All posts tagged: Ninon’s dress

Ninon’s dress: boning the bodice

Published by The Dreamstress

Making a mid 17th century dress is interesting – the bodice is fully boned, so it’s basically a corset with sleeves.  I guess it saves making a corset to go under the outfit 😀 Anyway, this means I had to make an inner boning layer, and figure out a boning pattern to present the right 17th century torso silhouette. For my inner boning layers, I used a fairly rough unbleached linen that I found 4 metres of at an op shop for $5.  This really has been a fortunate dress! For boning, I’m using 3/8″ black plastic cable ties.  Not exactly whalebone, but no-one is offering me a piece of the poor whale that beached itself locally over the weekend (not that I’m really sure I’d take it if they did! And do humpback whales even have the right kind of baleen for boning?) I started researching my boning patterns using two sources: the German bodice, and Norah Waughs 1660s jacket bodice.  Unfortunately, neither was a completely satisfactory guide.   The German bodice pattern was …

Ninon’s dress: draping and fitting the bodice

Published by The Dreamstress

I used three main sources to drape and bone the under-bodice for my 1660’s gown: the patterns for the 1660’s bodice in the downloadable book on 17th fashion (in German, which I don’t read, but ‘pattern’ is a universal language!), Janet Arnold’s 1660 bodice pattern, and the under-bodice pattern in Corsets and Crinolines. The German bodice was the most helpful, as it is almost exactly like the bodice I want to make, and it has the boning patterns.  If you do download the book for yourself, I believe the pattern is on page 232. Janet Arnold’s pattern was also helpful in the initial drafting, because her scale is so easy to use. Unfortunately, it’s only easy in some ways – Arnold notes that the bodice pattern drapes over a fully boned foundation, but doesn’t provide a boning layout or tell you if the under-bodice has the same seams as the over bodice.  Grrrr! Anyway, using a combination of Arnold and the German pattern, I draped a pattern.  I was very daring and did it straight …

Ninon’s dress: the skirt

Published by The Dreamstress

Unlike most seamstresses, I like to make the skirts of my ensembles before I make the bodices. My skirt is 150″ wide. My research revealed that anything from 115″ to 150″ is period accurate, but I really feel that I needed to size-up, as modern bodies are bigger than 17th c bodies. Hunnissett recommends 140″, but I wanted my dress to be quite sumptuous, and even with a boned bodice, my waist is bigger than the average 1950s actress she was writing for! I thought about having a train for the skirt, as many portraits show them, and there is a lot of information available on the sumptuary laws for trains in 17th c France. As Ninon wasn’t nobility, her legal train allowance would have been relatively short in any case. However, this turned out to be irrelevant as I’m a little tight on material, and want to be able to dance in the dress, so I’m skipping the train. My research suggested that even ladies of leisure only wore trains for the most formal …