Dress Diary
My NaCoFiMo project - a robe ā la anglaise
The National Costume Finishing Month, was created by
Sarah Lorraine Goodman, inspired by the National Novel Writing Month. The NaCoFiMo soon, I would say immediately, burts out of the national confines and became
an international phenomenon. The idea is too finish those unfinished costume projects most of us have lying around. In my case it was a project that was only
partly started: that of an 18th century outfit. I have a problem with finishing costumes from after 1600, since I have nowhere to wear them. Both the 18th and
the 19th century projects never got past the underwear stage. OK, for the 19th century outfit
I also made a bonnet.
But of course I'm not going to finish the 18th century sack back dress I started on. I'm much more fond of the robe ā la anglaise and I
like the later 18th century styles better, say, between 1770 and 1790. And it's in a peachy pink that doesn't look as nice as cooler hues with my complexion.
So, another dress it will be.
What I have:
* A corset and a shift.
* A bumroll/false rump. I also have pocket hoops, but they do not suit the style I'm going to make.
* I have also, the last week, made two petticoats. The visible petticoat (a term used for a round skirt, not necessairly underwear), is
made from green and black shot silk. Here you can see my dress dummy the Grand Sophy modelling it:
The other petticoat is just an underpetticoat from natural coloured linen. Like the green petticoat it has an opening in each side and is tied around the waist.
What I have left to do:
* Another under petticoat. I haven't decided if it's to be from linen or silk.
* The gown. The gown will be made from a very thin, printed silk, that need to be lined with some other fabric. Again, I have not decided which material to use for the lining.
This is how the fabric looks.
* An apron from thin linen with a woven in pattern.
* A lace cap. How could I do without one?
2006-12-15
Nacomfimo starts. I have already made the apron. It's from semi-sheer linen with a woven in pattern and
it is made exactly like the apron for my folk costume,
which is a copy of a wedding apron from the late 18th century. It has as small dart at each side, then gathers,
and a flat piece of ca 20 cm in the middle. It is closed with a hook and eye and not tied. No pictures yet.
2006-12-17
I have now made the lace cap. It is very big, since the dress is from the last quarter of the 18th century, when lace
caps were really big indeed. And placed on really high and voluminous hair. I will have to work on the latter. I am also wearing a t-shirt in the picture.
It is basically a large circle of cotton lawn with lace stitched around it. It is gathered with a thin ribbon, through more hand bound eyelets than I
like to think of. Then the broad ribbon is tied around it.
2006-12-20
The last few days I have been working on a mock-up of the bodice. The first was a little bit too narrow in the bust, and too low in the back.
So I made another one, with the changes. But before that I decided that I didn't like the way the straps of the stays kept falling down. Part of the reason for
them doing this was that the back of the stays was too wide. This is connected to the other problem, that the stays really didn't pull my shoulders back, as they should.
So, I bravely cut the back of the stays in half and then sewed it togther (by hand), thus losing about 2 cm of width. It does fit much better now. I still want to do something
about the angle of the straps, but at least now I can feel the stays digging into my armpits if I don't pull my shoulders back, which works as a constant reminder :)
But of course making the stays smaller made the mock-up too big. Except in the bust area. Since it is laced over a stomacher I can adjust the width of the stays to my liking
and while my waist had no problems with smaller stays, my boobs want the same space as before. I also need to take it in a little in the back. But other than that if fits fine. Rickard is
at work, so my daughters Valeria and Vendela helped me with fitting and photo taking.
Lovely fabric, eh?
2006-12-26
The bodice is now finished. It is made from three layers of fabric. The silk is blouse-weight, so it needs to be backed with something more substantial. For this the final mock-up was used.
For lining a thin black linen twill was used. The lining is boned in centre back with two strips of narrow german plastic boning and in one strip each in the side seams. Then I ran out of german boning, so
the edges are boned with cable ties and there is also a cable tie going diagonally from close to the front point and towards the shoulder.
The bodice is closed with 14 lacing holes on each side, the lacing holes are only through the lining. The top fabric and lining are sewn together invisibly (from the outside)by
hand, close to the holes. It can be seen in one of the pictures. This closure is taken from a swedish 18th century dress, but I'm sure there are more preserved examples.
I didn't get any good pictures of the back, so you'll have to live without that. Anyway, I didn't have much fabric so the pattern isn't matched in any way. This is period,
although there are some extraordinary examples of matching too.
Now I should start cutting the skirt and sew the bottom of the skirt and linig together so that I can let them hang for a week to stretch. Then sleeves.
