I made this dress to wear to a masquerade ball- themed wedding. I’ve always loved peacocks, so I thought it would be appropriate to dress as one. The under-dress is made of textured cotton in a pretty jewel-toned blue color. The matching partlet is made from a decorative sheer fabric in the same color. I overlaid the same sheer fabric on the sleeves of the under-dress, and decorated the ends of the sleeve bands with Swarovski crystal rings. The overskirt is made from iridescent dupioni silk in a dark blue/purple color. I chose an upholstery jacquard for the corset, in a pattern that resembles small feathers. The top of the corset is trimmed with decorative cording. The tail of the peacock was the biggest challenge for this costume. I didn’t want to use real feathers for the tailpiece, because they easily become disheveled. Instead, I felt it would be interesting to recreate the look of feathers with fabric appliqué work. Each feather “eye” was made of 4 pieces of fabric, which were appliquéd onto a wool felt background. The outer portions of the feathers were then hand-painted in metallic gold. The tail has 28 feathers in all, which I arranged onto a golden green dupioni silk base. Each feather was then accented with a small Swarovski crystal to give a hint of sparkle. I then added iridescent flat shell beads to the tail in-between the feathers to complete the look.