Ozzy Blackbeard: Halloween Dress

This is, without doubt, the most bonkers thing I've ever made; which makes it seem quite apt right now!

It was inspired by my love of Halloween and this fabulous dress that Rachel Maksy made recently. I have only recently discovered her youtube channel, and I just love it. The inspiration for the bodice came from these beautiful vintage Thea Porter dresses,

I ADORE this black dress, and would love to try and re-create it. Those sleeves!!

and these much loved dresses from Coco Fennell.

1. 2. 3. 4.

The whole dress is self-drafted, and I have been wanting to try and re-create that bodice for quite some time. It was difficult to work out how it was constructed, and I'm glad I tried it out on this and not some expensive fabric. The tricky bit was attaching the trim, and I'm not going to attempt to explain what I did, other than to say that I totally over-engineered it and learnt from my mistakes!

The trim I used was polyester bias tape, and I think it would be better with cotton lawn or polycotton bias tape, as they are lighter weight. Also, next time I would attach the bias tape before sewing any of the seams together, even though it would take some precise measuring from the cut edge. I am keen to try this again as a "proper" dress, so will report back.

I love this style of bodice with the midriff yoke, and have made some other styles of this, which I will be sharing.

My fabric is some orange cotton, and some black and silver mesh with spider webs on it - both were from ebay. Originally I was going to use one layer of mesh, but it looked a bit puny so I used two layers.

This is one layer of mesh

The orange underskirt is a quarter circle, which I haven't tried before, and I love it. The bottom layer is one rectangular fabric width of mesh gathered at the waist (and when I say gathered, I mean randomly pinned and basted...). The top layer of mesh is two rectangles seamed at the centre front, and gathered as above.

For the bodice I cut two layers of mesh, then basted it to the orange cotton, and treated it as one piece of fabric.

I flipping love these sleeves, and you will be seeing more of them. I slashed and spread my sleeve block to create gathers at the sleeve head and a wide sleeve. Then the hem is gathered into a little cuff.