When the pandemic hit I was struck with the urge to try to take my rudimentary costume design skill to a new level. I had done some work for school productions in high school but I had yet to start a project on this scale. I decided I was going to try to work from scratch using reference images from extant garments and a pair of stays I had made in 2019. I self drafted the bodice pattern and shift as well as figured out how to rig the skirt to pull up into the signature puffs of the polonaise gown. I made a pair of pockets and several petticoats. The ensemble took several weeks to put together and design. The biggest struggle was drafting the pattern on my own. I worked through several mock ups and pattern iterations before finally settling on the one that you can see below. The project was my first of what ended up being several forays into pattern drafting. Through the several pieces of the project I gained experience in being able to draft patterns. I further developed my eye for being able to translate something from a 3D image to a 2D pattern that could be used to go back to 3D to make a garment. This project helped me gain confidence in my spatial reasoning and gave me skills I can apply to more engineering or biology based projects.