1830s Dress and Bonnet

About two years ago I started work on my late 1830's dress. I am not overly fond of this time period (being 6 foot tall I do not like to emphasis my height with big puffy shoulders) so I decided to make a dress that is late 1830's by modifying it from the larger earlier sleeve by pleating the top into tacked bands. Anyways, as my heart was not fully into making this dress it took a long time to get around to finally making it. I was mainly prompted to finish it for two events: the anniversary of the birthday of Charles Sturt and for the START children's event for the Turner Exhibition at the Adelaide Art Gallery.

Surprisingly, I had lost about 1" since I made my toile so it fitted with only slight alterations. So I was very happy :-).

These dresses are very easy to construct and fit for people that have prior experience in mid Victorian sewing. The sleeves, however, are a challenge.

 A close up of the bodice. Normally I have Nic to take photos, but he was interstate at the time on a survey.

The bodice is a one piece front with a single dart on each side. The back has hooks and eyes for closure down the CB. It also has SB seems. All of the seems are piped in silk. I chose this for a contrast colour as the fabric is a little too pale for my liking and I was worried about being washed out. I also thought it would help to highlight the features.

 The sleeves that create a lot of drama. These took more time than the rest of the dress put together. I had to pull them apart 3 times to get them to fit. They were made it two pieces. the bottom section and cuff are piped in the silk and lined in plain cotton. The top half of the sleeve is a giant gigot that would normally be a large puffy sleeve. To make the pleats with the fabric required to keep the puff I sectioned the sleeve off and tacked the pleats in place. I then had to make the pleats double in order to ensure it did not pull too much to the front or back (this happened the first time I constructed it, the puff sat to the front and was flat in the back). I then pressed it and hand sewed it in to the armhole. The pressing was important to ensure that the pleats stayed flat as while working on the cross in some sections it was pulling while working down the pleat.  Once it was sewn into the armhole I then hand tacked the sleeve pleats down into the arm bands. The arm bands were just 1 cm wide strips of fabric with silk piping on the sides. Once the gigot sections were in, I then attached the bottom cuffs and whipped the edges to finish them off.

As you can see from this photo of the inside, as long as it looks good on the outside the inside doesn't really matter when you are trying to fit that much fabric into such a small circumference.

 Before I began work on this dress Jessie had given me a matching purple cameo style belt buckle that was the inspiration for my silk colour choice. As I was running late for completing this, the belt was mostly made by Jessie. She is a wonderful help when overwhelmed. 

 The completed dress outside of the Adelaide Art Gallery. I hate how flat the skirt is. I really need more petticoats.

This bonnet I purchased 3 years ago, second hand. It was made for the original 1980's anniversary celebration of our state. The poor bonnet had seen better days. It had a huge tear in the front and was decorated in fluro pink ribbons. The ribbons were the easy part to fix, but I was able to repair the tear as well. I wired the brim and tacked down some shape-well to reinforce the tear. To cover these repairs I had to wire the brim and line the inside to hide the damage. The outside was barely noticeable but I still put a decorative ribbon up over the tear.

 The only visible section of the tear. 

 I am not overly into floral decorations, so I tried to keep it simple with ribbons only. As Jessie offered to tack most of the ribbons down I did give in and let her put a single flower on it.

Anyways these make up two of the challenges for the historical sewing fortnightly.

The Challenge 9# Flora and Fauna - 1836-38 Cotton Dress

Fabric: 100% Printed Cotton

Notions: Cotton string for piping, silk for piping, metal hooks, Vintage Buckle, silk thread
Pattern: None - toiled to my body and the sleeves drafted from Brian Reader's ' Making Costumes of the Eighteen-Thirties'
Year:  1836-38
How historically accurate is it? About 80%, the fabric is natural and printed, there is some machine sewing, construction is similar to dresses in Kay Invererity's original dress collections. (before beginning sewing in 2011, she held a workshop to explore her original garments to gain an understanding of the construction)
Hours to complete: minus the two years sitting on the roll in my wardrobe.... 8 days x 8 hours.... plus extra.... sooo way too many when I should have been working on my ethics proposal.
First worn: 28th April
Total cost: I think the cotton was about $72 and the silk was about $28 and the thread about $5... This is just guess work as I did purchase all of this 2 years ago.

The Challenge 10# Literature - 1830s Straw Bonnet (Inspired by Mrs.Octavia Pole from Cranford)

Fabric: Straw Bonnet form

Notions: Brown Polyester Ribbon, Millinery Wire, Shape-well, Ivory Polyester Satin, Yellow Thread
Pattern: None - I did get inspiration from fashion plates
Year:  1830s
How historically accurate is it? About 50%, the shape of the bonnet is accurate, but I was unable to get around to purchasing non synthetic fabric or ribbon due to time constraints  as as this is not one of my favourite time periods I will probably not change it later.
Hours to complete: about 6 hours
First worn: 28th April by Jessie for Sturt's Birthday and a week later by me at the Art Gallery
Total cost: about $20 for ribbon and fabric

Photo Inspiration

Ps. I am very behind in my posting. This should have been written in March. My honours thesis has been taking a lot of my time and energy at the moment so while I am still sewing, its taking longer and blogging has been sort of put on hold.

Before I met my husband he had purchased 2 CDVs. These were his first inspirations for his non military fashion inspiration.

 "Rose" (taken in England, dated 1865) and an unidentified Gentleman (taken in Adelaide, no date)

The photo of the gentleman has been the inspiration for a brown woolen waistcoat that he made before he met me and grey corduroy trousers that we made together when we first met. As you can imagine there has been a long gap between starting this project and now. For his birthday present this year Nic requested I attempt to make him a sack coat to finish his outfit. As you can imagine my self esteem is still suffering from working on the 1830s coat that still needs sleeves and I have never seen an original sack coat to base my copy on. Therefore I did the best I could to make a copy based on the few photo examples of originals I could find. It is also amazing how detailed CDVs really are. The photo technology captures amazing details that can be viewed through a monocular, something that modern photos can not accomplish.

The completed sack coat.

As I did not have much time to complete it I did not take many photos of the construction. I am also not sure about how "correct" the sewing techniques I used were for this type of coat. I did take photos of the pockets as on checking the photo in detail it had 3 slit pockets (which I hated making, but Nic loves for putting stuff in). The front was lined after this photo was taken.

I know that this was not for the Historical Sewing Challenge, but I still like this information layout.

Fabric: Brown Melton Wool, 100% Cotton Ticking, 100% Cotton for lining, modern horsehair

Pattern: Drafted using patterns from the Victorian Tailor, the Complete Guide to Cutting (1853) and Mens Garments 1830-1900
Year: ca. 1860s
Notions: brown cotton thread, custom metal shanked covered buttons
How historically accurate is it? mehh, maybe 80%... I question my construction understanding without originals to study.
Hours to complete: about a week
First worn: 16th March, for our Victorian Afternoon Tea Party - and he has been wearing it daily since
Total cost: About $70