Nancy's Painted Silk Regency Gown

My daughter got on a designing tangent, and drew designs for costumes and room settings for a number of fantasy parties (fantasy, as in, one can only fantasize about being able to afford one!). When she showed me the drawings, I pointed at 'Autumn' (shown above). And said 'You know, we could make that with the Sensibility Regency pattern, and just leave off the sleeves.' And so we did.... This project involved a number of firsts for us: Amanda hand-painted the tree on the underskirt, and we worked together to dip-dye the overskirt. Neither of us has ever painted or dyed any garment before. And I pleated the skirt-back instead of gathering it. I've pleated before, but only with little dotted pattern markings to guide me! This was the first time I've had to figure it out for myself. The underskirt is ecru silk dupioni, and the overskirt is silk gauze, which we ordered from Dharma Trading Company. Lovely, lovely fabric, but holy cow was it hard to cut! Remember the line in 'The Sound of Music' - 'How do you catch a cloud and pin it down?' Well that applies to silk gauze, too.... She really loves the dress, no matter what she looks like in that last photo. She was just tired of being photographed by her mother!~ Nancy H.

Nancy does it again! If you've looked through the Show and Tell section before, then you've already seen two of Nancy's fabulous creations for her beautiful daughter. This one takes the cake, though, with that amazing dye job and the layers of silk! Wonderful!