1860 – Dress progress

In the past weekends, I’ve been working on my 1860’s dress. I’ve cut the skirt fabric, sewn the pieces together, made the pleats and the waistband and decided I do want a short train after all. I only need to sew the hem and the skirt will be finished. I didn’t take too many pictures, as I mostly sew in the evening and photographing black velvet with little light doesn’t work, but here’s a picture of my living room when I was cutting the fabric:

 

Aside from the skirt, I also finally finished the petticoat. I still needed to hem it, so it’s done. No pictures, unfortunately.

Last night, I was looking at 1860’s ball gowns and made the decision to also make a ball-gown bodice. Many existent dresses have both a day and an evening bodice for one skirt. I still have enough fabric left to make an evening bodice, and if I do it I’ll need to work with the same fabric, so I decided to just go for it. I’ll finish the dinner bodice first, but at least I’ll save the fabric.

My next step was looking at patterns for evening bodices, and I decided to try to drape one myself. I used the picture below for the seam-lines and this post by the Dreamstress as guideline: http://thedreamstress.com/2009/07/blah-costuming/

I’m pretty happy with how the experiment went, as it actually fits! This method is so quick, and a lot cheaper than buying a commercial pattern. I only had to make slight alterations to the mock-up, so I think this will work!