Split skirt – the second version

The last project of 2021 for me was a split skirt. I made a pair early in 2020, and after the gold bustle and wedding dress I was looking for a project which would need a little less figuring out. The great thing about making something a second time, is that you already have a finished version to look at when things get confusing. It also didn’t need a mock-up, which definitely speeds up the process.

The pattern is Truly Victorian TV299.

This version was made out of black wool. It’s just a little heavier than the wool I used for my brown version, so I chose not to line this one. It’s also wool which doesn’t fray, so no seam finishes necessary!

I got 3,5m of fabric for this project, as that’s what the pattern calls for. However, when laying out the pattern, I could get it out of more like 2m of 150cm wide fabric. It required a little piecing of the back panel, as that’s wider than 75cm (half the fabric width). However, this piecing is on the inner leg, so it’s nearly invisible when worn, and it was worth saving fabric for me. So if you’re looking at this pattern but want to save on fabric, it’s definitely possible, especially with the 1,5m width. I believe mine is a size D. Below is a picture of the pattern lay-out.

The pattern starts with pressing pleats. There’s few things as satisfying, nor as difficult to take pictures of, as pleats in black wool.

This pattern doesn’t include pockets. What looks like the pocket openings are actually the opening for the front fall closure. I’ve worn my 18th century separate pockets with my other split skirt, and that does work. So I decided to sew in similar pockets into the waistband for this skirt! I basically made 18th-century style pocket bags, and attached those such that the opening would be aligned with the fall front opening.

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They don’t fit really large items, as that will show bulk under the fairly tight upper part of the split skirt. However, it’s definitely good to have the option to carry things!

I found beautiful buttons for the front, but the store didn’t quite have enough to also put buttons on the pocket flaps, as called for. So I decided to use some decorative stitching on the pockets instead, and close them with hooks. They have a hook middle center, and a snap at the bottom. However, there’s a little bit of gaping at the top right now, so I do want to back and add another hook between the middle and the top.

The pattern calls for doing the button holes very early on, but with the bicycle length the lowest button hole and button get in the way of hemming. So this time, I left off the bottom button until the end. At that point I decided I didn’t really need it any way, so I just left it off entirely.

It’s quite difficult to take pictures of the skirt, as the wool absorbs the light, but I tried! I’m wearing my Emmy Design cycling sweater, which goes perfectly with it. I’m looking forward to wearing this for both historical and daily stuff!

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A gown for lounging and mornings

The event I finally made my gold/black dress for was a couple of days. And late nights and early evenings call for a more relaxed type of dress. One I did not have in my closet, as most of my events are just the outside day affairs or balls.

I finished my gold ensemble (at least to the point of being wearable) a week before I had to leave. So of course, I decided I probably could made a morning gown in that time, right?

What helped was that I already had the fabric, the pattern and the plan.

A couple of months ago, a friend decided some fabric from Fabriclore, an Indian fabric shop, selling a wide range of beautiful fabrics. I joined in with that order, and got a couple of beautiful cotton prints, including one I knew I wanted to use for a morning/tea gown.

It’s a light cream crinkled cotton with a distinct texture. It’s very drapey, not quite sheer but near to it, and it has a beautiful hand-block print of little blue and green flowers on it. Morning gowns are often quite full and flowy, without the normal Victorian structure, so I knew it’d be perfect for that.

Pattern wise, I had seen Cynthia from Redthreaded adapt this Wearing History pattern for a morning jacket into a full dress. She has a video about that process here. I was lucky enough that the original pattern (which only comes in the one, original, size) was pretty much my size, so I knew I wouldn’t have to do too much to make it fit me. And Cynthia’s method of lengthening the jacket worked so beautifully, that I knew this would be the perfect solution to getting a dress instead of a jacket out of an existing pattern.

