This is my entry for the Halloween Costume Contest on Deviant Art. I've wanted to make this costume for some time, so when the contest was announced, I decided to make it!

This is the very last costume you see for Katrina Van Tassel in Tim Burton's Sleepy Hollow film. It's my favorite of her costumes, even though it only gets about 30 seconds of screen time. A lot of work went into this costume because I wanted it to be made exactly the way the movie original was made. So I did a ton of research online to find out how this obscure dress was constructed, and here's what I came up with:

To start with, I kept a costuming journal for this dress, so if you want to read about the entire process with additional pictures, go here: [link] It's not very long and it says most of the things mentioned here, but with greater detail. That link also contains all the other pictures of my costume, along with the reference photos of the original.

The dress itself is deceptively simple. The hardest part was obtaining the correct fabric, which I bought from the UK and had shipped over. I didn't have a good pattern for this dress so I had to draft most of the pieces myself. The dress itself has no opening in the back and apparently none in the front, which means that the stomacher is false and attaches to the bodice, underneath of which is the actual opening. I made my opening with two rows of grommets for a laceup, since I didn't know how the original was secured. The triangular front pieces on the bodice tie together at the neckline, which I also copied.

The dress is in two parts...the top and underskirt. The top consists of the bodice and bustle. Since there was no opening in the back, the back bodice piece and the bustle had to be cut from one continuous piece, then small pleats put in in-between each stripe in the back to make the piece narrow in at the waist, and then out again for the bustle. These pleats had to be hand-pinned BEFORE cutting, then the piece was cut entirely and the pleats were stitched in. That was probably the most annoying part of the outfit.

The dress has three separate rows of trims going round the neck and down to the bustle (a tulle trim, a white ruffle and black velvet), and a fourth black leaf lace trim just around the neck. In the additional pictures, I DO have the black leaf lace going all the way round my neck as well, but it didn't show up in pictures near the bottom because it got tucked in accidentally when I put the dress on (whoops!) Anyhow, I hand-ruffled the three other trims on the rest of the dress.

The underskirt has a drawstring waist reinforced with grommets, two layers of ruffles in the front and one large ruffle in the back. The ruffles had to be pleated in between every other black stripe so that the stripes on the skirt would flow naturally down into the ruffle without a break in the stripe. This same technique was used when attaching the sides of the bustle to the sides of the bodice.

The false stomacher attaches to the front of the dress by a series of hooks and eyes. I had to make two because the first didn't have that same very sharp, very narrow point that the original dress has.

The entire costume is lined with cream colored satin and completely serged.

I also made all the undergarments for this costume...corset, camisole and drawers, and a set of tulle panniers to give the skirt body. Pictures of those are in the dress journal.

The black boots are imitation victorian boots that I bought at JoMar's.

The necklace (not shown, but pictured in the journal) was very hard to find reference for, but once I got it I was able to make a duplicate of Sculpey. It's very small and fragile, which is why it wasn't taken along in this photoshoot :0)

My hair I had bleached to the correct color, then bought two sets of extensions to give it more body. The hair bow is made from three separate kinds of ribbon, like the original.

All in all I had tons of fun making this costume and wearing it on my birthday XD it's definitely my new favorite costume!

Again, reference and better pictures are here: [link]