1870 Wool Polonaise

When I made my plain and simple dress last year, my plan was to make it part of a coordinating wardrobe. I wanted to add fichus and over-bodices to the plain dress, and use the skirt with additional bodices to get more mileage out of my fabric.

This is one of those additional bodices! I found this very lightweight wool with a woven pattern at the local warehouse fabric store a few years ago, and bought a few yards with no plan or idea. Turns out it was perfect for this!

I accessorized with an orange cotton sateen ribbon bow, held in place with my mother's cameo pin, my new clasp handbag, some old cream-color gloves I sewed long ago, and a pair of small gold-tone earrings in a faux-Etruscan-Revival style.

Construction stuff: I started with the same bodice pattern as the plain and simple dress (bodice X) but I merged the side and side back pieces to make it a 3-piece bodice. I also eliminated the CB seam and cut it on a fold instead. Fewer pieces/fewer seams is more typical of the very early 1870s. I cut the bodice off at the waist to make it a polonaise. I made a mockup and tweaked the darts and armhole a bit.

The sleeve is entirely new. I based it off a diagram from the book The Art Of The Mantua-Maker and my own measurements. It is your basic 2-piece 1870s sleeve with very low cap and little ease. There is a pleat below the elbow at the back sleeve seam, but it's a little one because I didn't want the sleeve to come out too full at the wrist.

The skirt portion is simple: two rectangles, cut slightly longer in back to hang evenly over the bustle. I used two short tapes to draw up the skirt slightly at the sides. Since this is 1870, the overskirt is not elaborately draped. 

There are no bones. The fabric was just so soft! And it seemed to sit pretty nicely without them. Ending at the waist helps that. I bound the edges with packaged bias tape. The CF closes with hooks and bars. 

The fabric had a patterned selvage which I was able to retain on the skirt front. I hand-hemmed the skirt, and the fabric is so soft and loose that my stitches just sank in and became almost invisible!

I trimmed the sleeve ends and neckline with lace. Pretty sure I got this at a garage sale in a big bag of other random laces. It's pretty synthetic but it's wide and soft and had the right beige-y color. I tacked it to the sleeve lining at the top, letting just a little hang below.

But I also tacked it right at the sleeve edge so it would hang nicely and cover the lining.

For the neckline, I use my serger to shorten the lace, then tacked it in. But I did not tack right at the edge, and I definitely need to go back and do that because it got all floppy and wouldn't stay in place.

The weather was quite grey yesterday and there were lumps of sad old snow everywhere, but I put everything on and took pictures anyway.

Here is one I took at my piano too!

Overall, I really like this dress. It's soft, it's pretty, it's easy to wear. It's wool but it is so thin that I didn't feel overly warm. It already feels like a perfect "this old thing" to wear to casual events.