Hope’s Dress
Show: Urinetown
Position: Draper
Date: Spring ’24
Location: Ithaca College
Costume Designer: Alina Gorney
Costume Shop Manager: Lilly Westbrook
From there I built a mockup and confirmed that the designer liked the shape with the added petticoat that was in her design.
Starting with the Draper meeting, I learned that the dress would have a petticoat, and be made from a 1950s dress pattern. During that initial conversation I made sure to ask the designer about the sleeve pattern as the pattern was different than her original rendering. She preferred the new sleeve.
At the fitting, I pinned the mockup as we determined the adjustments needed, like raising the waist and making the sleeves/shoulder section smaller. Alina pinned the hem length, while I looked at fit issues with the help of the shop manager.
I then built the the bodice and the skirt. The main fabric was a stretch taffeta with an added sparkly net fabric on the skirt and sleeves. The net meant all of my seams for that fabric were french seams.
To make the sleeves easier to work with without losing the gathers, I zigged twill tape on to the ends to keep it together in between steps. For the skirt, I basted the two layers together and then gathered them together.
We then had another fitting for the base dress.
After hemming the dress and making the final alterations, I added the appliques to the bodice. For the smaller hearts I cut them out of the fabric used for the skirt and sleeves and the larger heart is made of a pearl-like trim. I used yellow fabric from Hope’s look 2 skirt to fill it in and fit the rendering.
When I did it at first, the large heart was looking wonky(below left). Neither the designer nor I were satisfied with it so I did it a second time(below right) to make sure the final product was the best product I could make.
