Dawn's Victorian Costume Diary
It's now September. One-third of my time gone and I have less than one-quarter of the sewing done. It would help if I knew what I was sewing, but I keep changing my mind.
I've been looking over the patterns again, because I really want a rolled collar in black velvet. I think it would be so lovely and very smart looking. Oh well, I have to convert this to an 1880's dress, and I just don't think that's going to work very well.
Meanwhile, I bought bead trim. Fabric.com was having a sale and I found something I though was black irridescent faceted drops and bought 5 yards. When it came I found that it was actually a clear dark grape-juice purple. But that's ok, because it still looks really good next to my fabric. The plan is to use this trim on the 1880 version of the dress, especially on the bustle and apron swag.
I got together with my friend Tara over the weekend and we nailed down her dress pattern. We decided that the ruffled skirt she liked probably would not work well with the striped fabric she has, and to make it work would require a lot of cutting and sewing of panels. Her time is limited, so we went with something requiring less work, a skirt made with 8 bell-shaped panels. It will be full, it will be authentic to the period, and it will work with the pinstripe.
The bodice is similar to the one in the picture on page 1, a style which is laid out in Patterns of Fashion. She likes the false bolero front that is on the red dress, too. We debate over the width of the front insert. The Arnold book looks like it is narrower than the one pictured on the Kent University website. Tara wanted to use a fine white cotton lawn sewn with tiny pintucks, but if the front panel is too wide it might emphasize the bustline too much. "I don't want to look like Shamu the whale." There's also the difference in dates between the two. I think it means the style was popular for a number of years. After studying the diagram we figured that it uses less than a yard of 'silk and velvet' fabric pleated over a muslin base. I wish the book had a photo of the dress and some close-ups of the fabric and assembly. We have no idea what Arnold means by "silk and velvet'. I'm guessing she meant a silk velvet that had been cut or burned out, or had some sort of raised velvet design on it, but the book is so thin on those sort of details.
We took our best guess on the sleeve for the dress, and found something similar on a child's dress of the period in my 59 Patterns book. After a couple minutes with the scanner and an art program I printed out the diagrams for the pieces she needed, at quarter or half scale. At least they should be easier to enlarge at that size than at two inches high.
Then we went to Joann's to look for fabric for the pleated bodice insert. We walked in the door, and right there on the first table was a bolt of silver-grey semi-sheer fabric with a repeating floral design in black velvet. We tried it next to the blue pinstripe, using the ten-foot rule. You put both fabrics next to each other and stand back at least ten feet and look at them together. They looked good. The grey fabric is light enough to be a good contrast, but not so bright that it glares. Just to be sure, we tried it with a few other fabrics but none of them worked as well. The fabric was 30% off, and with only a yard it ended up not costing very much.
Then, since we were there, we walked around the store for an hour looking at "stuff". There are some cool birds made from real feathers in the floral department, I think one would look nice on a hat. We looked around for a large blue mum or cabbage rose for Tara's hat, but could only find hydrangea and very small flowers in blue. There are other stores in town with better floral selections, though.
Back at the ranch... Kim's been shopping and found a shirt she likes. It's a soft cotton peasant style shirt that laces up the front and has a small collar. It looks good with her outfit.
I did more websurfing today, looking at 1890's styles. I found some more images of that pleated blouse front style that Tara likes, both before and after 1890. It must have been popular. I got some more ideas for trimming my own dress. The Victorian Costume Site (now defunct) is really neat, and unlike certain other nameless ones that charge for access to images, it's getting a plug from me.
And I took the plunge. I cut fabric. Ok, I cut muslin. But at least I'm going somewhere.