All posts filed under: 19th Century

1883 in every way

So, after I posted about pleating my plaid 1880s skirt, an awesome friend crunched some number and figured out that if I counted the thread I used in the skirt in imperial rather than metric I would have used 1883 feet of thread in the skirt, which, since it is circa 1883, is just perfect. How fantastic is that? Most of the thread usage in the skirt went into the pleats, but after I had sewn them all, and attached the bottom portion of the pleats to the skirt base, I had to do the hardest part: drape the overskirt. I suck at draping overskirts. I don’t know why. Mine just never look right! I do better when they are separate pieces, but after scrutinizing the inspiration skirt from the Met, and considering how much fabric I had left to play with, I decided to sew it as one skirt. I’m still not sure that was the right decision. First I had to make my pieces of pleating big enough. Remember, I had a 5.4 …

Rate the dress: late Rococo ruffles

Published by The Dreamstress

Reminder: Two days left to enter the giveaway if you haven’t already. OK, back to regular programming: Talk about drama! Turns out a lot of you like it – the extremely dramatic pink and black dress had a lot of enthusiastic responses, and a few slightly horrified and repelled erks from those with more delicate taste in clothes. Definitely not a dress for the faint-hearted! Thanks to the non-lovers of huge hot pink & black chevrons (and those who noticed that the cuffs were a bit off, and the dress fell apart stylistically below the knee), it came in at 7.3 out of 10. Sometimes a ‘Rate the Dress’ chooses itself, and sometimes I have the hardest time picking a garment that is interesting and doesn’t repeat the theme/colour/timeperiod/aesthetic of something I showed you recently too closely. This week was dreadful. I looked at hundreds of images, and saw many that would be perfect Rate the Dresses, but weren’t right for this week. I finally settled on this: This gown fascinates me. I think how …

The pleated plaid 1880s skirt

Published by The Dreamstress

I love Aline’s By the Seashore ensemble, but I’ve never been 100% happy with the skirt, especially not on me (it’s too short). And the bustle has serious issues. When I inherited Nana’s fabric stash it included a 5.4 metre length of blue and white tartan. It wasn’t quite as ideal a match for Renoir’s painting as the tan and blue tartan I found for my first skirt, but it was free, so that’s a massive benefit! I set the fabric aside for an Aline re-do, and in April 2011 I decided it was time to tackle the project. First I made a basic skirt foundation out of heavy cotton calico (muslin), using the 1880s patterns reproduced at the front of Arnold’s Patterns of Fashion 1860-1940. They are all basically the same: a series of gored panels with angled edges heading towards the back, and a rectangular back panel which goes over the bustle. In addition to the original Renoir painting, I was using two other pieces of inspiration. First, a mid 1880s outdoors ensemble …