Victorian Dress 1888/9. Rating: Ambitious!

I'm beginning an exciting new adventure. My mother very kindly bought me my now favourite pattern book: Directoire Revival Fashions 1888-1889. It contains a grand total of FIFTY SEVEN patterns from that year; everything from chemises to bonnets to coats/wraps, skirts, blouses and dresses! There is a full chapter too on just the decoration of Victorian clothing (and the techniques of how to do some of the more ornate pieces), and it can be purchased here if anyone's interested. I've picked a dress from page 360 of the book, which I'm informed is an "Empire Costume" (though I have no idea why, it doesn't really have an empire waistline) and a little bit annoyingly doesn't actually have a pattern.

The Pattern

The book has a pretty good breakdown of what each part of the dress should look like and how it's fitted together. There are these two pieces at the front, which fold over each other into a V, very much like a wrap dress. Over the top there is a girdle, which holds the bodice in place and the skirt is attached too it. The description is rather confusing, as it talks about the lining and the drapery. I believe that it's actually two skirts, one made of lining and one of the dress fabric (you'll only really see the trim of the lining fabric, underneath the zigzag part of the picture, which I think is meant to be the end of the drapery). At least, that is how I'm going to try and make it. The back of the dress is a polonaise of a contrasting fabric, that still holds the dress together.

Now that I know the different parts of the dress, I have to find a pattern for them. While there are 57 patterns in this book, there are only 6 full dress patterns, and then a number of different drawings of how the same pattern can be done to create totally different looks. A few pages back from this image there is an "Evening Costume" which has the same V neck/wrap shaped bodice as the empire costume. I take the front, sleeve and cuff pattern from that, a polonaise pattern from the polonaise section. The skirt has four gores, the book tells me, of which look like rectangles which are gathered into shape. The only problem is that there is NO pattern for the girdle. Anywhere. So this will be fun.

Colours

Quick photoshop recolour, just to show you

The dress that never was

I bought myself some lovely white/light blue stripped cotton for the bodice/skirt, and have some navy blue cotton/silk for the polonaise, girdle and underskirt. These were bought not for this dress, but for another Victorian one that sadly never made it past the enlarging stage. The patters in Directoire Revival Fashion are specifically designed to be made in to a number of different sizes and can account for my curvy shape.




The Mock Up

This is the first time I've every used this book for a proper dress (though the chemise pattern came from here, though I knew that was going to be large enough that I wouldn't really have to make a practice piece). The pattern has to be hand drawn, and some of these pieces are HUGE (would not fit on an a0 page huge), so I ended up drawing them on AutoCAD to save my back, and had them printed out locally (only then did I realise I forgot to print out the sleeve pattern, so will have to do a mock up of that later). I used some old curtain and upholstery fabric to make the bodice and polonaise (didn't think it was worth making the skirt as it's simple).

I'm not 100% happy with the mock up, but I think it'll look batter with the skirt added (ignore my black petticoat). The girdle is just pinned on for show, and the polonaise needs the bustle under it to look better. I didn't bother with the neck collar in the end, as I think this looks better. The polonaise is far too short, which was due to restrictions in the amount of fabric I had lying about, but I'm really happy with the lines on the back. Next, cut the real fabric (and hope I have enough)

Victorian Chemise - Image heavy

A chemise is the undermost of all Victorian undergarments, often made from white cotton or linen, designed to protect the corset (and garments) from bodily dirt. It is a long, sleeveless dress, and the neckline style has varied over the Victorian era from square or round and undecorated, to more decoration and triangular necklines acceptable for day wear (initially they were for evenings only). It eventually evolved into slips in the early 20th century.

I attempted to make one without really doing a lot of research into what was acceptable for the time period, and took the pattern from Directoire Revival Fashions 1888-1889 (edited) by Frances Grimble. Absolutely fantastic book but quite complicated to use. All patterns have to be drafted from the book, but they are very simple and have a variety of scale rulers so you can draft your size without having to make too many calculations. Just measure bust size for bodices, waist size for skirts and away you go.



The pattern, as you can see, is for a square necked chemise with lace trim and insertions around the arm holes and neckline. In the description on the page over it suggests you add fine tucks and lace to the bottom (which I ran out of time to do). The second pattern piece is the yoke which I have absolutely no idea what to do with, so I omitted it.

