Materials Used
For the Dressing Gown:Roughly 5 yards of polyester crushed chiffon from Walmart.
For the Corset:About 1 yard of corset coutil
Boning
30 Grommets
Corset Lacing
For the "underskirt":Three yards of a thin white polyester lace.
For the Chemise/dustruffle: Three yards of some unidenitfied material from the walmart $1.00 section
2 yards of 2 1/2 inch wide scalloped lace.
Grand Total = $70.00
Patterns
For this outfit, I drafted the dressing gown myself. ***Click here to see my tutorial for drafting your own dressing gown***
The underskirt and the chemise were done quite quickly by just laying myself down, tracing, and cutting, becasue I ran out of time to really complete it. I'll explain some of that later on.
For the corset, I used Laughing Moon #100 Ladies Victorian Underwear Pattern (Silverdo Corset).
The Process: Yeah. It might look good in the pictures, but it's really being held up by a bunch of pins and other unidentified objects as most of my costumes are. A combination of fabric, metal, hot glue, and pins. :) The hardest part about this costume was the corset. It took the most time. It was the first corset I ever made, which explains the terrible way it came out in the pictures. I didn't really have enough money to buy all the supplies I needed, so I didn't have a good busk or grommets. Instead, I just sewed the front together, laced it up, and prayed that I could fit in it. Originally, before I took the pictures in the pictures section, the corset laced closed all the way with some room left over. After Halloween, I undid it, and readjusted everything, took in the seams, and got some kind of seam allowance in the back.
The dressing gown wasn't that hard to draft, actually. It was the first time I'd ever drafted anything in my life. It didn't turn out too bad, did it? That process is explained in my tutorial.
The underskirt was interesting. You see, it actually wasn't sewn. By 1:00 am, I was dead tired, so when I woke up, I just took some random lace lying in my fabric bin, wrapped it around my waist, pinned it, put the corset on and just went on with my day with it held up like that. It lasted, and didn't look too bad either.
The chemise/dustruffle was on a whim also. I realized I needed something under the corset, so I basically laid myself out on the floor, traced my figure out, cut the fabric to look somewhat like a tube with sleeves, and then sewed the lace on. Nothing really complicated, or nice looking. But it's all hidden by the dress. The material was some kind of stretchy gauze and I still to this day, don't know what it is and never will. It was quite comfortable, though.
For more info and tips on how to make your own dressing gown using my method of "I don't have any time or money to really do this, check out the Research Page on this outfit.