Historically Inspired

This gown and collar were fully realized by myself. I chose this gown because I thought I could successfully recreate the embroidered designs with puff paint and I really wanted to give the collar a go!

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The Collar: I made a stencil of bees, inspired by a collar commissioned by Napolean himself, and silkscreened it on sheets of silk organza - 1/2 puff paint & 1/2 Kroma Pearly White Paint. The organza was then bonded to a 2nd sheet of silk organza with watered down pouring medium. I ran the sheets under my domestic machine on a very fine zig-zag stitch in the shapes of the lace and cut them out. The lace around the collar is stitched in, while the lace directly behind the neck is a separate removable unit.

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The Stenciling: The center front piece on the skirt I used a dollar store stencil to manipulate and repeated it down the center with gold tinted puff paint. I then puffed it and re-stencilled over it with Kroma Iridescent Gold (having to stretch the silk back out to fit). The full sleeves and puff sleeves I designed the stencil for on my Mac. These were stenciled once with Iridescent Gold.