gallery

notes

pattern:
pattern draped by me, based on S&S Elegant Lady lining pattern

fabric & notions:
linen, cotton (lining)

general notes:
Sometimes my best work comes from my worst costuming disaters. After another Regency dress I was working on was messed up beyond salvation, and after my subsequent meltdown over the situation, I had a bit of a brain wave.

Almost a year before I had started a Lizzie (1996 P&P) inspired sort of fan-front dress. I did a few toiles but couldn't get it to work the way I wanted so I abandoned the project and moved on to other things. My brain wave was to figure out not only a better base pattern to start from but also how to better achieve the sort of slight fan front gathers I wanted.

So I pulled out my bodiced petticoat, made from the lining pattern from the S&S Elegant Lady pattern. I tried it on, noting the changes that would need to be made to create my "Lizzie dress".

I traced a pattern off the old bodice, cut up a toile and tried it on. Pretty good. My ideas for the shaping of the fan front worked much better than the ones last time. A couple of tweaks, a new master pattern tracing and I had a new day dress to work with. The pics above show the original bodice and the finial master pattern I came up with on top of it so you can see the difference.

construction:
My dress was moving along swimmingly until I got to the sleeves. I had neglected to toile the sleeves, having been lulled into a false sense of security but the ease of fitting the sleeves on the disaster dress. I thought, "No big, I'll just whip up a sleeve toile once the dress is made, tweak the little bit that needs to be tweaked and carry on". Um no. I forgot that sleeves play dirty! Jerks.

So I had to cut a new toile and completely refit the sleeves. Thanks to my Mom's help it wasen't too bad. Don't know how I would have done it without her!

I'm still not quite sure how it happened but my linen dress turned out wonderfully. I'm in shock about it really. Just like some costumes just don't want to be made, some actually do!


more construction pics: