Finished 1830's Christmas Dress

I finished my dress last night. I even did things I don't normally do when I'm rushing, like neatly bind the armscyes and whip down the seam allowances in the bodice. It still finished up in plenty of time to make supper and while I sewed in the pleasant afternoon light of the west windows David sat with me and planned out what I suppose will be one of my projects later in the spring, a Confederate surgeons uniform. I'm ready for another detailed menswear project. It;s been a while.

I really love this dress. The things I don't particularly like about it include the upper sleeves (they still came out a bit too loose for my liking) and the fit of the bodice is not as snug as I would have wished. I suppose I must have lost a bit more weight between cutting this out before Christmas and sewing it together. I can make the back overlap a bit more by moving the hooks over and that will help with pulling the bodice in a bit. My stays for some reason did not keep me up as much as I would have wished and gave a rather droopy appearance to the bustline (I think the bust kept slipping out from the busk channel since I didn't have it tied in!) but I know that is a temporary problem and will go away once Anne is weaned.

I am wearing the dress with the same undergarments I used for my 1840's Christmas Dress last year; my corded stays, square cut shift, corded petticoat, and three plain petticoats. Oh and the bum pad. Can't forget the bum pad. Or as the boys inelegantly term it, "Mommy's Butt Pillow".

It's easy to nurse in. I nursed the baby twice while wearing it today. The combination of a back opening and partial front opening make this dress very easy to put on as well. Hook the upper half of the back shut, put on the bodice, then reach around the hook up the rest of the back and then hook up the front. Lots of hooks, but it makes getting dressed very easy compared to some dresses I've made in the past!

I am not totally happy with  my hair. I tried 2 different styles. My hair is just above bra length and my bangs are growing out so its hard to do much with it at the moment.

Late 30's hairstyles usually have a high bun at the back and the front hair is either curled or smoothly combed down over the ears. When my bangs have grown out more I'd love to try the curled style. . .it's so distinctly 30's, not rather generic mid-19th century like the parted-in-the-middle-pulled-into-a-low-bun style that can, theoretically, work for a span of about forty years. . .

The skirt is 3 panels of 45" fabric. It gives a nice fullness. I pleated it into 1.5" pleats and that seemed to work perfectly. The hem is faced with a 9" wide hem facing.

Now to make one of those rad 1830's poke bonnets. Those are so utterly awesome. I probably will not have a reason to wear this dress again until later this year so hopefully by then I will have a proper bonnet made!

Speaking of bonnets, I did finish another UFO for this challenge. Remember that Victorian Sunbonnet Tutorial I was working on? Well, I never did finish the bonnet! It was almost done, but lacked ties. So I made the ties.

Now that February is nearly upon us and my brother is getting married in about two and half months (less!) I need to start working on a dress for his wedding. Something - yikes - modern. I have a few ideas so I plan to try one of them out this week. I have some fun vintage cherry printed cotton that will work great for a mock up dress!

Love,
Sarah

The Challenge: #2, UFO. Finish an unfinished project.

Fabric: Printed cotton. Green with a viney print and purple flowers.

Pattern: Draped.

Year: Late 1830's to Very Early 1840's

Notions: Hook and eyes, thread.

How Historically Accurate Is It: As far as I can tell the cut is accurate. The design is taken straight from period sources and the pattern shapes are correct. All exposed stitching was done by hand and interior seams (that will not show) were sewn with straight stitch on the sewing machine. To be totally accurate the stitching should have been completely done by hand.

Hours to Complete: Not sure. From draping to finishing maybe 30 hours or so?

First Worn: Today. Hopefully for a "real" event sometime this spring!

Total Cost: The fabric was an early Christmas gift from David. Everything else came from my stash. So, personal expense for this was nothing.

