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Rate the Dress: Damask and lace for dinner, ca. 1886

Published by The Dreamstress

Last week I showed you an evening gown worn my Marjorie Merriweather Post, in muted shades of blue and green.  Ratings were divided into those of you who thought it was the epitome of muted elegance, those of you who thought it pretty, but not a stand-out dress, and those of you who found all the soft half-tones too dull and drab, and gave it very poor ratings indeed (and one vote that I disqualified for not rating on a scale of 1 to 10, because that’s cheating 😉 ) .

I’m halfway through tallying the ratings, but it’s bedtime, so I’ll finish those up first thing tomorrow!

UPDATE: MMP’s 1910ish evening dress came out at 8.1 out of 10, which seems like the perfect rating for restrained rather than sensational  elegance.

This dinner dress from the Metropolitan Museum of Art features a design feature that has always been slightly problematic for you raters: a laced front bodice.

While you can choose to dislike the feature in and of itself, I am 99.8% sure that the original lacing cord has disappeared, and the one shown is a replacement, so please, dear readers, do not mark the dress down for the specific cord itself!

This dress features a classic 188os fabric: a sumptuous  brocaded silk in a rich colour,  with a large, striking  pattern with a single theme: this time of hollyhocks.  The rich persimmon orange tones of the dress are slightly unusual, but the overall tonality is absolutely typical of the period.

Also typical is the pairing of the heavy silk with a very light, delicate lace overlay.

The lace both hides a plain persimmon underskirt, and is hidden in turn by the brocaded overskirt, which features hem slits which allow the lace to reveal itself again.  The whole effect adds to the tension between the heavier and lighter fabrics, and to the slightly historically inspired feel of the dress.

At the back, the hollyhock fabric takes centre stage, mirroring itself at the centre back, and carefully arranged in the pleats of the train, so that a flower appears at each fold.

What do you think?  A masterful mix of fabric and usage of pattern?  Or a waste of good fabrics? Or are the fabrics themselves to blame for any fault in the dress?

Rate the Dress on a Scale of 1 to 10.

Not at all Slevils: Adventures in Medieval Sleeve Fitting

Published by The Dreamstress

With surprisingly little faffing and no angst at all, my 1360s-70s gown now has sleeves!

Medieval sleeves have a reputation for being hard (I’ve heard them called slevils more than once) but sleeves are one of the things I’m really good at, so I wasn’t too worried about them.*  I think it’s because I’d sewn in a dozen sleeves and drafted at least two before I heard that sleeves are supposed to be awful.  I never had time to be scared!

But I’m a good little bloggy scholar, and I want my dress to help me get to historical accuracy, so I read pretty much all the medieval sleeve drafting posts on the internet, and got myself all psyched up to sew 14th century sleeves.

I started with the sleeve drafting tutorial at the Completely Dressed Anachronist.  Nice and clear, and I like the way she discusses the pitfalls of drafting methods.

By following it, I got this:

Fitting medieval sleeves 2 thedreamstress.com3

I cut it out in toile fabric, sewed it up, and it DID NOT WORK.  It was way too long, particularly in the upper half, and the armscye was ridiculously not-right.   Half of that I will cop as totally my fault, because I did the measurements on myself, and I’m pretty sure I did a really crappy job on them.  The other half is the limitations of any drafting system for a garment with a very fitted  armscye – the shape is just going to be so specific to the individual and the garment that it’s almost impossible to develop a formula for it.

But I didn’t loose heart!  Oh no!  I shortened the upper sleeve 2″, peered at the armscye while tugging and moving my arm, and drew a new armscye shape with a shallower top curve, and a narrower underarm dip:

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I tried that as a toile, made a few tweaks to it, made another toile, the fit was perfect, so I re-drew my arm seam  on it based on the extremely helpful diagrams at By My Measure, and made a fourth toile.

I could bend my elbow:

Fitting medieval sleeves thedreamstress.com1

I could bend my elbow a  lot:

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(side note: I’ve moved the skirt gores back down again, versus their position in the last post, and look how much better than hang of the dress and the line over my hips is)

I could raise my arm:

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I was ready to cut sleeves!

For reference, here is my original drafted pattern on the left, and my final version with an altered line so the seam runs on the side of my arm so I can have sleeve buttons on the right (the final version has seam allowance added).  The final version looks a little weird, but that’s because arms and shoulders are weird.  They aren’t nice straight symmetrical tubes.

Fitting medieval sleeves 2 thedreamstress.com4

And here are my sewn-in  sleeves:

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Fitting medieval sleeves thedreamstress.com8

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Success!

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I’m pretty pleased, though I may keep fussing with the pattern, as I think I could get it just a bit more perfect for my next version, but overall it does everything it should, and  Felicity likes the pattern, so it must be good:

Fitting medieval sleeves 2 thedreamstress.com2

Some final thoughts on sleeve fitting:

  • Toiles.  Lots of em.  Suck it up and just keep doing them, because that’s how you get things right.
  • Just keep looking at your toiles, analysing where there is pulling (too little fabric) or bagging (too much fabric) and adding or taking away until you get it just right.
  • Sleeve fitting is an art, not a science.
  • Arms and shoulders are not symmetrical, and not straight.  It’s better to have a funny looking pattern that fits right, than a tidy looking one that doesn’t.

* Don’t worry, there are plenty of sewing and other things I’m not remotely good at, so balance is achieved across the universe!

Rate the Dress: Evening shades for ca. 1910

Published by The Dreamstress

I’m always surprised by what does and what doesn’t come under criticism with a Rate the Dress. I knew the print and non-symetrical matching of last week’s credited-as-1860s-almost-certainly-early-1850s-instead frock wouldn’t be everyone’s favourite, but it didn’t occur to me that quite a few of you would castigate it for the anatomy it was meant to fit over.  The lady who wore it couldn’t help her very long torsos and slope-y shoulders (and the shoulders, at least, were very fashionable at the time)!  Many of you did, however, appreciated the pairing of a very busy fabric with a very simple design, which helped to give the dress a modest but respectable 7 out of 10.

This frock, from the Hillwood Estate Museum, features very muted fabrics, and the transitional silhouette of 1909ish, as fashions moved from the sweeping skirts and drooping bodices of the first decade of the 20th century, to the raised waists and slim columnar shape of the second.

This evening dress still features the sweeping skirts, but they are considerably restrained.  The colours are the fashionable pastels of the 1900s, given a slightly off-tone twist that anticipates the wilder colours of the 1910s.  A slight hint of blousing in the bodice remains, but the waist is raised, and the sleeves hint at the newly fashionable kimono or dolman sleeves, albeit with a very uber-feminine Edwardian touch of bows.

How do you feel about the mix of styles? Is it the best of both eras?

Rate the Dress on a Scale of 1 to 10