The pattern is late 1890’s, and I particularly love the back design with the pleats which are a historicism echoing 18th century Watteau pleats. You see this a lot in the 1890’s, and in informal gowns in particular. This dress is also unfitted at the front, with just a belt, which is perfect if you want to wear this both with and without a corset. Although some of these dresses are completely unfitted at the waist, I do appreciate the belt to ‘break’ the silhouette a little bit. Below is a beautiful period example showing the typical types of pleats in the back:

Dressing gown1880–90, MET Museum

I made very few pictures of the process of making this, as I was on a tight deadline and Cynthia already has a video about how she made it. I chose to line the top (basically the original jacket part) with a plain white cotton. I also followed her method of gathering the bottom front and stitching it down a little lower, to create a tiny little ruffle. For the back, I chose pleats instead of the gathering shown on the pattern envelope, to make it look more like the extant dresses with pleats that I like so much. The pleats are stitched down to the lining to help them stay in the back a bit.

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The skirt of the dress is not lined, to help with the flowy-ness. As the fabric is a little sheer, I did wear it with a petticoat underneath. This helps give some volume without weighing down the actual skirt of the dress.

I didn’t have time for trim, which I still might add later on, but for now I was really happy to finish it on time. I even opted to machine-sew the button holes, because although I like hand-sewn ones, I just didn’t have the time. Sometimes it’s good to allow yourself shortcuts if you know it’ll save you on stress and sleep while finishing something on time. And I’m really happy I managed to get this done in time to wear it, as I got a lot of use out of it as both an easy gown for breakfast and one for some relaxing after the dancing had finished in the evening. It was a wonderful lounging garment at a wonderful event!

A picture on the last morning, by Timelight Photographic:

And two more with my own camera, to show the back:

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1880s Gold Bustle dress – All done!

In my two previous posts, I shared the progress of making an 1880’s gold/black bustle dress.

I’ve had the gold fabric for this dress for a while. The occasion to finally make this was a private anniversary in the U.K. to which I was graciously invited. There were a couple of days, all in the ‘Victorian bustle’ theme, so it was the perfect reason to make a new garment. The event was lovely, and I really loved wearing this new dress. As always, I have some small things I want to fix already (mostly necklines which wanted to gap open a little), but overall I’m really happy with how it turned out. This fabric was a joy to work with and wear.

Thanks to Serena and Melchior for taking some pictures for me!

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It was originally inspired by this dress from the MET:

MET museum Evening dressca. 1880 Wechsler & Abraham 

I changed the underskirt to better suit my taste and fabric stash, inspired by the design of this dress:

NGV. Day dress (c. 1883) ENGLAND Medium silk, cotton lace, metal Accession Number 1411.a-b-D5

And I added a ballgown bodice based mostly on this existent one;

“Evening dress, 1886-87. Philadelphia Museum of Art.”

1880s Gold Bustle dress – Bodices

With the skirt post done, it’s time to move to the bodices of the gold 1880s dress! I started the evening bodice after making the train base, and worked on the skirt/bodice interchangeably. I also planned the ball bodice at that time, but as this project had a deadline, I did finish the full evening version of this outfit first before starting on the ball version. In the end, I had enough time to finish both!

I used the Truly Victorian TV462 tail bodice as my base. Interestingly, the current cover of this bodice includes a keyhole neckline exactly like my target dress, but my pattern doesn’t have that image on the front, and neither does it have the keyhole on the pattern. It might be that I have an older version, but it meant I ended up drawing the neckline on me by myself. I also changed the back, removing the pleats. As TV patterns tend to fit me reasonably well, I made the mock-up out of the black cotton I also planned to use for the lining. After fitting, I cut the silk, flatlined all the pieces, and did the main construction aside from darts and side seams. The darts I did while fitting another time. The side seams I waited with until after I finished the bottom. This way, it’s easier to let out in the future if I want to, a theatre trick I learned from one of Redthreaded’s videos.

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I marked the keyhole neckline first when fitting, and then used a silk facing piece in the exact shape. This was sewn on right sides together, the neckline was cut out (this was scary!), the facing flipped to the wrong side and stitched down. I have no clue if this is a period way to do it, but it worked for me. I decided on a facing rather than bias tape because of the sharp corner, and I like how that turned out.

