Reprise

I finished my 1830s ballgown, but what is an 1830s anything without Too Much in the way of trimming? Therefore, I decided I wanted a belt to go with the dress. And then I wanted a belt with trailing ribbons. And then I wanted an organza ruffle down each ribbon. Finally, I decided to add bows.

Inspiration:

I was very happy with the method I came up with for constructing the belt. I cut two lengths of the silk and a lining of coutil (no seam allowance on the coutil). The coutil is stitched securely to the belt back. Then I sewed the belt seams with the front piece not quite reaching the edge of the back piece. This means that when the seams are done the front piece will be slightly wider than the back.

I sewed the seam just below the edge of the coutil and pressed the allowances to sit behind the coutil. Once the belt is pulled through, the front piece of silk neatly covers all the edges of the coutil and the seams and any bulk from the seam allowance sits at the back.

The ribbon trails are pretty straight forward. I didn't interface them because the silk was sturdy enough on its own. Then I came to the organza ruffles. Turns out once you've cut two large sleeves out of a piece of fabric on the bias there aren't a lot of long, reasonably wide strips to be had. So it was back to Cardif. I figured I would want about 2 metres length to get the degree of ruffling I wanted. They had a metre. That makes three different silks I have 'bought the roll' of for this dress, and none of them had as much as I thought I would need.

To get the 2 metres for the ruffle, I joined two 1 metre lengths with a seam that, thankfully, doesn't stand out too much, and the length was pretty much right. I gathered the strips by hand, then sewed them down by hand. I am trying to have no visible machine stitching (the inside of the belt here qualifies as 'not visible').

The bows are made from two rectangles cut on the bias and sewn into a loop. I couldn't use the tailed bow design that came with my pattern because I did not have enough purple left (are you noticing a theme here?). By removing the tails I ended up with a pattern just small enough to squeeze what I needed out of the silk. Even so, I still have more purple left over than silver.

I had only just enough fabric for this dress in the best possible way. I still got to use the fabric I had imagined and the design is much more interesting. I am so happy with how this gown turned out.

Enough, Enough Now

My last post was about the fabric (silk!) that I am using for an 1830s ballgown. After cutting all the pieces – and a couple of strips for binding – I had this much fabric left over:

4 metres was enough, but only just.

Skirt
Because of the limited fabric, I faced the skirt hem and waist. The facing is cotton homespun which I also used for flatlining the bodice. As with my previous 1830s dress, I sewed a strip of wadding around the hem, used double inverted pleats at the front waist and cartridge pleating at the back.

Dear future self, use 1cm stitches for cartridge pleating skirts, not 2cm stitches.

Bodice
I gave this bodice a straight edge (the pattern has a centre front peak) because I want to have a belt that goes with it. It is finished with self-binding – cut on the straight because that was all the fabric I had left. The back seams and neckline are piped in purple. The centre bodice and shoulder seams are self-piped. I didn't want to use purple next to the bertha as I thought the white/dark contrast would be distracting.

I thought the inside colour scheme turned out quite nice.

I had the very smart idea of doing all the hand sewing before putting the sleeves on the bodice. Sewing on the hooks and eyes and binding the sleeve flounces was much more convenient when the pieces were not attached to each other. Usually I wouldn't do this, because a dress can be worn with these features incomplete if it really needs to be but, for once, I had started sewing with plenty of time.

Bertha
The pattern I am using has a bertha. Its version is made of alternating strips sewn down to overlap.

Source

I didn't think that would work so well for me, what with the organza being see-through and all, so instead I pleated my organza all in one piece, along the lines of how my inspiration portrait looks. The raw edges are tacked underneath.

The bertha is attached to the bodice by being caught in the shoulder, sleeve and centre front seams. I did do a little bit of tacking near the shoulders to stop the fabric overlapping the neckline. Said tacking is hidden under the third layer of pleating so as to not affect how the edge of the organza sits.