Making my 1830's Sleeves

The dress is coming along. Slowly, but surely. The sleeves have ended up taking me an ungodly long time to do. Why?? I used to whip out a whole dress in a day or two. Sleeves took me a few hours. But then, the baby has been sick this week and I have felt rather indifferent to sewing and have been utterly depressed because of current events. (political stuff, but I won't go there.) But then, sometimes it is nice to sit down and not feel rushed to work on something. I put the last stitches in my sleeves just this evening and now they await to be attached to the bodice, as soon as I can scrounge enough scraps to make the self piping needed for the armscye seam!

These particular sleeves are made with a fitted upper sleeve that reach to just above the elbow. The bottom sleeve is gathered to a narrow, piped cuff. The seam between the upper and lower sleeve is trimmed with a little flounce that is gathered on a narrow cord and then tacked to the seam.

Oftentimes sleeves of the late 30's were just gathered or pleated and banded down to the upper arm. That was a very practical and easy way to convert the fluffy gigot sleeves of the early 30's to the fashionable silhouette of the later 30's. However, for this dress, I did decide to cut separate upper sleeves since they take so much less fabric and I did not have a whole lot of fabric to work with.

The upper sleeves were problematic to fit. To fit the armscye, the sleeve head needed to measure about 17". To fit my arm just above the elbow the bottom edge of the sleeve needed to be 13". I ended up having to take two small pleats at the bottom edge of the upper sleeve to fit my arm at the back of the arm. A nicely fitted upper sleeve does look so much better than a loose and baggy one (at least in this period of history) but I didn't think it would be so much trouble to fit it!

I added two piped bands at the neckline to shape the neckline. I really like how it looks and am looking forward to completing the dress, hopefully this weekend! I still have the entire skirt to make but since that is just straight seams and pleating I do not think it will take that long.

Love,
Sarah

1830's Christmas Dress

Or the Remember-the-Alamo dress. A dear friend of mine, Kevin Young, who loved the era of history the Alamo took place in, passed away last spring. I can never think of this era of history without thinking of him and I know I will always remember him when I wear this dress. He loved the Texas Revolution, he loved the 30's and the 40's and was an all around great guy. We miss him so. I have always loved the dress pictured below and decided to use that as my inspiration image for my Christmas frock.

Late 1830's Dress

Because, of course, I intended to make this dress for Christmas. The fabric was an early Christmas present from David. Besides draping a pattern and fitting the mock up and cutting it out, though, I didn't get much done. I finally decided to speed sew it 5 days before Christmas but that afternoon our power went out. I spent much of that day getting out the kerosene heater, filling the oil lamps, finding candles and matches, making food and converting our long, narrow living room into a kind of one-room cabin where we could hang out and keep warm. Obviously, the dress did not get made.

It's getting made now, though. I am sick of regency stuff at present (even though I do have a 1790's-ish gown I want to make soon) and I need to get back to *me*. This dress is not for any challenge or sew along, but it's what I want to make, so, by gosh, I'm gonna make it! (although, technically, it could work for the UFO challenge for the Historical Sew Fortnightly. It might be a stretch, but it *could* work!)

The basic design is fairly simple. I really like the late 30's silhouette. I like the round, elongated waist. It is slimming. I like the sleeves that are tight at the top and still fluffy at the bottom. I like the necklines and I like the skirt fullness. I like the full hips. I like almost everything about the late 30's. It's a very feminine era, without looking ridiculous!

The dress I am using for my inspiration image has a crossover, or surplice, bodice. I debated a while about whether or not to make the crossover actually part of the main bodice or to just cut separate strips of fabric to mimic the crossover look. For a long time I was actually going to do a front opening, crossover bodice dress but at the last minute I remembered Jessamyn's early 1840's dress that has a front opening and a back opening and has separate drapey crossover panels. This clicked for me, and I decided to go with it.

