Merenwen – Ontario, Canada
Notes on Making Arwen's Requiem Dress
This
was my second attempt at an Arwen costume (the first was
Arwen's Farewell Dress) and so I felt much more
confident going into this project. Also, the Requiem Dress is based on a
fairly simple pattern so it was much less fussy in terms of design.
The
pattern that I started was Simplicity 9103 which is a super easy pattern to
work. The pattern is designed for a knit/stretch fabric so it meant that I
didn't have to fuss with complex closures.
Fabric & Costs
I used
three fabrics for this dress: a navy blue stretch panne velvet, a cream
leaf-printed satin and a navy blue chiffon. The actual Requiem dress is
described as steel blue or blue-gray velvet but a pretty exhaustive search
of fabric shops around my area turned up nothing that was close to that
shade. So instead of going the custom dying route, I opted for a navy
velvet for the overdress that I could easily pair with a matching chiffon
for the underdress bodice and a cream coloured satin for the elven sleeves.
My costs were $20 (CDN) for 4 yards of stretch velvet + 2 yards of cream
print satin and $7 (CDN) for 2 yards of silk chiffon. The total cost of the
dress including pattern, trims, fabrics, thread and notions was just under
$40 CDN. 
The
major alteration that I made to the basic overdress pattern was adding about
10 inches of length when making Dress View B. I also cut out the back
panels with a slightly extended V-shaped bottem so that it would look like a
small train to the dress. The dress was easy to sew but I must admit that I
really struggled attaching the trim (a wide firm ribbon of navy and silver
swirls) to the scoop neck of the dress. Working on the curves was really
tough!
The
underdress used the same pattern as the overdress except that instead of
making it full length (I didn't have enough chiffon anyway), I only made it
to hip length. I cut out the short sleeves (from View C) from the navy
velvet. This was a tough choice but I knew that the chiffon couldn't
support the weight of the lower sleeves even with seam binding at each of
the joins. I used the same silver-swirl trim on the join between the lower
and upper sleeves and used a silver-black narrow trim for the neckline of
the underdress. The sleeves were nothing more than a large square of fabric
(45 inch width) that I finished the edges and sewed onto the velvet upper
sleeves in a pleated style. I liked the final look of the sleeves since
they go all the way to the floor and are really billowly (and I can still
use my hands.)
