Artist Statement

Madison M.

8th Grade

The Blue Dress

This dress was inspired when I was reading one of my books on historical fashion. I was just flipping through admiring the pictures and I saw several from the Victorian era that I liked. It gave me the idea for this dress which contained several of the traits I had seen in these different dresses in the book. So I drew it out. I was planning on using fabric that my grandparents had bought as a present, but ultimately decided that I should not experiment on expensive fabric. So instead I looked around on the internet for some patterns that looked a bit like what I wanted and had certain features and aspects of my design. Then I used those patterns, taking the pieces of what I wanted and altering them to get what I have now. The fabric was two different fabrics, one lace one lining, which I sewed on top of each other and added an additional layer for the lining. The dress had a lot of gathering making it quite a long process at times. Also at one point the skirt was too long and I had gathered and done all this stuff to it and then had to undo it and then do it all over again. So it was quite a long process which took longer than I thought it would. The bustle was taken from a different pattern than the bodice which included the zipper which posed a problem for getting it on and off. The problem was that the bustle in the other pattern did not have a zipper so it did not accommodate it and split down with it. I managed to fix this without ruining the bustle by not sewing it all around the back and attaching hooks and eyes so the bustle piece would hook on and off. I created the bustle by gathering a rectangle of fabric across the top and sides. To create the ruffles on the bustle I gathered it more in different places and had a bit of fun with it. I was aiming to get it look like the ripped design I had initially designed without ripping it.