I made a 19th Century Evening Gown for a BALL! ✨

The first 500 people to use my link in the description or scan the QR code will receive a one month free trial of Skillshare! https://skl.sh/catscostumery03261 Thank you to Skillshare for sponsoring this video ✨ This video has been a long time coming - I've had this fabric in my stash for over six years. As soon as I saw it I knew it had to be a late 1890s evening gown... and the recent Society of Salome ball was the *perfect* final push I needed to finally make it! For the pattern, I customised patterns from the Keystone Guide to Jacket and Dress Cutter (freely available here: https://archive.org/details/keystonejacketdr00heck). I mentioned the walking skirt pattern, but I did end up swapping to the Dress Skirt at the last minute and it worked great! It had just the train I needed. The main inspiration was this Doucet gown (1898-1900) at the MET, https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/158194. I used approximately 6-7 meters of the silk fabric. The skirt is interlined with tarlatan and a plain cotton, and the bodice has a sturdy cotton twill base on which the silk and decorations are built. The bodice laces at the centre back with thread covered eyelets, and the skirt with hooks and eyes (and it has a pocket!). I ended up working pretty much every day on this for four weeks, often after 10 pm, but I was glad to see it done and to wear it for a whole night! As is the way, I got very minimal footage of me wearing it, so stay tuned on my Instagram to see more of i