Raeliana from Why Raeliana Ended up in the Duke’s Mansion
The Design
The Anime and Manwha main dress design is a bit different. The Anime version had a solid gold dress bottom while the Manwha had more of a glittery dot-filled pattern. I decided to go with the Manwha version. It’s a bit more whimsical, even the sleeves are a bit more flowy.
New skills + Experimenting
To achieve the effect at the bottom of the skirt I played with some new techniques. I also learned some more sewing staples that I had never properly learned or done. These included making a standing collar, button wholes, vinyl printing, gold foiling, and pleated style ruffles instead of gathered ruffles.
The pieces
The top was based off of a basic button-up top pattern. I modified it to add the ruffles around the middle, looser sleeves, and ruffled wrist pieces. I also cropped the top, this was more because I didn’t want to fix the uneven ruffles on one side. Plus, it all went under the corset in the end, so top length wouldn’t matter.
The skirt was a full skirt that was ankle length. I ended up making most of it at 2am. For all of the gold details, my neighbor let me borrow her cricut, where I crunched some numbers and added a consistent amount to every skirt panel. These took me 4-5 hours to add on once they were cut. I did this before sewing the skirt pieces together, so they could be properly flat. The ruffles were also made more like pleats than a gather.
For the corset pattern, I actually made one because of Raeliana’s type of corset. This was drafted and made in a couple of days. This time I made sure to actually add proper curvature so it would fit me well.
