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Rate the dress: 1880s 18th century remake

Last week I showed you a blue-green & black 1860s dress with embroidered embellishments & a dash of Renaissance inspired historicism.  Your overall reaction to the dress was pretty positive – the vast majority of you either loved it, or felt that it was rescued from the potentially deadly frumpyness so common in 1860s dresses by the perfect colour combination and above-average embellishment.

But nobody liked the collar!

Collar aside, the dress came in at an extremely impressive nice round 9 out of 10.

I’m sticking with the historicism theme of last week, but putting a different twist on it.  Many 1880s dress took inspiration from the 18th century, but this one from the MFA Boston has actually taken an 18th century quilted petticoat, altered the shape to fit the current styles,  and used it as the entire skirt of the  gown.

The quilted petticoat has been paired with a bodice and trained overskirt of ecru silk with brocaded green and red flowers,  and trimmed with pleated silk in palest gold, and fascinating three-dimensional floral trim (I think it’s a lace, but can’t zoom enough to see if it’s lace or a very lightweight embroidered silk).  The pleated collar and heavy trim around the neckline are a clear nod to 18th century fichu.

The low, square neckline of the dress and the slightly paniered effect of the overskirt further evoke the 18th century, but the overall gown is decidedly 1880s in its silhouette and sensibilities.

It’s definitely slightly flattened and crushed with age, so you have to imagine it fresh and bouncy.  What do you think dear readers?  Has the re-use given the petticoat another shot at elegance and glamour, or is the whole thing a twee travesty: slightly too little Bo Peep for good taste?

Rate the Dress on a Scale of 1 to 10

A Miramar Gothic Dress thedreamstress.com

A Miramar Gothic Dress

Some of the most popular sewing classes I teach are focused on sewing with knits: lots of experienced sewers have never worked with knits, and knits are a great next step for beginner sewers.  I teach classes on T-shirts, knickers & leggings, but the first two can  be fairly fussy & stressful for beginners (bindings are tricky!), and they are all really pragmatic.   I wanted to be able to offer a REALLY easy class with no bindings or set-in sleeves, for a knit garment that could be  practical  or glamorous, and winter or summer appropriate.

So, playing around with this idea, and riffing off a couple of tops I’ve owned and loved over the years, I came up with the Miramar dress and top.  It’s got cut-on sleeves, a flattering V-neck, and can be as fun or elegant as you want, depending on fabric.  Plus, with just two pattern pieces, it goes together quickly.

Quickly is where this dress comes in.  Mr D & I were heading down to Nelson for his grandfather’s 90th birthday back in July, and I needed something to wear to the party, and the weather prediction was for COLD.  Cold and I are NOT  friends.  So I needed something dressy, glamorous, and WARM.

I’d just finalised the pattern for the Miramar dress, and I realised that a long version of the dress would be perfect.  I had a couple of meters of  merino-silk blend  knit in graphite (yum!), I could wear merino leggings and a merino undershirt underneath, my Capelet of Yay over it, and be elegant and snuggly.

When did I realise all of this?  At 11:30pm on Friday night.  With our flight leaving Wellington at 11am the next morning.

So…rush time!

I laid out the fabric & pattern pieces Friday night, traced out the alterations for a longer skirt, and went to bed.

On Saturday morning I popped up at 8:30, whizzed through all the seams, hemmed the dress (slightly shorter than I should have – sigh) tried it on, and had a little panic.  In my haste I’d nicked the seam allowances in the upper arm while cutting, so had to cut the sleeves slimmer, and since the knit didn’t have quite as much vertical stretch as the pattern was drafted for (it had none, in fact!) my upper arms were snug little immovable sausages.  Ergh.

Brainstorm!  Slice off the seam allowances to shoulder, grab length of black lace trim, insert lace along sleeve allowances (note to self: never attempt to insert lace into a closed sleeve again), re-hem sleeves, admire wider sleeves.

It worked!

