Prom Dress

I dabbled in learning to sew from a very young age. I decided early in high school I wanted a very specific prom dress and nothing else would do. Unfortunately, my dream dress didn't exist, and even if I were to try to find something similar, my family was working poor - hit hard by the recession so had nice property but struggled to keep food on the table at times - and wouldn't be able to afford it.

I taught myself how to make a dress form out of duck tape and an old t-shirt, how to fabric drape, how to make an Elizabethan-style corset, how to make a hoopskirt petticoat, how to draft patterns on paper. I sewed every stitch by hand over the course of many months since I didn't have access to a sewing machine. I hemmed the ruffles on a cross-country car ride with my grandmother. If I knew better then (and had a slightly higher budget) I would have chosen a higher-quality satin rather than the costume satin I settled on, but the bedsheet, vinyl electrical tubing, satin ribbon, shoelace, and zip ties for the petticoat and corset worked just fine.