Restricted by both my small table and my terrible laziness, I started drafting straight onto the fabric (huge pain in the ass, and entirely NOT recommended. I only managed because this is a very simple pattern. Easiest to measure down from the fold, then out at a 90 degree angle to do the widths.

Other issue with drawing straight onto the fabric, 90 degree angles are not 90 degrees anymore

Tiny table isn't very good for sewing

Next it was just a case of draw lines between all the dots, cut out one piece, and lay it over the rest of the fabric and trace it out.

Unfortunately I derped and didn't have quite enough width of fabric. To be fair, the chemise is so massive it's not really noticeable

Stitch the sides together and shoulder pieces together, and you will have a tent. Seriously, it is HUGE, but it is meant to be. What I should have done now was gather along the bottom of the neckline on both back and front, then add trim, but I decided not to do that so that I could have a bit more flexibilty of what I wear over the chemise (think it'd look silly of I try to wear it with a v-necked Victorian bodice). So add all the trim

Lace over green ribbon around the neck, with cord so that I could tighten/loosen the neck

Green around the arm holes, just because it's pretty.

And this is it being warn under corset and skirt (ignore my scruffy face)

Victorian Evening Gown (image heavy)

A run through of the first proper gown I've ever tried to make. Took me on and off a year to finish, but if I broke down the time it would probably have only taken about a week of intensive sewing.

The patterns have come from http://www.trulyvictorian.net/ which has an absolutely stunning array of women's Victorian clothing patterns (and to a lesser extent, men's). The two I've used is TV 416 and TV 208 (Skirt A), and involves over 13m of fabric (in the form of some old curtains and some old upholstery fabric kindly donated to me by my boyfriend's mother).

The Skirt

The skirt comprises of 2 layers. The under skirt and the over skirt, stitched together at the waist band. The under skirt is formed of several different panels, all stitched together. The panels that go around the bum need to be gathered and will eventually go underneath a bustle. At the time I didn't have a bustle, so I rigged one up out of an old bed sheet (so professional).

The over skirt was a little trickier. It's an apron shape (in 3 panels), gathered at each side at the back, and then 4 panels that hang down over the bustle (which have to be stitched together and then turned right-side-out).

The Bodice

 I don't have any individual pictures of the bodice, but I can tell you this was a lot more fiddly. It's fully lined, boned, and made out of about 7 panels of upholstry fabric (same as the skirt). There are darts in the front for shape, which is held together by hooks and eyes, and has some pleats at the back over the bustle. As you can see, it didn't fit terribly well first try. I had to go back and add some darts above the bust so that it sat further up on the shoulders, and used hook and eye tape rather than individual hooks and eyes (which would have taken forever to sew on). Obviously, it doesn't look the most attractive. On to the TRIMMING (serious business when it comes to Victorian clothing, I am discovering - this is seriously toned down). At this point the whole outfit was died with Dylon chocolate brown dye, but ended up coming out a maroon-ish colour.

Decoration

 The lay out of these images is a bit messed up but let me explain as much as I can. Everything is hand stitched from this point on. I added a chiffon rose trip around the neckline, and moved the hooks and eyes so that the bodice overlapped a bit more, before adding goldish snaps to the front of the bodice (not very Victorian, but nevermind). I also started my first ever hand embroidery. I sketched out the shape of a tree, and slowly started working on it in horizontal lines. This was no doubt the most time consuming and injury inducing part of this endevour - you can see the bloodstains on the lining. My fingers also started blistering at one point, so I took to sewing the second half of the tree and all the beads while wearing rubber gloves. This made the stitching so much easier.

About half way through I tried it on to make sure everything fit. As you can see the bodice is much closer fitting though I'm still a bit too short for the pleats over the bustle to really be seen. It's being worn with a bustle and a hooped elliptical petticoat which isn't technically period but this is a) my dress, and b) was being made and worn for a steampunk event, so I figured a little anachronism wouldn't go amiss. I'm also showing off my ankle like some sort of hussy :P. You can see the finished embroidery here too.

And All Together Now

Voila! The completed outfit. Sadly you can see a little of the petticoat in that picture, and the skirt did still need hemmed at that point, but apart from that it's finished! I'm still not totally happy with the way the bodice sat under the corset, but I'll live.