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.