A Floral Lawn Dress for 1870

Last week I finished this very fluffy new dress!

We were having a Victorian Picnic, and I have been wanting something light and summery - with lots of ruffles of course!

My friend Laura took most of these pictures. I handed her my camera and asked if she'd be my photographress. (Thanks Laura!)

This dress was SO comfortable on a hot day. I wore it with my crinolette/hoop bustle thing and it really kept my legs free and breezy! The open sleeves were nice, too, and of course the fabric was just so fine and breathable.

The crinolette really gave me a shape I loved. I finally feel like I have enough volume for those huge 1870s dresses! My lower hoop is about 85" around and I made my skirt about 130".

The plans for this dress all started with the fabric: a light printed cotton lawn. We received it at work by mistake, and I got a great employee deal on it. It was 57" wide, and I had about 10 yards. 

The colors are a bit off in these detail shots, but you can see the pattern. Flowers and butterflies!

There was a wide border print. I wasn't super fond of the brick red color but it ended up being a nice contrast. I used up every scrap of the border for ruffles!

A little of the progress. I started with the crinolette. For the skirt I used a formula I came up with ages ago, consisting of three pieces (Front, Side Front, and Back) and drafted to measurements. Leveling it on my own body is always an exciting challenge!

For the bodice, I used the pattern based off the one I call Bodice X, the same as my wool polonaise, but with a narrow V neck. I sewed the darts as tucks for a softer look. I made a new sleeve pattern that widened into a bell below the elbow.

The skirt ruffle. I machine-hemmed all the ruffles using dark red thread to blend into the border stripe. The skirt ruffle was gathered with a bit of a frill on top.

Starting to come together! The dressform was very helpful for figuring out the trim layout and general look.

The overskirt was pretty much just a big rectangle, longer in the back, with rounded front corners, gathered to the bodice waist. For the overskirt ruffle, I stitched the gathered ruffle right sides together with the skirt, then flipped it. Same with neck and sleeve ruffles. I closed the CF with hooks and bars.

I made a few pleats along each overskirt side seam to froof it up.

I bustled the back with tapes. 3 tapes, caught in 3-4 places each. I could definitely nitpick this a bit, but it's okay.

I trimmed the neckline and sleeves with a wide embroidered net lace, cut a bit narrower at the neckline. I tea-dyed it just a bit first because it was a very stark white. I wore my green-trimmed straw hat and gold Etruscan-revival-style earrings, and carried my gold silk reticule. My hair is just my own hair, done up in a braided bun.

I love how this dress turned out a lot and it was a dream to wear!

Early 1870s Crinolette

The very full-skirted shape of the early 1870s can be difficult to achieve with petticoats alone. And even if you can get the correct volume, that means layers and layers of petticoats sticking to your legs. For a summer dress, I wanted a hoop and bustle combo - a.k.a. crinolette - that would hold my skirts out, give the correct, very large shape, and be comfortable to wear.

Here's the finished crinolette.

Here it is under a petticoat.

I used this diagram from Corsets and Crinolines as a guide.

Obviously mine didn't come out exactly like this one! I couldn't figure out how to make the bustle part connect to the hoop like in the book, so I just let it float. I also lengthened the whole thing a bit; I wanted it to be short enough not to trip on, but long enough to hold my skirt out at the bottom.

The diagram is also not perfect. There are lengths written in for a few of the bustle wires, but they didn't correspond to the size of the fabric piece when scaled up. The bustle portion's waist also did not fit with the skirt portion (between X and Z) and no pleats are indicated to make it fit. So I took this as an inspiration and just fiddled with it until it worked.

I sewed the fabric structure from plain white cotton (some of it recycled from old sheets) and made the channels from white cotton twill tape. I didn't bother with seam finishes because this was an experiment and I wasn't sure if it was going to work.

The lower part was easy - just hoops! I used wide German plastic boning. This was ideal material; the hoop was supportive but very flexible, not rigid, making it easy to sit, get in the car, and move past obstacles, and keeping the look of the dress soft. The lowest hoop is about 85" in circumference.

I rounded the ends with a scissor, overlapped them by about 1", punched two holes in each end with a very small hole punch, and sewed the ends together with strong thread. Then I slid the joins into the channels, making sure to stagger them throughout the hoop.

The bustle portion was more challenging. Getting the shape just the way I wanted was tricky. Here I used plastic-covered double-steel hoop wire, and I played around with the lengths until I liked the shape.