Unfortunately my kitchen table, where I have my sewing machine, is taken over by three men playing Illuminati
2006-12-29
Instead of actually sewing the skirt I patterned the sleeves and they are now attached. Or rather, they were when I took these pictures. I decided I needed to move the right sleeve a little so it was exactly like the left sleeve, not 1 cm off.
The sleeves are made after the sleeves on the same swedish linen gown that I have taken the front closure from. It can be seen in the excellent, but sadly out of print Kvinnligt mode under två sekel
by Britta Hammar and Pernilla Rasmussen. As you can see from the title it's in swedish, so I guess it wouldn't be of that much use to most of you anyway. Anyway, this is how it looks. I also took a picture when I was wearing the apron.
That was before I figured out that the apron should go under the point of the bodice. The pictures are clickable.
Apart from fonding out about the apron I have also found out that I have been fooled! My first 18th century stays had
a thick hardwood busk. I had learned from La couturičre Parisienne That one should have a fairly thick hardwood or bone busk in 18th century stays. I am sure she had gotten that information
from Waugh, who mentions busks, and Hunnisett, who has a drawing of how the busk should look, with triangular shape if you did a cross section. So I had one. The purpose of the busk was according to the web site and Hunnisett twofold. One was to
give a straight line along the front, which it does admirably. The other one was to contribute to the rounded shape of the corset front, so typical of
the 18th century, which it doesn't. In fact it gives quite the opposite result, as everybody who has worn a regency corset can testify. The point of the busk is to separate the breasts, something
you don't want with 18th century stays. Apparently La couturičre Parisienne hads found that out too, since she now says on her site that busks are very rare in preserved 18th century stays. I had observed
that too, but since I haven't seen that many pictures of stays from the period, mayb 30 or so, I believed the experts who said there should be one.
But I was fooled.
So now I'm going to bone the former busk pocket with reeds. I will also add some horizontal boning on the stomacher too. While I'm at it I'm adding another piece of reed in every channel on the stomacher.
I put only one piece of reed in each channel on the stays, and there really should be two. The stays hold me up nicely, but it is easier for the reeds to break when there is only one per channel.
I will probably be ambitious enough to do the same with the two front pieces of the stays too.
You know, I always come up with new things I need to do for this costume to be good enough.
2006-12-30
The skirt and lining is now sewn together on machine, turned and ironed. I have also hand sewn a line of running stitches, larger on the inside and very small on the outside, ca 1,5 cm from the edge.
This will help keep the edge in the right place and also looks nice.
The (ungathered) skirt is now hung upside down from a skirt hanger to stretch. I love this way of making skirts, no hemming to talk of.
The stomacher has lost it's pocket for the busk; it's made into 4 boning channels instead. I also put another reed in all the channels on the stomacher as well as making a horizontal
bone casing from ribbon and putting two pieces of reed in it. And I also put another reed in all the channels in the front pieces of the stays. It made them much stiffer, so the visible "bend" has disappeared.
On the right side of the stays most of the original reeds were broken, so I had to replace them. Though the reeds aren't very thick adding another one in every channel of course shrunk the styas; they're less comfortable now
since I have to lace them harder, but it works; and they're not really uncomfortable. I think that when I get rid of the extra christmas weight they will be perfect.
2007-01-06
I haven't made any updates for a few days, but that does not mean that I haven't done any sewing. The dress is actually finished. On New Year's Eve I started
a pair of elbow ruffles from a reasonably fine cotton fabric and some really nice cotton lace; and I finished them on New Year's Day. I also made a new false rump.
The old one was my old bumroll, made from thin cotton and with ugly orange and blue patterned ribbons. The new one is slightly shorter, so that it only reaches to the sides
and not all the way round, and is hand sewn from sturdy linen herringbone twill.
Yesterday I sewed the skirt to the bodice. I used buttonhole silk,
which is very strong, and whipstitched it to the bodice from the right side. It would have looked better sewing from the wrong side, but the pleats were partly stacked and I felt I needed the control
you get from sewing from the right side to get them in the right place. And the visible stitching is at least hand stitching.
Then I decided that it would be nice to be able to wear the gown as a polonaise too, so I added loops of cord and put two buttons about an inch from the side seams in the back.
The buttons are made from two small copper coins, which are covered with one layer of linen and one layer of the same fabric as the dress. It looks really good IMHO.
Photos will hopefully be taken tomorrow. I decided that I need a linen neckerchief and I'm now busy hemming a 1 metre square piece of thin linen. I'm using stolpsöm, which is
a decorative way of hemming which
creates very small holes along the hem, often used on finer linen. This I had of course never done before :)
2007-01-07
The dress is finished (except for one side of the neckerchief, and I plan to put som emore decoration too later). Go see!