After I knew how I was going to cut the bodice I dove in and got started. The basic "foundation bodice" was easy. It is very similar to many of the dresses I have made before. It has a fitted back with curved seams between the center back and side back pieces. Since I have a large difference between bust and waist I had to fit the front bodice with 2 darts per side, rather than the 1 dart per side that is more common. The waistline is slightly high, to allow for a wide waistband. All the seams are piped with self fabric piping. The shoulders are slightly dropped and the neckline is finished with piping. The front bodice opening was piped and sewn shut about half way to the neckline. This gives me double piping along the front seam which is seen in several examples from Nancy Bradfield's Costume in Detail. The part of the front seam that I left open is for nursing access. It will close edge-to-edge with hook and eyes once the bodice is complete. Here you can see the darted bodice:

sorry for the poor quality of the pics. . .yet again. . .I am lazy and did the infamous "mirror shot"

I hemmed and pleated two strips of fabric to become the drapey crossover bits. I sewed one pleated end into the shoulder seam. While wearing the bodice, I pinned and pleated the other ends of the fabric strips to the darted bodice. Here you can see one side crossed over and pinned into place:

And here it is with both crossover pieces pinned into place:

After that, I trimmed off the excess fabric at the waist and sewed the waistband to the bodice. The waistband is slightly wide as the waistline was in transition at this point in history from the higher waistline of earlier years and the very long, pointed, low waistline of the 1840's.

There will be piped tabs lower on the shoulder, holding the pleated panel in  to make a sort of sweetheart neckline shape.

I am as pleased as anything with how it is coming out so far! I do love this style so much. I can't wait to see what it will look like with sleeves!

Love,
Sarah

Impromptu Trip to the 1830's

We had no plans for the weekend other than doing some yard and garden work but a spur of the moment idea yesterday had us heading about an hour south to visit the tomb of Abraham Lincoln. The remainder of the afternoon was spent at Lincoln's New Salem and we came home happy and exhausted and very inspired by our little daytrip.

I just love trips like this - somehow, they seem more intimate and fun than trips that have been long in the planning. There is no time to have to plan things out, stress over getting things done. You just go. You just do it. It usually works out pretty well.

We were blessed with an absolutely beautiful day. Of course, to get more "into" the feeling of the trip we dressed  in our historic attire. I was the only one with an outfit made purposely for the late 1820's/early 1830's period but we all had fun and the guys looked very handsome, I thought. :)

The boys were often stopped and people exclaimed over how cute they looked. The boys were curious about simply everything and had a grand time peering into the cabins, seeing the smithy at work over his fire, watching the shoe maker, seeing the ladies dye yarn and, of course, looking at the animals. And gathering sticks, rocks and "flowers" (clover) which entertained them the entire time they were there as well as the drive home since they insisted on bringing their collections home with them. . .

The last time we were here was three years ago and as it was very early spring at the time, the village seemed rather dead. David was not impressed. This time, he was intrigued by all the demonstrations and of course fell completely in love with the various gardens. Being quite a good gardener in his own right, he noted ideas for future garden plans and different plants and herbs we should incorporate into ours.

And me? I was just thrilled to be here! I was 12 years old when I visited New Salem for the first time and ever since then have harbored a secret little dream to walk the curving, tree-shaded pathways of this sweet village in a historic dress. Yesterday, that 13-year old dream came to fruition and I was just as happy and excited as I would have been when I was 12 years old. :) A girl never gets too old for dress up, now, does she?

We met some really lovely people who volunteer here and were asked some rather bizarre questions by the visiting public. One really stood out to me - a gentleman approached David and asked him "Sir, if I may ask, how old is your wife?" He then proceeded to ask about marriage customs of the day, and wondered if I was telling the truth when I told him that yes, I really was married at age 19 and yes, I am really 25!

It was quite a nice break from modern life to get away to this quiet little town for a bit. I hope more trips to this destination will be in our near future - I think they might!

I have more photos at my facebook album, here: Lincoln's Tomb and New Salem 

Love,
Sarah

Romantic Gown ~ Sense and Sensibility Pattern Review ~

I recently had the opportunity to use the Romantic Gown Pattern from Sense and Sensibility to make several dresses for a sweet customer. I have long admired this pattern but never used it until this project. I thought I would review it in case anyone else may have been wondering about it. Not that my thoughts may be particularly helpful, but, well, it’s a post worthy topic. :) And anything post worthy is most welcome since I've been rather neglectful of this poor wee blog as of late.

