The Fantasy Thursday Outfit

Every girl has to have at least one fantasy gown, even historical costumers.

6/13/06

As I write this, the outfit is about 90% finished, but that's ok. At least you know from the get-go that this outfit ends up done on time, right? It all started eleven days ago when it was more or less decided by a group of the Usual Suspects (Kendra, Trystan, Katherine, etc) that Thursday night of Costume College should be "Fantasy Thursday". Everyone who wanted to could wear a fantasy-themed outfit and since the Usual Suspects all had lovely Lord of The Rings-inspired gowns, they were all set.

Except for me. With an ever expanding list of costumes to sew by August, I had a mini panic attack: I could either whip something up now and play along with my friends in a pretty fantasy gown, or I could... I dunno... Go to the Thursday night festivities in some other costume? Hm.

It was decided when I came across the perfect fabric sitting in my fabric stash. The dupioni had been there for at least a year and a half as a result of being too slubby for historically accurate clothing of pretty much every era I do. Seven yards of it, in fact. I then came across the 7 yards of silk-blend drapery sheer that was a gift from Becky earlier in the year. I put the two together and ended up with Awesome. The dupioni would be the under gown, which would have long, pointed sleeves and the over gown would be from the sheer which would have flow-y sleeves.

Since I'm not a Lord of The Rings fan (the movies were gorgeous, but I'm a Narnia girl at heart), I just decided to go with a generic medievally outfit that wouldn't be out of place in LOTR, or Narnia, or Camelot, or ::insert random Pre-Raphaelite painting here::

A preliminary sketch

On advice from Kendra, I decided to A) make the gown to fit over a Victorian corset and B) use a commercial princess seamed pattern just to save time. I found Butterick 4827 and Kendra recommended McCalls 4491, which is essentially the exact same pattern as the Butterick but had the really nice drapey sleeve option.

As for the corset, everything just fits better over a corset, y'know? ;)

Ok, skipping ahead of all the boring toile-fitting and cutting out fabric and assembly... Which is to say, the patterns were pretty darn straight forward. The only major change I made was to not make lacing strips and just put size 00 grommets directly in the back edges. I added a modesty placket just in case the edges gapped any, but that's mostly just a precaution.

Under Gown - Front	Under Gown - Back

With the under gown done (took about a day) I moved onto the over gown. Due to the nature of the fabric, it took a bit longer to make. First there was the widginess of the fabric, which meant I needed to cut very very carefully. Then there was the fraying issue, which meant I needed to do French Seams on almost all of the seams. And by that time, I was burning out. I set it aside for close to a week because I ended up attaching the sleeves incorrectly and I just couldn't bring myself to look at it.

Which brings us to today.

I re-attached the sleeves. And... That was it.

Front	Back	Find the French Seams!

So, right now all I have left is to finish the edges on the over gown (which is going to be FUN... Not) and hem the under gown. I'm also probably going to be attaching some metal trim over the arm seams on the over gown.

The metal trim pinned into place	Close-up on the trim

For now, that's pretty much it!

Click here for pics of the finished garment.