At Dalhousie I was in the diploma program which meant that I could take all the costume specific courses without doing any other theatre or general education courses. I spent two years almost constantly sewing. The coursework included building costumes for the shows in the theatre department as well as classes for drafting, draping, tailoring and history. The big finale of the program was the historical dress class where we would build an entire outfit, from the underwear to the outer garment, of a chosen era; in my year we commemorated the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic, hence “Titanic dress.”