Pattern:

Sense and Sensibility’s Romantic Gown Pattern, available from http://www.sensibility.com/

General Description of Style:
This pattern contains several style variations on the typical mid 1820’s - mid 1830’s style dress. The dress is styled in the transitional fashion popular at the time, falling between regency era fashion and Victorian fashion. The gown features a slightly elevated waist, large “leg o mutton” sleeves that are puffy at the top and narrow at the wrist and long full skirts. The pattern also contains a pattern piece for short puff sleeves, suitable for evening wear. There are no skirt pattern pieces. Since skirts of this era can be simply rectangles, directions are given in the pattern for measuring and cutting rectangular skirt panels which are then gathered, pleated or gauged and secured to the waistband of the dress. Variations of style include directions for both front and back opening dresses, different neckline shapes and a collar suitable for the V neck dress. Instructions are also included on how to make a sleeveless “jumper” with the pattern.

Historical Documentation/Accuracy:
The pattern pieces all have a good shape for a basic 1820’s-1830’s style bodice and sleeves. The basic style is documented with photographs of original garments and fashion plates included in the pattern. The skirt instructions are good for a basic rectangular skirt. However, another style appropriate for this time period is a skirt with a smooth or lightly gathered gored front with a gathered back with gored side pieces. This style would probably be more appropriate if you are going for an earlier look. It is easy to measure and cut gored skirt pieces for yourself but the instructions do not include this style.

One thought I had was that the curved side pieces of the bodice back could come in towards the center of the waist more. Rather than having so much space between the two curved seams at the back bodice edge, it would look nicer if, perhaps, there were only a few inches of space between them as I have seen on the majority of the original dresses I’ve seen from this time period. The sleeve seams are called to be matched to the side seam of the bodice. I prefer to match the sleeve seam to a point on the front of the bodice, so the inner sleeve seam is running down the inside of my arm instead of under it.

The construction methods offered in the pattern seem a tad modern. I can’t say if they are inaccurate per se, but I like to construct my own dresses a bit differently with the lining and fashion fabric treated as one and seams overcast or left raw as per original dresses. The instructions call for sewing up the lining and fashion fabric separately and then sewing them right sides together and turning them. I prefer to use a turned self facing for opening edges (front or back) or piping for around the neckline and openings rather than using the method called for. The instructions also call for a center front or center back placket in the skirt. I like to use a center back skirt opening for a back fastening dress but prefer a dog leg closure on a front opening dress to avoid a seam or placket in the center front of the skirt. The instructions also call for the top of the skirt to be gathered along the raw edge and stitched directly to the waistband or bodice. A period method would be to turn under a little of the top of the skirt and attach the folded, finished edge of the skirt to the bodice with small whip stitches. This method makes a very smooth, low bulk waistline rather than having all the gathers or pleats bunched into the waistband.

Although no pattern for piping is provided, the online instructions for this dress do have a link to instructions on how to make piping. Very small self-fabric piping is a very nice period correct touch for bodice and sleeve seams.

Physical Characteristics:
The pattern is printed on heavy white paper and is clearly marked as to size and pattern piece. The pieces fit together well and seem to correspond well to the size measurements given on the size chart. The pattern comes with a thick stack of instruction sheets that clearly explain and illustrate the construction methods given. The pattern envelope is white paper and is illustrated with a group of ladies wearing the different style gowns contained in the pattern.

Technical Characteristics:
One very nice thing about this pattern is that it clearly explains how to make and fit a muslin mock up of the bodice before you cut into your dress fabric. This step is absolutely critical in getting a proper fit and so many patterns leave out this very important step.
The pattern also contains vintage illustrations on how to gaage a skirt. Gauging is beautiful and period correct and it is nice to see this addition and alternative to gathering or pleating.