I cut the lengths and covered the ends with tape (yeah, I know boning caps exist, but I didn't have any handy) then sewed each end through the plastic middle part of the boning (using a big strong needle and some muscle!) and the fabric and twill tape channel, to keep it from shifting.

I tied a piece of twill tape to connect the bustle portion to the hoop to prevent it riding up and shifting.

Even after I finalized the hoop lengths, the back seemed not quite right, so I sewed a small pad (which I just happened to have sitting around leftover from a different project a couple years ago - yay for re-use!) into the back waistband. The pad is a rounded shape about 8" x 11", stuffed with fiberfill into a soft, flat shape. It was stuffed more firmly when I found it, but I took some out because it made the bustle just a bit higher than I wanted.

The crinolette came out a bit funny looking, but under a dress it really works! And it's so comfortable to have your petticoats not sticking to your legs - I felt so light and cool!

I wore this under my new floral lawn 1870s dress, which you can see here!

Me Made May Wrap-Up

Me Made May is over! This was the first year I participated and I really enjoyed it.

The ambiguous nature of the challenge was both refreshing and a little confusing. Making up all your own rules and goals made it a bit vague, but I liked just picking out what mattered to me.  And it's nice to feel I wasn't in competition with anyone, just myself.

I really enjoyed taking pictures and wearing all my me-made stuff. It was nice to challenge myself to get things out from the back of the closet! Here's a few of my favorites from the month.

Comparing this to my style post I'm seeing a lot that feels consistent (especially colors!) but a lot I could be working on, too. A lot of that has to do with how old most of my me-made garments are; my style goals are there to help my future decisions, too.

A few thoughts.

Dresses: I remembered why I don't wear them more. Mostly because of sweat. Summer is hot and I get sweaty. With a skirt and shirt, I can always swap out a sweaty shirt I've been wearing all day for a fresh one if needed (like if I am heading out to teach an evening class). With dresses, you have to just change everything. But I do love wearing dresses! I can work around that issue.

Skirt Lengths: Longer is better. I can do shorter skirts with leggings, but with bare legs, I get tired of my thighs sticking to chairs.

Coordinating pieces: I always feel like I have great individual pieces to wear but nothing to match. I make a lot of skirts and I don't always have a shirt that goes. I should probably put more coordinating things onto my list. Or even just buy some.

Wardrobe gaps: I definitely would like to make more blouses and shirts! In the past I've thought it was pointless to sew t-shirts when you can buy them so cheaply, but I think I'm coming around.

Me-made clothes I am tired of: It's hard to part with things I have made! But I have a few pieces that either never really clicked for me style-wise, or that I've just worn a bunch of times and now I'm sick of, and they are taking up space in my closet and making me feel guilty. I'm going to try to sell a few and give the rest to goodwill.

Closet overload: I love sewing new things all the time! But I guess I have to have limits, because my closet is already petty stuffed. Getting less emotional about getting rid of stuff I don't wear would help (see above) but of course I don't want to be wasteful either.


My Me Made May 2018 Goals (Or, How did I do?):

Wear:
Every day, wear at least one thing I have made, whether old or new. Did it!
As many days as possible, wear 2+ me-made things. Did it!
Wear every me-made garment I have at least once. Not quite, there weren't enough days!
When wearing repeat separates, mix up the combinations. Did it!

Make:
Sew or knit every day. On work days, an hour is enough. On days off, my goal is 3+ hours. Nope! 
Finish at least 3 modern garments and 2 historical garments. Did it, sort of.
Try one new sewing technique. Did it!

Style:
Use my Pinterest board to think about the styles I'm drawn to. Did it!
Try a few new style elements. Eh, not really.
Think seasonally! Did it!

Share:
Take daily outfit pictures. Did it!
Blog post weekly to keep up with my progress. Did it!

I finished 5 pairs of kid pants and now I'm not sure if that counts as one thing or 5 things. I made a historic dress and bonnet for the kid and trimmed a bonnet for a friend. I knitted on my sweater a bunch and sewed about half a dress, but didn't finish them. I am surprised that mostly what I finished was kid clothes! I did not plan that!

For new techniques, I'm counting both the historic bonnet I made for The Girl and the short-row sleeve from my rosemary cardigan.

The main thing I didn't do was keep up with daily sewing. Life kept interrupting! But I do feel energized and inspired by this challenge, and that's more important than sewing an arbitrary amount of hours each day.

