This dress was based on the ever-popular Simplicity 9891 with a few modifications. The whole costume consists of an outer dress, a long skirt and a black singlet. I've done quite a bit of sewing before but nothing quite on this scale. It really helped that I made a mock first (which was quite disastrous) in order to sort through all the problems I would encounter.

The sleeves have been altered so that they drop from the elbow rather than lower arm. The sleeve bell was adjusted so that it was longer at the seam edge, about 50cm, and about 40cm at the upper end. The sleeve bells are also bag-lined with a lighter purple.

The outer dress laces up the front from the waist and has splits on either side from the waist down. The ends of these pieces were modified to be petal shaped. To go underneath I made a skirt from the bottom half of the same pattern.

To get the collar I did a couple of mock designs as the original collar in the pattern is a separate piece and is too high and sharply pointed for what I wanted. I lined the collar and the front of the dress where the lacing went but it still needed to be stiffer in the end.

The fabric, according to the store, is called 'lover's satin' and is two contrasting colours woven together so that in different lights it changes colour. The main dress is a dark purple and is bag-lined with a matching underlay. The skirt and undersides of the sleeve bells are made from the same material as the main dress but of a lighter purple shade. The dress is then laced up with black leather. Each eyelet is about 3cm apart and there are 9 in total. An uneven number works best for the lacing pattern.

My older brother, a landscape photographer and my best friend who did a photography paper at university, took me out to one of Auckland's many regional parks to take the photos. The photos are

taken either on the road to Huia, at the sea by Huia or at the big tree with unusual roots at the Auckland Domain. There was a jazz concert going on at the same time so we got a lot of strange looks.