We bought a 150 inch Southern Belle style hoop skirt and went to work!
The dress is constructed very similar to the prayer dress worn by Scarlett Ohara in Gone with the Wind. It has 8 chiffon ruffles (three pink, three peach, and two white) topped off with a fitted bodice that features a flared peplum forming the very top ruffle. The first change we made was to go with cotton rather than chiffon. It easier to both dye and sew. She was planning to wear it to an outdoor wedding reception during late June, so we wanted the fabrics to be as breathable and natural as possible. My wife also does not at all care for peach as a color, so we changed the color scheme so that it would be dark pink ruffles on the bottom, light pink ruffles in the middle where the peach would have been, and white ruffles on the top.
I decided (in my lunacy) to buy a bolt of white cotton and then dye the appropriate amounts fuchsia and petal pink. I used RIT dye for this because it was the most widely available and because I had read a few posts that from people who used the same brand when making this dress. Can I say hugely uneven dye job? I ended up dying the strips for the ruffles three separate times to finally get the color mostly even. The first time it came out looking tie-dyed. Not at all what I was going for. If I had it to do over I would have just calculated and bought broadcloth in the colors I wanted each fabric to be rather than dying it myself. It would have saved money in the long run because dye isn't cheap.
Next came applying all of the ruffles to the underskirt. I gathered these by hand because I don't have a ruffler foot for my machine. It went surprisingly fast considering the yards and yards of ruffles to be gathered. I think what helped the most was the decision to do it in halves (front half and back half) and then sew the two halves together on the sides. With all the ruffles, the seam wasn't very visible anyway, and it made it so much easier to work with. The skirt construction went by pretty quickly. There are some tweaks that I need to make before she wears it a second time to Gencon, but it wasn't bad. I blame the few uneven ruffles on the fact that many nights I was working on it up until three or four in the morning. It looked straight at the time.
The shirt portion was the biggest challenge for me. I have made many many chemises and flowing style shirts, but I'm not that comfortable making fitted, button down shirts. So, to make me feel a little more comfortable, I found a cheap shirt at the local thrift store that had the Mandarin collar that I was looking for and used it as a building foundation. To go with that I found a white specialty cotton that featured some floral embroidery in the same dark pink as the ruffles. I used this for the chest and back of the shirt that in the original was ruched. We thought the design kept with the Asian feel of the top. I made the puffed sleeves and the waist accent out of the same dark pink fabric and the peplum out of solid white. To finish off, I embroidered a small decorative trim along the edge of the peplum in the dark pink as well. The top fit pretty well, but once the corset was on underneath it was a bit large and short. I will be taking it in and adding a zipper in the back before Gencon to make it easier to get into and more fitted.
All in all for my first full on ballgown, I didn't do badly considering how rushed I was to get it done. I let things go that I normally wouldn't have because of time constraints. If I'd had an extra three weeks to work on it meticulously, I admit the product of my work would have been better. But, saying that, the next time around I will know what I'm doing and it will all fall into place easier.
After one more wear as the Kaylee shindig dress, we have plans to shorten it and make it into a cute lolita style dress for Steffie to wear to other events. I will post additional pictures of it when we do that.
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