Weekly posts: Week 1  Week 2  Week 3  Week 4

An 18th Century Gown and Bonnet for an 8-year-old

Last week I sewed this 18th century style gown and bonnet for my 8 year old kid. We had planned a picnic which got canceled due to rain, but dressed up and went out for a little lunch anyway. Here she is! 

The restaurant had the fireplaces lit in the basement.

Working hard at something!

We stopped at a small park on the way home for some more photos.

The Making:

I started with 2.5 yards of 60" wide poly taffeta. I am usually a fiber snob but, a.) this was reaaaaallly nice poly taffeta, I promise, and b.) it's kid clothes. The pattern was drafted from another old pattern, which I enlarged (because she has grown) and also made new/different seams. You can just barely see the curved back seams here.

An inspiration image from Costume In Detail. The girl's dress is plain, open in front. I also loved the bonnet.

Here's the shift, which I made from an old cotton sheet.

Pockets and petticoat. I got this embroidered fabric for free. The petticoat is just some very cheap muslin I had laying around.

The petticoat is your typical drop-front construction. No bum pads or stays, just these.

 I machine-sewed everything I could. The whole petticoat, almost all of the shift. I hand-hemmed the shift neckline just because it was easier on the curves. The lower lining seam of the dress is sewn down by hand. There is no closure because I just used pins.

I trimmed the dress with pinked, self-fabric pleats and some fine dotted netting. All applied by machine. (See above: kid clothes.) I made the pleated strips on the machine with the fork method.

I shaped the net at the elbows to be longer in the back. I had to apply the sleeve trim by hand because it was too tiny to get into the machine.

The Bonnet:

I liked the one in the image above, as well as those little silk market bonnets that everyone is making these days. See A Fashionable Frolick, or American Duchess blog. I made this one out of some grey silk taffeta from the stash.

I've been trying to make one of these for myself for ages, but making up my own brim shape was challenging. It always looked dorky, no matter what. Here's what I ended up with for The Girl. Please feel free to copy this if it helps you at all!

Like the dress and undies, I machine-sewed as much of this as possible. First I cut the brim shape out of Peltex (not buckram! I'm such a cheater!) and sewed millinery wire to the edge using a machine zigzag. Then I cut two silk pieces for the brim (adding seam allowance) and sewed the front seam. I clipped the seam allowances and inserted the wired Peltex piece. The I folded the back seam allowances over and machine-stitched them down. Brim done.

For the crown portion, I made a drawstring casing along the straight back edge and put in some cord, stitching it down at the sides and bringing the ends through a small space I left open at the center, making a drawstring to adjust the size.

I zigzagged the raw edge, then moved to hand sewing. I whip-gathered the curved edge of the crown and hand stitched it to the brim.

It looks a little messy from the inside, but it doesn't show when worn.

I pinked a few strips of the silk and made a big bow attached to the center front. I did her hair in a soft bun at the back and frizzed up her natural curls in front a bit. 

The brim shape isn't entirely how I anticipated, and maybe the crown is too wide on the sides, but I love it anyway.

I am so in love with how this whole outfit turned out! She had requested a fancy dress with ruffles and I think this did the job. 

Me Made May Week 4

What I wore:

It was VERY hot so there was not much layering this week.

Day 24: An old batik dress I've re-made a couple times and still enjoy.

Day 25: A loose cotton dress from the Dottie Angel pattern Simplicity 1080. I call this The Unnecessarily Complicated Smock. It's cute and comfy but the construction is just silly.

Day 26: Cotton lawn skirt.

Day 27: Cotton print skirt with mermaids.

Day 28: Cotton lawn skirt.

Day 29: Cotton print skirt (a repeat).

Day 30: The linen dress I made in April. When I blogged it I wore it with layers and here it is on its own, in hot weather.

Day 31: This very old cotton print shirtdress.

I enjoyed all the stuff I wore this week! I felt an urgency to wear all my favorite things before the month was over. I did get tired of taking pics, though. Cellphone + mirror isn't always gonna turn out great, and I got sick of taking 50 shots and hating all of them. Using my real camera and tripod always makes better pictures, but it's more of a hassle.

Getting Stuff Done:

I made a new historic dress for The Girl. Pictures soon I hope!

Goals:

I definitely spent some time sewing this week! I also tried to get some old stuff out of the closet and wear it. I'll write a more thorough goals wrap-up in a separate post.