Edwardian Ball
When I first made this dress, I had no idea how much use I would get out of it. I’m not even sure what inspired me to make it. Actually…. I found this black and white striped satin and just fell in love with it. And I wanted to try making a big dress. This was my first foray into sewing a project this large and I had no idea what I was doing. It is made from a pattern for a French dress, and is intended to be worn with 18th century French panniers. These, I do not have, and have actually never worn with the dress. Anyway, I suppose I’m just pre-emptively saying:
It’s not perfect and it isn’t historically accurate and it isn’t even accurate to the pattern at this point. It was, however, a learning experience.
I had this pattern that I got on sale and had wanted to make, probably for years. So I just jumped right in and gave it a shot with my new black-and-white satin. I spent every evening for about 3 weeks constructing it. The original event for which I created this dress was the Edwardian Ball. In 2011.
Tim Burton Ball
After that, I wore it to another event in June, the “Tim Burton Ball”. The most common descriptor people have used for this dress is “Bride of Beetlejuice”, so this seemed appropriate. Nobody loves stripes as much as Tim Burton and I. However, this was not a huge event put on by a cool costuming guild. I arrived, with friends in tow, to a bar in San Francisco. They had fliers up for their ‘Tim Burton Ball”, but there were no decorations. No other people in costume. There were, however, some themed cocktails and I got to dance to Harry Belefonte’s “Shake, Senora”, so the night wasn’t entirely a bust. The highlight of the evening was when a lady who had been sitting at the bar summoned me over. She enjoys going to cool places and sketching people. And she had sketched me in my awesome stripey dress.
Zombies!
The next time I pulled it out, this dress was used for a Zombie party at the Exploratorium. I decided to be a creepy historical zombie, and also I got to experiment with doing some liquid latex make-up applications. We got dressed up and some friends and I went to a cemetery before the party to take some creepy zombie shots. Then we made our way to the city. If I saw me, I’d run.
Circus time!
Most recently, I decided to join a costume guild. This is now 7 years later. They hosted a Victorian ‘Fancy Dress’ Halloween high tea. All of the participants were to wear Victorian style Halloween costumes, which is to say, Victorian dress silhouettes with large poofy skirts, but make it a costume. I decided to go with the option of wearing the black and white dress again. This time, the black-and-white striped part is a circus tent. And the white underskirt would house all of my circus performers.
I printed out some historical circus performer poster art on iron-on transfer paper, then ironed them onto some plain white fabric. I then ironed that onto red felt and cut out each character, so that they had a red outline. There were acrobats, jugglers, a full circus train, clowns, bears, and tightrope walkers. I even mad a ridiculous hat with some flying trapeze artists.
