1860 Dress

Part 1:

So far this is what I knew I wanted on my dress-
- Gathered bodice with a yoke
- short sleeves (possibly with long sleeves that are removable)

I got about 5 or 6 yards of this beautiful pink cotton fabric! I hope it's accurate, I know they had floral prints, but I just loved the fabric too much too pass it up!

Source

I've also discovered another inspiration picture

Source

Mostly I really like how the waistband is on this one. If you look closely the bodice opens directly in the front, but the waistband extends past and the skirt opens more on the side.  Though I'm liking the sleeves with the small ruffle a lot too.

First I had to draft a pattern for this dress. It's something I really should do more often and get better at but I always put off drafting any patterns mostly because I'm scared to mess it up! 

I started with the bodice from Simplicity 7212 and I made a copy of the front bodice. The back I left the same. I cut the bodice where I wanted the yoke to end and then just made a somewhat rectangular lower bodice that extended past the top piece so there would be fabric to gather.

I made a mock-up of it and it had some issues being a bit big and just didn't look as great as I wanted it too. At this point I considered just making the darted bodice from the pattern and I cut out a piece in spare fabric and sewed up the darts to see how that looked. Then I remembered reading about how gathered bodices typically had a darted lining inside. So I placed my mock-up pieces on top of the darted bodice to help me figure out how much to cut off of the lower bodice and basically just fit the gathered bodice to the darted lining and it worked! 

So now I feel confident cutting out the front bodice tomorrow and getting that together.





I did put the back lining and top together tonight though I have to admit I didn't iron it!  The color is actually a dustier pink then the picture shows. I'll have to get a better picture showing the fabric color next time!

Looking at this I'm not sure how accurate it is to do the gathered front with this particular bodice back... I can't think of seeing one like that but I'm not going to change it now, I really need this to be done to wear on Tuesday!