Sleeve
The top of the sleeve is knife pleated. I used a cable tie to gauge the width (because it was lying around nearby) and kept pleating until the sleeve was the width I wanted. The resulting ruffles are perhaps not quite as nice as they would have been had I had enough fabric to cut them on the bias but less fancy ruffles are better than no ruffles. The other ruffles are just gathered and all are edged with purple silk bias.

I used French seams on the organza puff – I have mixed feelings about French seams but they turned out all right here. The rest of the seams are finished with Hong Kong binding. To hold the organza puff in place I made a rouleau from the organza and stitched it down at the top and bottom of the puff and into the sleeve seam.

I love how the sleeves turned out. I’m very glad I didn’t have enough silver for them – I think this looks so much better. My only qualm is that the puff could probably afford to be a bit bigger but that’s not a significant problem.

Not Enough

After the 1830s day dress I made last year turned out so well, I decided to make another one for this year’s Jafa, but this time a ballgown.

I’ve been thinking more and more about silk recently. I want to get away from using artificial fibres so much because the lack of breathability gets uncomfortable after a day’s wearing. I used silk in the corsetry workshop I did last year and again on trimming my 1830s bonnet. It was so good to work with that now, having used it, I don’t want to go back.

On the other hand, silk is expensive. I was hoping to find some cheaper silk when I went to Cabramatta. I had decided on blue to match a (not-remotely historical) necklace I had bought myself as a reward for being brave at work but turned out not to go with any of my everyday necklines. Alas, there was no silk to be had when I visited.

So, plan B. There’s been an embroidered silver silk dupion at Cardif Collective that I’ve been admiring for years. No-one's ever bought it so I figured that if I found nothing in Sydney I'd go with the silver. The embroidery is perhaps not completely accurate but I did find a few very embroidered skirts which would make it passable.

They all had relatively simple skirts so that would save a few metres I would otherwise have needed for self trimming the skirt. The pattern recommended 8m but the silver silk is pretty wide, so I figured I could get away with 3m for the skirt, 1m for the bodice and 1m for each sleeve.

I went out to Cadif the Saturday afternoon after the Sydney trip and found that the roll of silk was thinner. Horror! Three year’s sitting unbought and the same day I go to get it someone else bought half of it.

There is none of the silver left. However, last I saw there was still a roll in hot pink. Don’t all buy it at once.

There were 4m remaining. I did some maths at the counter and figured I could possibly, maybe, perhaps squeeze it out of 4m. I also wanted 2m of purple silk, the same as I had used for the corset, for a belt and trimmings and 2m silk organza for lining the sleeves, making 8m of silk in total.

I bought the last of the purple too; not as much as I wanted but I have some left over from the corset workshop.

Back in August I won a sewing machine in the Gamma.Con cosplay contest, sponsored by Cardif. As I am quite sufficiently supplied with sewing machines, Cardif generously allowed me to exchange the prize for store credit. So this is my actual prize: enough silk for a ballgown.

Because I had 1m from which to get what I originally thought would take 3, I had to change my plans a bit. I had planned to do a bertha for this dress but given the limited fabric I chose to make it in organza rather than use the silver.

Helene of Mecklenburg-Schwerin as a bride, 1837.

I am reusing the Powerhouse museum pattern and modifying the sleeve design. My new design has a row of knife pleating, one puff and lots of flounces.

Laying the bodice pieces carefully allowed me more than half a width for the sleeves. However there was absolutely no way I was going to get all of the sleeve pieces out of that (and definitely not cut on the bias).

I was also not entirely sold on the organza bertha – the contrast seemed a bit random; I couldn’t find a way of continuing it around the whole neckline (something to do with curved lines and straight lines not being the same thing). Then my sleeve problem and my bertha problem solved each other: I could use organza for the large puff on the sleeve! The bertha no longer looks out of place and I think I have (just) enough fabric for everything.