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The next step was finishing the bottom! I made my own piping by stitching a cord into a bias strip, and sewed this to the bottom fronts and back. After this was done, I could finally finish the side seam. It was a bit odd for me to use this order of sewing, as I’m so used to construction first, finishing edges second, but I do like the size flexibility it gives! The next step after this was to add the collar, and finish the neckline like that.

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The original garment has a lot of self-fabric covered buttons, and I decided I wanted the smallest ones possible. Of course, this meant covering a lot of little buttons, which was fiddly at best… The official mold for these self-covered buttons didn’t work too well with this small size (I’ve used it for larger versions without problem). So I ended up running a gathering thread (by hand) around the edge of the fabric to pull it in tight around the button that way. I do really like the look of the finished buttons!

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The final steps were button holes (sewn by hand, as I do really prefer that look), and to sew on the pearl trim. I decided to go with a plastic, pre-made pearl string. The original has very tiny pearls, and given the deadline I decided to not find individual pearl beads and string them. You can see the difference up really close, but I called this a ‘good enough’. I can always go and change the trim later if it does bother me in the future.

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And then it was time for the ballgown bodice! I designed this in photoshop based on some originals. My main concerns were: have some black; but the black should be removable if I ever want to wear this with a different underskirt. I ended up deciding to do a ruched black panel on top of a gold base. If I really want to change it up, I need to unpick some trim, but not deconstruct the entire thing.

For the pattern, I went with the adapted version of the evening bodice. As I tend to make any adaptations directly on my mock-up, I just traced pattern pieces from the bodice directly. Then I could cut the flatlining (white cotton) and silk fabric! Again, I fitted it again after flatlining and basic construction, and pinned the darts directly on the body.

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With the base done (I finished the neckline with bias tape), I could create the draped pieces. I did delay the center front and shoulder seams, as I wanted to make the trim disappear inside them. In the end, this didn’t actually work for the center front, as the ruched piece will go on top. I cut the basic shape for the draping out of cotton first, and then experimented with increasing the width to get the gathers. I cut two pieces of this, and draped it on the bodice, pinning it down in strategic places to get the folds to lay nicely.

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For the black ruched piece, I followed a similar strategy, cutting it out of cotton first, widening it so it could be gathered up, and then cutting and gathering the black silk. This panel was finished by turning in all the edges, and stitched on top of the bodice beneath the gathered pieces. (I made the gathered pieces first to determine the size of the black panel, but I did stitch on the black panel first, as it goes below the other one)

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To finish the bodice, I hand sewed eyelets around boning in the center back, and I finished the bottom with piping. There are a couple of boning pieces inside, the most important one which is in the front, as it keeps the center front point from flipping up. I also added very small gold sleeves (which I didn’t take pictures of…)

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And then it was time for final touches, the bows! I found a tutorial for fabric bows here. Basically, you create one long ribbon strip, and loop this to get a bow with two loops on either side and tails. I ended up using a bit of organza ribbon to go around the bow and tie it together. I originally planned on just having bows on the sleeve heads, but I also added one to the bottom of the gathered pieces, and I am really happy with how that looked!

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And then the whole ensemble was finished, with an evening version with long sleeves and train, and a ball version with short sleeves and train bustled up! Some pictures of the final ensemble on me and about the event will follow in a future post!

1880s Evening gown – Skirts

And then suddenly over 2 months have passed without a post!

I the meantime I have been working on the gold 1880s dress project that I talked about last time. In fact, I’ve now finished it, so time for some catching up. In this post, about the skirts!

I started this project with the train. Not because that made most sense per se, but because I knew it’d take the most fabric, and I wanted to make sure how much I’d have left.

I used the TV Butterfly Train pattern, in the shorter version. I cut the fabric on my living room floor, as it’s the biggest in the house and actually allowed me to lay out the pattern fully. I chose to slightly piece it to save on fabric. With the pleating in the train, it will be nearly impossible to spot when it is worn anyway.