Final Thoughts:
I would definitely recommend this pattern to anyone interested in making a dress in the 1820’s to mid 1830’s style. The sleeves are a little small for fashionable 1830’s appearance but could be made larger by enlarging the head of the sleeve in length and width, tapering down to the original pattern lines at the lower arm and wrist. In Janet Arnolds Pattern of Fashion 1 there are several diagrams for full gigot sleeves which were at the height of fashion in the early to mid 1830’s, and those can easily be scaled up and used in place of the sleeve pattern included in this pattern if desired.

I made the pictured gowns in the front opening style with the original pattern darted bodice. The bodice is attached to a two inch wide waistband and the skirts are gathered to the waistband and are made of three panels of 45” wide fabric. I set the skirts with a dogleg opening which opens to the left side. Self fabric piping was used at the neckline (pattern “jumper” neckline), armscyes, and on either side of the waistband.

Another lovely pattern by Sense and Sensibility! I think it is a lovely base pattern from which many serious costumers could create beautiful, appropriate gowns, combing outside research on fit and construction and additional style details with the information contained in the pattern. As is, the pattern creates a very passable dress and would be a wonderful and practical style to wear for everyday.

The At-Last Waistcoat and Trousers and 1830's Dress

Last year Jo Anns had a great sale on their woolen goods. We were blessed to randomly drop in at the store while the sale was in progress and lo, there was a bolt of black wool. Black wool sells very fast in our local stores so finding ample yardage was a pleasant suprise. David picked up about four yards of it and I promised him I'd make him a civilian style waistcoat and a pair of civilian trousers.
I made most of the trousers early this spring. But uniform making duties forced me to postpone finishing them. They hung in the closet for months. I finally pulled them out and finished them a few weeks ago. I made the waistcoat last week, after the green corderoy disaster. This time I made sure to cut an ample seam allowance and the finished vest fits David quite nicely. It has 3 welt pockets, a notch collar and buttons up the front with seven covered buttons. David wore the set for the first time to church yesterday for our beginning of Advent service. He requested a red necktie to go with his outfit and looked, I thought, very festive. I was able to get my dress finished up on Saturday. I do like it very much although I am not completely happy with how the sleeves came out. I wish I had gathered the pouf to a point lower on the arm to get less of a mushroom effect. However, as Mr. Darcy said in his letter to Elizabeth, "It is done, however, and it was done for the best." Also to keep in the mood of Austen, here is a picture of the dress in front of a "prettyish kind of a little wilderness", where we plan on tilling up ground for our garden when spring comes. I don't usually wear a cap. I only wear one when the mood strikes. Here is a capless photo, though a tad risque - dear me, you can see my bare leg! - complete with this beautiful set of ultra-modern Fuzzy Snowflake Socks with White PomPoms. Don't they look wonderful with my repro mid-19th century boots? I didn't mean for this photo to be so alarming, I promise. It was the fault of the stiff breeze. Now you can see all my farby sinfulness!
Here is a back view. I was appalled when I saw this photo - "David, is my rear end really that big?!" Thankfully big bums were "in" for most of the 19th century. In those times, looking like a woman with natural womanly features was desired and encouraged. Alas. How times have changed. But David was kind enough to tell me that it was my fluffy skirts and petticoats that gave the illusion of a bigger behind. I need to add a few more hooks along the wrist placket since the placket kept folding open yesterday, but other than that I think this will be a very serviceable house dress. Oh and yes - David has decided to grow side whiskers! I have become reconciled to the thought of a beardless husband. His look has grown upon me and I do like this new style very much. He looks rather like I imagine Col. Brandon when I think of him in my mind. David is becoming ever more interested in pre-CW times and, I think, it shall not be long ere he joins me in the 1820's and 1830's. He is currently afflicted with great passion for the 1840's and his next set of civilian attire is to hail from then. Love,

Sarah