HSF Challenge #23: Gratitude

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While finishing up this dress, I was super excited to realize this could count as an HSF challenge! I couldn't have gotten through the making of this dress without the great tutorials and pictures that others have put out there. This was my first 18th century gown so I had tons of questions and no pattern so I relied on what others put out there! 

Research:

Here I learned more about chintz fabric

William Booth Draper sells a blue chintz fabric here that has the same white background with floral blue print similar to my fabric.  They also cite, The Pennsylvania Gazette which said "Run away... a native of Ireland... has on, and took with her, one chints gown, stamped with blue."  The same site also sells patterns and says that printed cotton is an option for a robe a l'anglaise seen here. This helped reenforce that my fabric wasn't completely inaccurate.

Before I could start on the actual dress I had to make a basic bodice lining pattern and the pictures of her draped lining on Jenny La Fleur's Robe a l'Anglaise dress diary helped a ton! Not too mention her other 18th century projects I looked through just to get a better idea of how to make my dress.

After completing my lining I really followed much of the tutorial here from The Fashionable Past

As mentioned in a previous post, when I got completely stuck on my sleeves, this website and dress tutorial here gave me a sleeve pattern that got me back on track!

I'm sure there are even more links that I am missing because as this shows the first place I turn to when I'm stuck are the tutorials and even just pictures others have put up. Anytime I make a historical item I spend a ton of time researching by looking at examples others have made. I love this challenge because I really am so grateful for all the research and pictures others put up! It's why I always try to document mine because you never know what little picture, or way of wording something, will help someone else with their project!

The Challenge: Gratitude

Fabric: Blue and white cotton chintz, blue linen, cotton lining

Pattern: Robe a l'Anglaise self drafted

Year: late 18th century

Notions: cotton tape

Accuracy: It's pretty accurate, I've hand sewn the entire outfit including both petticoats and I think I got the shape down pretty well. It's only issue may be the fabric. While there was blue chintz on white, the pattern on my fabric is probably not the most accurate in terms of the design size. The blue linen petticoat is accurate.

Hours to complete: many

First worn: For pictures!

Cost:  I bought this fabric in the early summer so I don't remember that anymore and am calling it stash fabric. The linen I got from an old table cloth! So no money spent for this one!

This is my favorite 18th century outfit so far. I really love how it turned out with the blue linen petticoat. It's very simple and I'd like to go back and trim it one of these days. Besides some problems with the sleeves it went together pretty well and was a great step in learning to make 18th century gowns.

The matching petticoat!

For all previous posts of the making of this dress click here. 

Sleeves Finally!

After my complete fail and frustration with my PT dress sleeves I spent a good while searching for 18th century sleeve patterns and any kind of visual that could help me make a better sleeve. I couldn't find anything that would help me draft a sleeve to fit my specific dress, which was my original plan to fix the sleeve, but I found a pattern that worked!


Using the sleeve pattern from this page, I was finally able to get some good sleeves! I actually just enlarged it on my computer screen till I thought it was at a large enough size then traced it bit by bit onto paper. I had to make it a little bit larger and a little bit longer after the first try but that was simple enough.

I lost my original scaled up pattern from the costume closeup jacket and tried to do that general shape after draping it and things are in the wrong place and it's just a mess! I do love that seam at the elbow though, I just couldn't get it right!

and finally the pattern that worked!! Yay!! 

Here are the finished sleeves!! Which makes this dress officially finished! I'd like to add trim but I'm going to move onto other projects before I come back and trim this. 

Hopefully I'll get some full outfit pictures of it up by tomorrow! 

More Sleeves...

I tried measuring the armhole and adjusting the pattern I had and that still didn't work. Then I tried to drape it which also didn't work.

Draping it I got a sleeve that fit the armhole and went and cut the fabric only to once again have the sleeve go wrong. 

I'm really really frustrated with these sleeves. I know the armhole may be too big but I can't think of any way to fix that without starting over. The newest sleeve fits the armhole but it just gets all weird and starts twisting. On top of that its too big around my arm and the elbow is too far down. 

I did finish the solid color linen petticoat to go with it, so all thats left are these awful sleeves! 

The P.T. Dress Hit's a Roadblock

If there's anything that sets me back in historical costuming, it's the issues that come with patterns and sizing up etc etc.  Math is not my strong point!

I spent the weekend working on the Patience Tabitha dress and finished just about everything except the hem and the sleeves. I even got the matching petticoat done.

The finished and unusable sleeve

I very stupidly took the pattern from my costume closeup jacket (and even that pattern needs to be altered to fit me better!) and used it's sleeve's pattern. Of course I cut out both sleeves, floral fabric and lining, and sewed up a whole sleeve before discovering it didn't fit my dress. I did try to make it fit... but that resulted in weird bunching and messed up neckline.  To be fair, I think some of the issues are possibly from draping it. I think I cut the armholes larger than they should be, which I need to remember to fix on my basic 18th century pattern I made. 

I now need to go back and make a new sleeve pattern that actually fits but I think I may take a day or two and step back from this dress and work on some other projects. 

The Patience Tabitha Dress

This new dress I'm working on is "The Patience Tabitha Dress" named after my 6th great grandma and who was 30 at the time of the American Revolution.

I started off making a fitted lining and a fitted lining pattern that I can use for future dresses. I machine sewed this together because I wanted to be sure it was going to work before taking the time to handsew. In the future since it works, I'll hand sew this. The rest of the dress will be hand sewn. 

I'm realizing as I look at this that the front is rounded... I don't know why I didn't catch that before. I may need to recut the front lining pieces. I'm sewing it on the mannequin without the stays beneath because I know the lining fits me with stays on, so as long as I sew to the lining it will fit me fine.

The back smoothed out and pinned and the skirt pleated to the lining. 

The pleats are being whipstitched to the lining and then with the top fabric folded back over the pleats a spaced backstitch. 

pleats pinned down

closeup of pleats sewn with spaced backstitch

Finished Pleats and cut neckline

Hopefully, tonight I'll get the front of the bodice on and the front skirt pieces attached!