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Cutting on the floor (spot the cut lines!) and piecing in the corner

I cut the silk, and seamed all the pieces together. Then I did the same thing with the lining. I chose to line it out of plain black cotton. While black isn’t the most historical lining fabric, I knew I’d wear this with a black underskirt and I wanted it to be the same in case the train flips over and you see the inside. It’s a bit less conspicuous this way.

Construction was extremely simple. It’s bag lined, so lining and silk sewn right sides together and flipped inside out. Then the two sides were pleated up, and the top left and top right part were attached to the waistband. The top center is finished by turning the edges in, and then it is pleated up from the center and attached to the center of the waistband. This creates the ‘butterfly’ effect like poof that the train is named after.

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Laying the silk on the cotton lining to pin it in place for the bag lining & a top view of the pleats attached to the little waistband piece.

The train has its own waistband which hooks unto the overskirt (as that needs to close center back, so under the train). I also tried out some methods to bustle up the train, as I also want to be able to dance in this dress. Eventually, I settled on attaching one ribbon center back, with two button holes. There are buttons lower on the train to button it up. Then on the sides, I attached ties, as well as a bit further down towards the center. These tie to each-other to bring up the sides. It shows a little bit of the black lining when bustled up, but I don’t really find that bothersome as the underskirt is the same color.

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Trying out how to bustle up the train with the lining fabric only & the train waistband which hooks onto the overskirt waistband in the back.

The front overskirt is of the same gold, and I patterned myself with a little help from examples in Izabella Prior’s the Victorian Dressmaker books. I mocked it up from a sheet, and basically played around with pleats and length until I got the look that I wanted. It’s a basic rectangle type shape which is pleated up the sides. I ended up pulling the bottom side points of the rectangle over the back of the bustle and attaching a hook to keep them in place there. This makes sure that the overskirt has the feeling of volume and pleats without hanging down too low. The overskirt is attached to a black waistband ribbon, closing center back, with eyes to hook the train over. The back looks a little funny on its own (and I have no clue if it resembles period patterns), but with the train on top it looks like I meant to!

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Patterning the overskirt out of an old sheet – the handstitched hem – the sides are pleated up and sewn down by machine (they won’t be visible), attachment to the twill tape waistband – the finished overskirt from the front – the finished overskirt in the back, this is covered by the train.

Then, finally, there was the black underskirt. The base was really quick to make, using the TV1880’s underskirt pattern, but of course adding a pocket. It’s made out of black twill cotton, as I wanted a solid base. Base, because the skirt is almost entirely covered in trim! I ended up taking inspiration from an other original 1880s dress, and settled on one row of knife pleats, two rows of stacked box pleats and a large ruched panel.

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To try out the design, I copied the underskirt of the original dress I liked and pasted it on top of my picture, painting it black. Then I could measure the height of the pleats and the ruching.

The pleats took a little time to make and prepare, and various calculations were done and re-done to ensure I had enough silk (I’m still not sure I did it right, but I had enough fabric, so it’s okay). The pleats were all hand pleated, pinned in place, sprayed with a vinegar/water mix to set the pleats, steamed, and taped in place with painter’s tape. This last step ensures that the pleats can fully dry and won’t be distorted when handling them later. The ruched panel is one large piece with gathering stitches running horizontally. I ended up not giving my piece a lot of extra length, so the ‘poofs’ aren’t quite as poofy as in the example, but I actually quite like this slightly flatter look. The entire panel was then stitched on the skirt, together with the pleats. Only after doing this, did I finish the side-seam, so I could include the ruched panel in the seam. It took some fiddling to then make the pleats match over the seam, and if you look closely you can see that the pleats aren’t quite the same there. It’s not noticeable if you don’t look closely though, so I really don’t mind.

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Pleating the knife pleats, stitching down the stacked box pleats, and gathering the ruched panel on the base skirt. This is why I didn’t sew the final seam yet, makes it a lot easier to lay it out flat!

And that completes the whole lower part of the outfit! I’m really happy with how luxurious the gold and black work together so far!

