Eowyn Victory Dress Part 8: Finished at Last!

Whew!  This monster of a project is finally done!  It has been a tough couple of weeks, I can tell you that.  Between canning everything coming out of the garden (and off the peach trees), I've done nothing but can and costume this entire month.

I'm not entirely pleased with the final result.  There is a lot I don't like about the dress, but I'm not going to start pointing it out.  Here are some shots of the jacket.  This is before I tacked down the sleeves so that they aren't so poofy.  I will mention that I know that the "belt" isn't correct in the back, but I had a lot of issues with where to put the zipper, and I ended up making it a lot tighter than I'd originally planned, so that threw everything off.  I wasn't going to start ripping, though.  I'm also not thrilled with how the sleeves lay, but the fabric just didn't lay correctly to begin with.  It's on the lightweight side, but I chose a heavy satin for the lining.  Unfortunately, with all of the gold embroidery, it makes the fabric a bit too stiff, and because it's so light weight, it just doesn't sit correctly.  Oh well.  There's nothing I can do about that.  I could either have it lay perfectly, or have a more authentic pattern.  I determined that the pattern was more important.

The interesting thing about the bodice and front panel is that the majority of it all is hand-stitched.  I did use the machine to stitch the bodice together, make the seams on the sides, and add the two pieces of ribbon down the front, but the rest of it is hand-stitched.  The front piece, the belts, the ribbon along the top, and the sleeves are all hand-stitched to the bodice.  And don't forget the beading!  It might not seem like a lot, but that was maybe 10 hours worth of work.  I also had to rip the belts out once and redo them, as they'd somehow gotten bunched up without my noticing, and the one side was markedly different from the other.

Here is the complete, finished piece.  This includes the dress and jacket with front panel.  Some day I'll get some good photos, but not at 1:30 in the morning the day that we're leaving.

I will probably be posting the work I did on Matt's Eomer costume when we get back from Dragon Con, so keep an eye out for that!

I'm also now on Instagram, so look for me there as CasualCostumer!