First I gathered reference material on the costume. I looked at footage (footage is really good because there are close-ups so I could pick out the detail. Also it shows the costume from many angles). I also have an old publicity photo of Elizabeth Estensen in the velvet dress from the shoulders up. This shows the trim in close up, so the details are quite clear.

From my reference materials, I managed to come up with my final reference drawing that included all of the information on how the dress should be constructed to be authentic and move in the right way. This acts as a blueprint whilst making the costume.

Reference Sketch

I love colouring in!

 

Step 2: Sourcing materials

Sifting through references and fabric swatches. The fabric that I have my hand on is the correct shade of red.

Once I had gathered my references, I had to match the fabrics and also the decorations and fasteners (technically called "notions"). I wanted to be accurate, so I wanted to match shades - luckily, I had a replica of this very costume made by Raymond Childe and Roger Oldhampstead (the Mark I). Unfortunately, it was too big for my sister to model, so I needed a smaller one. It also wasn't as faithful to the original, largely because I gave them the wrong instructions! I found a place that sells the correct shade, after a long time trawling.

Sourcing fabrics and notions can be a nightmare. The basics (zips, hooks and eyes, velcro, etc.) can be bought from the local haberdashery. Fancy things, however, are really difficult to find. This is where the Internet comes in handy, but you can spend days searching and sourcing. If you plan on doing anything like this, get an idea of how much the thing is going to cost. It WILL be more than you budgeted for, so be careful. With notions, more often than not, you will compromise and go for cheaper alternatives. A word of advice for those in the UK - Birmingham is the most fantastic place for fabrics and trims, etc. I found the gold faceted bead trim at the Rag market, and also all the required braiding.

The first trauma happened here: NO 2" SEQUIN STAR APPLIQUES! These are needed for the belt and the trim. I managed to find some hologram ones from Fabricland.co.uk, but these would not be authentic (not to mention that they cost 99p each!). I therefore had a quick trip to Aberdashery in Aberystwyth where I managed to get some sequin trim. I then set about making my own thus:

i) I painted some heavy, plain fabric (such as canvas or linen, which I happened to have lying around) with a thin layer of PVA glue and left it to dry overnight. This stops the fabric from falling to bits after it is cut.

ii) I then drew a perfect five pointed star template by drawing a pentagon with a ruler and protractor and joining all the corners with lines (internal angles of a pentagon are 72°).

iii) I used the template to draw and cut out 32 stars.

A Star is Born

Hard work More hard work Twinkle, twinkle!

iv) Using the 10m sequin trim that I bought, and starting at the centre of each star, I stitched the trim on in an outwards spiral until I reached the base of the star points. The trim was extended up to the apex of the point and then looped back on itself, to reach the base of the point. The two adjacent sequins were then stitched together at the base of the point . I repeated this until the star shape was full.

v) I now had something resembling stars with loopy sequin points. I cheated and put a blob of PVA under each point to hold them in place and make the whole thing more star shaped. This all took me about three days.

Sourcing the fabrics took as much time as the notions. This is because I was after a specific shade of red crushed velvet. I cannot give you the shade name, because I discovered that fabric suppliers tend to make up the shade names for velvet as they go along. Personally, I would call this shade wine, because the colour is very similar to that of wine. Having ordered wine fabric swatches from three different suppliers, Online Fabrics produced a colour that Fabricland calls grape (a deep purple), Fabricland produced a colour that Online Fabrics calls maroon (pretty close to the correct colour, but too red), and only FabrickUK.com produced the correct colour, albeit more expensively than the other two.

Thankfully, however, red is red, so I had no trouble in getting red from any of the suppliers.

Online fabrics supplied the rest of the fabrics (gold tissue lame, lining, etc.), and Empress Mills supplied the vilene interfacing.

The gold lace for the trim took ages to find. Eventually, after two replica dresses and a lot of searching, I stumbled upon it purely by accident at M&J Trimmings in the US. The lace that they had was by no means identical, but it was a similar pattern.

The Long Lost Lace

 

Step 3. Making the Tiara

I needed gold stars for the tiara. Where could I get gold stars? Nowhere! What's the answer to this problem? If I was going to get carried away with this costume (and I gave this serious consideration), I would have bought some sheet brass and cut the stars with a hacksaw, filed down the sharp edges, and polished the brass until it shone like gold. This, I fear, would have cost a fortune and taken an age, considering that I would need around 42 stars. Instead, I took some gold card (that I had lying around the place from the Pearl dress tiara) and glued canvas to the back of it. I then proceeded to cut out 42 stars. The central (brow) star has eight points, so I constructed two rhombuses (rhombi? A quadrilateral with all sides equal, opposite sides parallel and opposite angles equal - for those who don't remember their geometry!) with my trusty protractor and ruler. The corners of the rhombus were used as the large points. I then took the halfway mark of each side to determine the positions of the small points. The original had a dull gold central design and borders, and also a gold blob (like a bead) in the middle. I drew the design on with silver (all I had) glitter glue and pushed a split pin through the centre for the central blob.