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A last-minute bodice

I had predicted that this would be a year of more sudden changes in plans than normal, and so far that’s proving to be true. I’m still waiting on the fabric for my vest to arrive, and in the meantime I decided to make a day bodice to wear with my green 1890s skirt.

I’m participating as an extra in a Dutch show about history, and I was asked to wear my green ballgown with a cloak on top of it for an outside scene. I suspect they just chose that outfit because they wanted darker colors, but a ballgown in the middle of the day is a bit odd. It would be covered by a cloak, so in theory invisible, but then the weather turned, and the prediction for filming day was -2 degrees. Not the best weather to have bare arms.

I didn’t have any plans in the weekend before (because, you know, covid), so I decided I might as well try my hand at making a new bodice. I still had plenty of green and black silk left, so this could be done entirely from my stash. The bodice will have long sleeves, which I could even wear extra layers underneath as well. I had 3 full days for this, as well as a couple of evenings after work, so I wanted a design that wouldn’t take a lot of figuring out or trimming. In the end, I settled on this dress as inspiration:

It’s interesting without being overly complex, and as a bonus, the Victorian Dressmaker book actually has a pattern for this. Not to my size, but with the Truly Victorian pattern I’d used for my ballgown bodice as base and the rough shapes in the book, adapting became a lot easier. I still have some black velvet from my 1860s gown, so the velvet details were covered as well.

So I set to work! I didn’t make a lot of pictures, but after day 1 I had the main bodice drafted, cut out, sewn together and fitted! This seems like the most work, but as it’s nearly all machine work, it actually comes together relatively quickly. It also helped that I skipped the mock-up. I’d used this pattern for my ball gown, so I knew it fit, and pinning the darts on the body allows for last-minute adjustments.

Day 2 was for the sleeves. These are fairly complex because they have 7 pieces of fabric each. An organza, dupioni and cotton layer for the inner sleeves, and an organza, dupioni, tarlatan and cotton layer for the outer sleeve. The outer sleeve lining was fitted (with slight gathers) to the armhole first, then the tarlatan was pleated and pinned in (this is just a small strip, meant to give volume), and then the large fashion layer with dupioni and organza was pleated down to fit the smaller lining. Then the inner and outer sleeve were sewn together, and the whole thing was set in by hand, as wrangling layers is just easier that way.

Day 3 was spent on finishing the edges. This dress has a collar and belt of pleated velvet. I pleated them and stitched down the pleats by hand to make them invisible. Then they were both lined in cotton, stitched on along the velvet edge, and then the cotton layer was hand-sewn in place to finish it off. The sleeves I bound in bias tape, finished by hand.

That was the end of my weekend, and it was nearly there! The main thing left was closures, as that’s really essential to wearing, this was done in evenings. It closes with a combination of hooks and eyes, hooks and bars and snaps.

Final touches were a big velvet bow on the back collar, and a smaller one on the belt to hide the closure. I also decided to add a strip of black velvet ribbon along the sleeves.

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All in all, I’m pretty happy I got this done within a week, and I can now wear my green outfit for day events as well as balls!

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The Stripey bustle

I made a thing. It’s fabulously seasonal, wasn’t at all on my to-do list, and I’m really happy I made it.

The thing is that I have a ton of projects on my to-do list, both smaller things to finish and bigger ones I’ve already got the fabric for. There are enough plans on there to last me a couple of years I suspect.

But after finishing my green 1830’s dress, I mainly wanted an ‘easy’ project, something that wouldn’t require too much thinking, and which would be fun. And finishing old projects is just never as exciting as starting new ones, and the new projects on my to-do list all required more thinking than I wanted.

So instead, I turned to my pattern stash and pinterest. I’ve had this Truly Victorian pattern for a number of years, but I didn’t have plans in which it would fit yet. It was perfect for what I was looking for though, exciting, yet simple enough because I could just follow the pattern directly.

