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Rate the Dress: 1830s evening elegance

Life has decided to be unrelentingly busy, so it’s taken me a while to get back to Rate the Dress. But it’s here in the form of a white and gold 1830s evening dress.

Last week: a 1913-14 evening dress in salmon pink, bold black and gold

Those of you who are rating at the moment are very opinionated. There wasn’t much middle ground to the reactions to this dress. Most of you loooooooooved it. So many 10s! But a few couldn’t get on board with the colour, or felt there were just too many elements.

The Total: 8.6 out of 10

A whole decimal point up from last week. I mean, I guess that’s an improvement!

This week: An 1830s evening dress in gold and white

I woke up today and decided that the next Rate the Dress should be 1830s. I was vaguely thinking of something quite bright and a bit ridiculous, but this was the first 1830s item in my Rate the Dress inspiration file, so here it is:

Muslin evening dress with gold metal thread embroidery, 1830s, Fashion Museum Bath

This dress, with its sophisticated gold embroidery on a white ground, is definitely not brightly coloured. Whether it is ridiculous or not is up to you!

I’m not entirely sure if the satin underdress is original, or if it’s a museum recreation meant to represent the type of dress that might have been worn under the sheer muslin overdress. In either case, you are rating the dress based on what we see here, and how it’s presented.

What do you think? Ridiculous? Elegant? Ridiculous in the best possible way?

Rate the Dress on a Scale of 1 to 10

A reminder about rating — feel free to be critical if you don’t like a thing, but make sure that your comments aren’t actually insulting to those who do like a garment. Phrase criticism as your opinion, rather than a flat fact. Our different tastes are what make Rate the Dress so interesting. It’s no fun when a comment implies that anyone who doesn’t agree with it, or who would wear a garment, is totally lacking in taste.

As usual, nothing more complicated than a .5. I also hugely appreciate it if you only do one rating, and set it on a line at the very end of your comment.

Felicity the Sewing Cat thedreamstress.com

A day in the life of Felicity the Sewing Cat

Published by The Dreamstress

7:30 am – Wake up

7:32 am – Pat Leimomi on the face to remind her to wake up and give me cuddle

7:33-7:45 – Sit on Leimomi’s chest and purr like mad, periodically reaching out to pat her face to remind her to give me head scratchies

7:50 – Breakfast!

7:52: after licking off all the sauce and eating 2 pieces of meat, go and sit by the back door and look pitiful and wistful until Leimomi opens it for me

7:53 – Eat three blades of grass, sniff another patch, and then come back inside, having decided I’m not that excited about the outdoors after all.

7:55 – Use the litter boxes instead of the great outdoors.

7:56-8:00 – Grooming session

8:00-8:20 – Back to bed for another snuggle session, this time asking to go under the blankets for a cuddle, and then to get out again 5 minutes later, and then to come back under (after I’ve contemplated the nice cave created for long enough for lots of cold air to creep in), and then out again, and then back again.

8:20 – Leimomi gives up on a sleep in and gets up to make herself a cup of tea. I make my first plea for second breakfast (the stuff left from first doesn’t count. I already licked off all the sauce)

8:25 – Out-of-bed morning cuddles with Leimomi while she has her cup of tea and checks emails.

8:45 – Morning snoozes in the sun streaming in the bedroom window

9:30 – Second breakfast requested again, and finally delivered. I lick off all the sauce and eat two pieces of meat.

9:35 – Mid-morning snoozes out in the garden.

10:10 – What’s that sound? Leimomi’s working on a pattern. Guess it’s time for me to log on. Quality control cat at your service!

11:00 – Utterly exhausted from all that work. Time for a quick nap on the nearest pile of weirdly uncomfortable stuff I can find.

12:15 – Leimomi is having lunch. Time to sit in the doorway and send her psychic beams reminding her that I’m a poor starving little cat, and I too need lunch.

12:32 – it works, as it always does.

12:50 – Back to work, keeping an eye on Leimomi from the warm embrace of my heated throne.

1:45 – Exhausted. Recovery nap on a convenient pile of oddments

2:40 – Oh dear, job time again. Sounds like Leimomi is on the sewing machine, and I need to keep an eye on her.

3:30 – The sewing continues.

4:00 – Leimomi abandons me. Something about ‘almost out of cat food’ and ‘stopping by the vet for meds’. How could she do this? I’m sure it’s not as important as me!

4:30 – I am a small circle of sadness.

5:30 – Leimomi returns. I insistently demand reunion cuddles. I can’t believe she makes me wait until she puts away groceries and changes out of her delightfully claw-able nice pants and into sweats. I sit on my poof and look pitiful to remind her that some people actually love me and put me first, like the nice lady who made a poof just for me so I could easily get up on my warm throne.

5:45 – Reunion cuddles. Finally!

6:20 – Dinner

6:40 – Treats

7:10 – No rest for the never-ever-wicked, as Leimomi is back to patternmaking, and clearly my help is needed.

9:00 – Bedtime cuddles

Such a hard life being a little old lady cat!

Assembling the Cassandra Stays thedreamstress.com

The Cassandra Stays Sew Along: Assembling the Panels & Adding Bones

Published by The Dreamstress

Previously on The Cassandra Stays Sew Along:

In this instalment of the Cassandra Stays Sew Along your Cassandra Stays are finally going to start looking like a pair of stays. That’s right: we’re sewing the panels together and adding bones!

Assembling the Panels

This isn’t the final sewing-together of panels: this is just a quick assembly so you can do a final fitting before the final assembly of the stays. You’ll need to either re-sew the seams with stronger stitching if you’re using the Theatrical construction methods, or whip the channels together if you’re using the Historical constructions methods.

You have two options when adding bones and sewing the panels together. You can either bone the panels first, and then sew the panels together, or sew the panels together, and then add bones.

If I’m sewing the seams by machine, I prefer to bone the panels after I’ve sewn them together. This method doesn’t work with all styles of stays, because some boning layouts don’t allow you to add bones after sewing the seams. However it works well for the Cassandra Stays.

I’ll be sewing the final seam-joins by hand using the historical instructions. For the purpose of fitting, I’m speeding things up and using a machine.

I sew all the panels together:

And then I press the heck out of all the seams:

(never trust a sewist who doesn’t press more than they sew!)

And now that I have assembled stays, I can add bones!

Boning the Stays

When boning the stays I just re-use the bones from my fully boned toile:

Some of my bones are longer than the boning channels. I’m keeping that extra length, just in case I decide I want to keep the seam allowance length for my final stays:

Since I’m keeping the length, and will need to do a final trim and shorten of my bones, I’m just cutting down and sanding one end of the bones to be smooth:

If you find that it’s very difficult to insert the bones into the channels, use a pair of pliers:

Hopefully you were careful in measuring your boning channels and don’t need to do that!

And here’s my toile, all limp and de-boned, and my nice stiff fully-boned stays, ready for a final try-on