To make the tiara itself, I bought a cheap angel halo from the local party shop and pulled it to bits to get at the headband. I bought some really tough wire rods from the local art shop, and tried to cut it with pliers. It dented the pliers, so I ended up having to snap it by hand! I threaded the rods through some 2mm hollow lurex braided cord, and then bent the rods around the headband three times to anchor them in place. To make sure that the headband was comfortable to wear and also that the rods were held securely, I bound the headband with some gold fabric christmas ribbon (a sort of flimsy brocade affair). I glued the gold stars to the rods at regular intervals.

4. Drafting the pattern

The back of the muslin showing the marking

 

Whilst waiting for the fabric to arrive, I decided to make a start in drafting the pattern. The first step that I took was to create a muslin (a sort of scrap costume that is used to fit the dummy in the same way as the final costume). To make the muslin, it is always a good idea to use fabric that behaves similarly to what you will finally use. I used scrap crushed velvet that I had lying about. The original costume was around a size 12, so I set the dummy. The next stage was to drape scrap fabric on the dummy, making sure that the grainline was oriented correctly (crushed velvet has a nasty habit of stretching all out of shape if the grainline is wrong). The excess fabric on the dummy was chopped off, and the seamlines and allowances marked on the fabric with black marker. The skirt was not considered in making the muslin - I decided to do it by eye. It is possible to make a muslin without a dummy, but you need two people - one to wear the fabric and stay perfectly still, and another that can be trusted with sharp objects.

Drafting the pattern for the front of the dress

Once the muslin had been constructed, I drafted the pattern by drawing around the muslin onto greaseproof paper and extending the muslin patterns for the skirt. I used my reference drawing at all times to make both the muslin and the pattern. From my research, I found that the skirt has seven godets (triangly bits that help to give the skirt fullness). These godets insert into the seams between panels. Making the muslin and drafting the pattern took a couple of days to get right.

5. Making the dress

The pattern ready for cutting. From top left - Side back panel, Side front, Undersleeve, Centre back, and Centre front on the fold.

At last the fabric proper arrived, and I could start cutting it out. For inspiration, I put "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" on the DVD player, and set about cutting.

Note that the pattern has been oriented to follow the grainline of the fabric, and that the pile of the velvet is all running the same way (upwards). This will help it to look more luxurious. The fabric is 60" wide, folded with wrong sides together so that the pattern pieces are duplicated for left and right sides. This is done so that the velvet pile doesn't lock and cause creeping whilst the pattern is being cut, causing inaccurate cutting. Once the pattern was cut, iron-on interfacing (webbing with heat setting glue) was applied to the inside of the bodice area and the over and undersleeves to make the velvet stiffer and give it more body. This also had the advantage of making it easier to sew! The cut panels were then draped on the dummy for a final fitting, pinned to fit, basted (sewn roughly together by hand using large, easily removable stitches), and then machined. This all took me a few days on and off to get it right.

Sew, sew!

Hard at work on one of the sleeves. I use two machines - a cheapo £50 Victoria sewing machine from Lidl (honestly!), left, and a Toyota overlocker, right. Too much of this, and you'll go blind! The story so far... No lining yet. Fitting the lining.

The habotai lining was then constructed and fitted in the same way, and the zip was inserted into the back of the costume. Incidentally, habotai is a beautiful fabric (lightweight and silky), but it is ghastly to work with because it falls to bits at the drop of a hat and turns into a load of fluff which gets stuck in your socks and turns up in the funniest places. It was particularly important to overlock the seams for the lining, therefore. If I hadn't done this, then the costume would have fallen to pieces as the habotai ravelled, leaving me with a load of maroon fluff.

6. Making the Trim and the Belt

Neckline trim nearing completion

The original trim (as far as I can make out) was gold on the back, with gold lace on the front overlaying some red fabric (see Lee's photo's and press cutting in the "Behind the Scenes" section). I used red cotton drill fabric for the underlay.

To make straight (standard) bits of the trim (eg. for the belt front and sides and also for the armbands), I cut 2" strips of the gold lame, and applied interfacing. I then cut 2" strips of the red underlay and placed them over the lame backing. The lace was placed over the top of everything, making sure that it was pinned straight since the pattern was to be cut (it was around 0.5" too wide). The edges of the whole thing were then overlocked with the blade down, so that the lace was trimmed and the raw edges sewn down firmly simultaneously. The braid borders were pinned to the dress through the loose trim, and the whole lot sewn in place through all the layers. The neckline was similar in its construction, except that I constructed pattern pieces for the neckline by tracing it with greaseproof paper. When applying the lace to the trim, the fullness of the lace needed to be tucked in slightly since it was totally inflexible and could not be curved without rucking up.

The central dangly bit of the belt (streamer) was slightly different in its construction in that it has an extra layer. The original has a wider bit underneath the standard lace/maroon trim, so that there are two dark stripes running either side of the standard trim. The original fabric (I have seen Raymond Childe's original swatches for this costume) was a red/blue metallic brocade type fabric. I managed to find a brocade with a similar look to it. The base of the 4" wide streamer was contructed in the same way as the trim, but substituting the red cotton drill with the brocade. The lace is omitted, also. The standard trim then runs down the centre of this strip, leaving half an inch of the brocade exposed either side.

Here's the finished article