The other thing I’d been thinking about for a couple of years was a black and white striped dress. There’s just something about this type of fabric that the goth in me still really appreciates. I especially love the ones which combine the stripes with solid black, like this one:

So I ordered a pattern for a bodice, which was a little more interesting than the base pattern I already owned. Again: for the purpose of not having to change much, and just being able to make it up as it was intended. I settled on the Truly Victorian Senora bodice:

And I ordered some fabric swatches. I found black/white striped cotton. I wanted to pair it with solid black, to break it up a bit, but the solid black cotton didn’t quite give me the right feeling. While the striped cotton is printed, the black is probably dyed and it makes the color a bit less intense. It also was more loosely woven than I’d hoped. So instead, I went with a black poly taffeta from the same shop. I wasn’t quite ready to use my (much more expensive) black silk taffeta on this, and the poly stuff looks enough like the real deal from a distance. I also wouldn’t be using it for all of the bodice, which means that hopefully it will still be breathable enough.

And then I started to doodle around in photoshop! I wanted to try out which bits to make of which fabric, how to combine the stripes and the black. In the end, I settled on this design:

I cut the pattern and made a mock-up in the first weeks of October, after finishing the 1830’s dress. My fabric arrived half way through the month, after which I immediately started sewing.

I was aiming for about a month to make this, but it went so fast! Starting right after a holiday meant I had quite a bit of sewing energy, and having planned everything beforehand + working from patterns meant I could go full steam ahead, so that I was actually finished with the skirt within a week, and had the bodice ready in another. For me, this really is super fast. It did also really help that I went the ‘quick’ way on almost everything. Not bothering about too much stripe matching, hemming by machine, etc. Spending time on those things definitely give a costume an extra touch, but for this one, the goal was to make something fun, rather than something perfect.

As a final touch, I decided to get some bright orange ribbon and give the dress a seasonal vibe. I made a ton of bows, and pinned them all on the dress. They are all removable, which means I can still wear the dress out in a slightly more subtle version as well. They are quite fun though! For the pictures, I re-styled my 1870’s hat with some other trim (I saved the old one)

I think that after this, I’m ready to tackle some of my unfinished projects. This dress was really about instant gratification, and it did it’s job perfectly.

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1890s sports blouse

It’s been almost a month since my last post! August flew by, I was busy first with work and then with taking some time off. I did, however, finish a small(ish) project!

Shari from La Rose Passementarie has been hosting some sew-alongs, to get people motivated to start projects which might not have an event. This month, the theme was ‘1890s shirtwaists’. I didn’t have this on my direct project list, but I did have a pattern. And I sort of want to make a vest with the leftover fabric from my bicycle skirt, which means I also need a blouse to wear it with. That was enough motivation to get me started.

I used the Black Snail sport blouse pattern. I chose a simple off-white cotton for the blouse + collar. This will be a fairly functional blouse, and this way it’ll fit with almost anything.

 

 

It is a fairly straightforward blouse, with the tricky bits being the collar and sleeve split+cuffs. I definitely needed to read the pattern a couple of times, and it helped to see the collar construction in this blog. It’s technically a different Black snail blouse, but the collar pattern is the same. If you’ve made 2 piece collars before it might be easier, but those bits would make me hesitant to recommend the pattern to real beginners.

The only thing I changed was to hand-fell the seams, instead of doing that by machine.

 

I really like how this came out. For a next version, I might move the sleeves a little bit, as 1890s sleeves are fairly high up on the shoulder. But I am quite happy with the shape, it’s actually quite a flattering shape even if it’s not tucked into a skirt.

 

Shortly after I finished the blouse, we actually had our first event since January, a Victorian (distanced) picnic. I took that opportunity to wear the blouse with my 1890’s petticoat/skirt, and that combination worked quite well! These pictures are by Martijn van Huffelen:

 

 

1895 Ball gown – Bodice

The ball I was making my 1895 gown for was supposed to be today. Instead, it’ll happen next year. But the dress is finished, so to celebrate the occasion, instead here’s my post about making it!