And we made our flight in time and I wore the dress to the dinner and was almost warm enough.

As I’d been cutting and sewing the dress I thought to myself that the silhouette was quite medieval, as was the very simple construction.  In the black merino silk, with black lace insets, the dress felt like a lost garment from the gothic phase I never went through, so was instantly dubbed the Miramar Gothic dress.

And obviously, if I had a Miramar Gothic dress, I needed to do an American Gothic style photoshoot!

I thought about finding a house in Miramar in Gothic Revival, or at least bungalow-y style to shoot in front of, and posing with Mr D, but I would also need a photographer, a pitchfork (or whatever we decided was the appropriate Miramar equivalent), AND a cooperative Mr D, and it was all just too hard.

Plus, I’ve always agreed with the female model that the painting depicts a man and his daughter. Pity my Dad is in Hawaii and I can’t pose with him, because he’d be a great sport about it.

But wait….

My dad is in Hawaii, but there IS a statue of him in Miramar…

…Or at least, a statue that would be a dead ringer for him if he grew out his beard really long and wore robes and capes and carried a wizard’s staff!

Wait, what?

Yep.  My dad looks a LOT like Ian McKellan, and hence, my dad looks like Gandalf.  If we dressed him up and hung out in  front of Weta Cave and near the LotR filming spot in Mt Vic I bet we could get a bunch of tourists REALLY excited on a daily basis.  He’d have to keep his mouth shut though, because I think the American accent might give the game away.

But, without a dad to pose with, there is at least a Gandalf statue in front of the Roxy Cinema in Miramar, so after breakfast on Saturday Mr D & I headed down to try to recreate American Gothic.

Here’s how we did:

A Miramar Gothic Dress thedreamstress.com

I should really be looking slightly to my left, and Gandalf should be holding his staff between us, but not too bad!  He does look suitably stern.  And it’s certainly very Miramar!

We only had a few minutes to pose because 1) it was COLD (as as mentioned, I’m not good at cold), and 2) the queue of tourists started giving us dirty looks for hogging the statue, so I had to move off and let them get their photos with it.

A Miramar Gothic Dress thedreamstress.com

After a stint in the car with the heater blasting to take my hands back from purple to normal-ish human colours, we went a few blocks further up Park Road to where some awesome person has painted an electricity shed to look like a bookshelf.

A Miramar Gothic Dress thedreamstress.com

I posed in front of the shed for as long as I could stand, having fun reading the book titles (lots of classics, books relevant to the Miramar film industry, and other Miramar relevant books & documents, including The Taranaki Whānui ki Te Upoko o Te Ika Claims Settlement Act 2009, and a binder of power bills.

A Miramar Gothic Dress thedreamstress.com

I’ve made a couple of changes to the dress since Granbob’s dinner, which you can see in the photos.

A Miramar Gothic Dress thedreamstress.com

The lace looked gorgeous and worked, but was itchy, so I replaced it with a strip of the merino silk that runs from sleeve to sleeve, across my shoulders.  It twists across my arms in a really interesting way, which I quite like.

A Miramar Gothic Dress thedreamstress.com

Because the strip runs across my back, it created extra fullness at the back of the dress, so I took that in with a series of small tucks.

A Miramar Gothic Dress thedreamstress.com

I’ll tell you about the belt I’m wearing with my dress in my next post.

A Miramar Gothic Dress thedreamstress.com

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Trimming a hat with a silk stocking, ’20s style

I came across this tutorial for making a hat from an old silk stocking in my Feb 1928 issue of The Women’s Magazine, and I thought it was rather fabulous and something that you might enjoy.  What a great re-use idea!  It’s also a great insight into the colours and aesthetics that were en vogue on the eve of the Great Depression.

Now, if only I had any old silk stockings to re-use 😉

The Women's Magazine, Feb 1928 thedreamstress.com

The Women's Magazine, Feb 1928 thedreamstress.com2

The Women's Magazine, Feb 1928 thedreamstress.com3