The Italian Renaissance Curtain Dress

So sorry this has taken so long for me to post this! Life and Thanksgiving got in the way, so the blog got put on the back burner.

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I made a curtain dress! Yep - you heard (read) that correctly! I made a dress out of a velvet curtain. To most people this may seem kinda crazy and weird, but the theaters I work at do this frequently. We will often use home decor fabric for costumes (especially corsets and stuff like that).

Anyways. 

My parish was replacing a lot of stuff earlier this year and guess who got the velvet drapes?

 Me!

Yes, this was (above) literally me when they gave me the old drapes! 

So many possibilities!

Not an entirely inaccurate picture. 

RBF, awesome hair, and velvet dress. 

Yep. 

Pretty accurate.

Although a closer look at this scene in Enchanted (picture here) brings up a lot of questions for me. Why did she cut the bodice on the bias? 

She had plenty of leftover fabric. 

Did she let the hem hang overnight so it's not uneven?

 How did she cut out the pattern so perfectly? 

Where did the pattern come from? 

Did she draft it by memory? 

Granted this is a Disney movie so there is a level of fantasy. But still! I need to know!

I didn't realize just how many movies have dresses made out of curtains! Lets make this trend!

Alrighty! On to the the important stuff!

This dress has been in the makes for quite some time. 

I've been working on it off and on for the past few months and have finally finished it.  Everything came from the stash too! More room for fabric!

I based the design off of dresses from the Italian Renaissance, so it's not 100% accurate. I am fairly happy about how this turned out but I am just not totally enthusiastic about it. 

Here is the front of the dress. The front  panel is chiffon, backed with canvas and lined with red quilting cotton. I will replace the twill tape with a bronze chain I have in the stash eventually.

Because I'm such an economical person (read: I was running out of fabric) I made the front false and pinned it on the laced it up. Creating the illusion of a full chemise.

My favorite part of this is all the beading. It really gave the dress a nice weight and drape. 

I'm less thrilled about the sleeves. I don't know what it is. I just don't really like them. But they are completed and wearable so that's that.

This dress was my first time trying cartridge pleating and I rather like it! I merely folded the salvage over once and gathered it using top stitching thread.

And that is all! Hopefully work wont effect the blog too much but there may be some late posts occasionally!