 

 

The bodice of this dress was difficult mostly because for a long time, I didn’t know exactly how to trim it. I knew I wanted extravagant trim, but not exactly what. I had an antique beaded collar-like piece which seemed perfect first, but had rather wide shoulder pieces which didn’t fully fit the 1895 style. So when I started off, I decided to just do the base bodice first.

I used TV493 – 1896 Plain Bodice as a base. It’s not a ballgown bodice, but the goal was to get the basic shape and as usual for me with TV patterns, it fit almost perfectly out of the envelope.

First bodice fitting, pretty good!

 

The bodice is made of 3 layers, silk organza, silk dupioni and white cotton. I sewed all layers together and then treated them as one.

After the base was sewn and the bottom finished with binding tape, it was time to decide on the neckline. My original piece of trim was definitely too wide for the shoulder, but I got another one, and this one was more promising.

Left the original plan. Super pretty, but too wide for the shoulder. To the right the new plan: it fits better, but needs something more.

 

The new beaded piece was also in a bit of a shabby state, as the threads had faded from black to light brown, something you see more often with old black dyes. I decided to re-dye the piece to make it look better. I tested first on another old faded piece, and when the threads didn’t disintegrate, I moved on to the trim piece. It’s still not 100% black, but the brown is a lot darker and less noticeable.

Before & after dye. The little round thing was my dye test.

 

Aside from the beaded piece, I knew I wanted something more. In the end, I found this fashion plate which has a somewhat similarly shaped front piece. I took inspiration from that and created organza ‘poofs’ running from the beaded piece unto the shoulder line. I also found black antique lace in my stash, and used that to both fill in the neckline and create extra interest around the sleeves and back neckline.

The rough  inspiration for the bodice

 

Trying out stuff. The only piece I ended up leaving out is the little extra beaded piece CF at the top.

 

Finally,  I added velvet trim. The skirt has velvet trim as main accent, and I wanted to create a bit of cohesion. I added it along the bottom, and then decided to also put it on the back seams.

 

The sleeves were created after most of the trim was put on, especially the organza poofs and lace run into the sleeve seam, so had to be done first. I used the TV495 – 1890’s Sleeves pattern as I wanted different sleeves as came with the bodice. I ended up using view 5, but without the ruffle to get short ballgown sleeves. The sleeves have a fitted inner layer, and an outer layer of the organza + dupioni. To make them poof, they have a structure between those two layers. As the inner layer is fitted, it’s not possible to wear separate sleeve supports. So instead, I consulted Janet Arnold and found a ‘sleeve interlining of black stiffened cotton’ in the pattern for the 1894-5 London Museum dress. Via the Foundations Revealed live-calls, I’d already heard Luca talk about these, and I made mine of tarlatan after his suggestion.

Comparing sleeve shapes from TV & Janet Arnold

 

This layer of tarlatan is pleated and attached at the top of the sleeve. It stands out sharply, and holds up the outer sleeve perfectly! I just have to be careful not to squish the bodice. Of course, it would also loose shape when wet, but given my dress is silk I planned on avoiding that anyway.

 

The sleeves were stitched in by hand, as I was handling a good nr. of layers. Silk organza and silk dupioni in ruffles, pleated tarlatan ( so 3 layers at times), cotton inner sleeve and the silk organza, silk dupioni and cotton of the bodice. I also made sure to attach the sleeves pretty high on the shoulder, as is typical of this era.

 

The very last thing to do was to add boning, and closures. The dress closes center front, underneath the beaded trim. I debated putting in a center back closure, but eventually decided this’d be nicer for getting in/out by myself. There’s hooks and eyes center front, and the beaded piece is only stitched down on one side. When the center front is closed, the beading can be closed on the other side as well with hooks and eyes. This does mean the beading is handled on closing the bodice, so to give it a bit more stability I backed it to another layer of black silk organza. The lace filling up the neckline is attached to the organza on both sides, so it closes with the beading.

Backing the beaded piece with organza

How the bodice closes:

 

Because I didn’t want to directly put the dress in my closet again, I wore it for pictures across the street last week. I’m already looking forward to wearing it again next year!

 

I also took it for a twirl!

