Vampire Dress - Skirt Progress

Hi all,
It has been such a long time since I've made a costume! Yes a whole year I think actually, I think the steampunk dress was my last one... Anyway, this month it will be time to go to the EFF in Arcen again and this year's theme is zombies and vampires. It works in well with Halloween so we're actually sticking to the theme :)

My zombie will be my usual but with a different top as I have discarded the old one. More on that in another post though. My vampire will be... how could it be else... a little Victorian. I was really going to make something else but my love for corsets and puffy dresses won yet again :)

As I am also taking part in the Stashbusting September over at the T-Shirt Diaries, I really need to work with what I have. I signed up spontaneously as we're trying to declutter the apartment at the same time so this is the perfect way to combine both. Luckily this also means that I can use the lace I found at the market a couple of weeks ago when I decided on my dress :)

So for this dress I am using:

My ancient ancient petticoat, minus the green bits which I took off

The underskirt from the Steampunk Dress

Using these already saved me so much time in sewing! I used to spend all my waking hours sewing costumes, but I guess when I wasnt even considered for a prize with the Mombi dress I knew it wasnt worth it. I still try of course, but with my job it's not easy to find much spare time and I want to enjoy it a bit too.

Ok back to the dress. I went to the market last week and there is this shop that does cheap curtains. A friend of mine once mentioned that a vampire dress needs lots of lace. I just couldnt get that comment out of my head, so I decided to have a lace overskirt over the taffeta one. I was in luck, that shop that the PERFECT lace on sale for only £1 a meter! I bought about 4 meters but ended up using about 2.5 because I didnt want to it to me too massive and curtainesque. Of course now it is a tad too tight but I guess 10cm wont make that much of a difference.

This is a closeup of the skirt so far. It will have some sort of bustle over the top but I have to think about that. This skirt is super easy, I just sewed the ends together and added elastic. It will be covered anyway... A good start at least :)

I still have to make the bustle, a bolero-type jacket, a handbag, and a hat. The corsets I bought last month at the BB sale and still need to be washed. Nearly there... although that still sounds like quite a lot... But it's all frugal and stashbusting so that's great! :)