1895 Ball gown – skirt

The ball is officially postponed until next year May, but I have still been working on my gown. I want to just finish it as planned, and the first bit is now officially done!

 

The skirt of the gown is finished. She hangs a little bit oddly on my dummy, mostly because the waist needs to be properly tight to not fall down in the back, which works better on me. This was probably the most involved skirt I ever made, using a lot of different techniques and materials. I was greatly helped by the live calls at Foundations Revealed on historical skirts and sewing techniques, and I tried to use as many as possible in this skirt.

The pattern was the same as I already used for my blue petticoat/skirt. The skirt has three main layers. A green silk dupioni as base, a black silk organza overlayer and a tarlatan interfacing. The tarlatan I used for the interfacing was relatively soft, so just a very lightly stiffened cotton mesh.

 

The first step was to line the dupioni and tarlatan. I based all layers in place, and then sewed the main skirt seams.

 

The organza layer was sewn up separately, as I wanted it to ‘float’ over the other layers. All seams were French seamed, so first with the allowance to the right side, and then again to capture the raw edge on the wrong side. I kept an opening in the same place for all layers to create the pocket. The two skirts were then put on top of another, and the back was pleated all layers together, and stitched in place.

For the waistband, I used two layers of dupioni and one layer of organza. It’s made to be as thin as possible, so I folded over the dupioni at the top and the edges in on the inside, and the organza over the dupioni at the top and in at the bottom. Then the top and bottom were stitched to keep everything in place.

This means the waistband was completely finished before stitching on the skirt. To do this, I first did a running stitch over the ‘flat’ skirt pannels to ever so slightly ease it. Then, the skirt layers were folded over right above that stitch and whipped to the underside of the waistband through all skirt layers. This way, the raw seam allowance lies downwards to the inside of the skirt and there is no bulk at all in the waistband itself.

Whip stitching the waistband on:

 

Pictures of the finished waistband. Showing the running stitch as well as the whip stitch (which was done from the other side).

 

The edge is left raw and turned down.

This is what it looks like from the outside

And in the back, with the pleats. If you look very closely, you can see the whip stitches.

 

 

For the pocket, I used a pattern from Patterns of Fashion, and stitched that into one of the back side seams of the dupioni/tarlatan layer. Then I folded the organza to the inside of the pocked and hand-sewed it in place, so I can access the pocket easily despite the skirt layers. The top of the pocket has a little bit of tape which attaches it to the waistband, so the weight does not hang from the skirt seam.

The pocket slit from the outside, and the pocket as it looks when turning the skirt inside-out.

 

For the hem, I used another layer of tarlatan, this time a bit stiffer. This was cut to size, and then a layer of black cotton was put overtop and sewn to the bottom of the skirt (by machine) and whip stitched down at the top, completely hiding the tarlatan. This extra layer helps the skirt keeps its shape.

 

To further shape the skirt, ties are sewn to the inside, starting next to the center front panel. This tape gets increasingly narrower towards the back, making sure all the pleats of the skirt stay towards the back when moving around. I tacked the organza layer to the same place as the tape was attached to ensure it would behave similarly.

The spot in which the organza is tacked to the rest (it’s not as poofy normally), and the tape in the back.

 

As decoration, the skirt has an extra layer of organza at the bottom, topped by a velvet ribbon. This extra organza layer was cut to size and stitched on, the ribbon was machine stitched on top. The extra layer is only attached to the organza skirt layer, so it too moves separately from the base layer.

 

Both layers of organza were hemmed by first running a machine stitch along the bottom edge, then turning it up twice (firstly along the machine stitch), and whip stitching it in place by hand. Basically, the entire skirt was hemmed by hand three times. Let’s just say the hemming took a while.

 

And then it was done! I’m very happy with how it turned out, and how much structure it has. The two fabrics are beautiful together, and especially in movement you get a subtle shift of how dark it is as the black organza moves differently from the green base layer.

 

Next up is the ball gown bodice! The base of that is done, but it still needs a lot of trim and general fancying-up.