The $7.32 Regency Dress

Each of the girls are getting a new dress this spring: Maggie got 2 1860s dresses, Abby got a late 1830s dress, Elisabethe's turn was skipped because her late 1840s pattern isn't ready yet so we jumped to Rebekah's turn. I wanted to do something different, the same old era gets tedious dress after dress, so I decided to give the Regency Era a go.

I looked at fashion plates and consulted Costume In Detail and Nineteenth Century Fashion In Detail and finally decided to make a drawstring, lightly gathered neckline and smooth elbow length sleeves. I didn't want to make a plain white gown, though they are far and away the most common kind to find examples of. I ended up finding a fabric at Wal-Mart with a white ground and blue figures that was $2/yard. I did find quite a few original printed dresses and genre paintings of printed dresses, among them were these:

 

Portrait of Jane Ann Campbell 1820

 

Girl's Dress 1815

 

14 year old Mary Ann Gale painted in 1815

 

Cotton dress 1805-1810

 

I took Rebekah's regular dress pattern and made it up in scrap fabric and then drew the new, further back shoulder seams in magic marker. Then I drew and redrew the slanting back seams to get the placement and angle right. I'm used to the curving back seams that were popular in the 1860s, whereas Regency seams are more of a straight line. Then I tweaked the armscye, cutting it in deeply at the back to give the illusion of a "small back" that was popular in this era. I cut the bodice apart on the marker lines and redrew the pattern with it, adding seam allowances.

When making up the dress I lined the bodice in a light weight cotton and piped the back seams. There is a casing at the neckline with a tiny 1/8" twill tape drawstring and self fabric buttons closing the rest of the back.

 

The sleeves were the hardest thing to draft of anything I've ever tried. I drafted and tried half a dozen incarnations of this sleeve before getting even remotely close. I looked at my Patterns Of Fashion book, but it wasn't very helpful. In the end I traced the whole sleeve opening shape by laying the dress flat and tracing it onto paper. I then stared at that for about five minutes thinking, "well that was brilliant, what do I do now?" And then a little line here, a little curve there and I came up with something passable, though not perfect. They are elbow length sleeves with the small amount of excess held in with 2 pleats and a self fabric button as trim.

The skirt is smooth across the front and full at the back, slightly gored and just above ankle length. The back skirt opening is made from a solid length of fabric, sliced open about 5" and turned under in a tiny hem. This was nice because then I didn't have to sweat matching the print like I would have if the skirt back was 2 pieces seamed up.

She really seems to like it.  :)  She has a bonnet to go with it which is as of yet untrimmed, hence no pictures, but I'm working on it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



 

 

 

 

Late 1830s Dress



Abigail's late 1830s dress is finally finished enough to get pictures of and blog about. Of all the historic eras that I've experimented sewing clothing for, the 1830s are by far my favorite. I love the wide necklines and gigot sleeves, it an aesthetic that I appreciate. Before the gigot sleeves were replaced by the slim sleeves of the 1840s, the gigot for a short time was banded or otherwise reduced at the bicep and flared out around the elbow. It doesn't seem like it's a very popular style to reproduce though, for whatever reason. I loosely based her dress on the 2 girls' dresses pictured in William Sidney Mount's 1840 painting The Blackberry Girls.



The
Blackberry Girls

I found this fabric at Wal-Mart for $2.50/yard and I squeaked it out of 3 yards. Romantic Era dresses really eat up the yardage.

The fabric is pleated at the bicep and then attached to the lower sleeve. There is self fabric piping at the armscye, between the upper and lower sleeves, at the wrist, binding the bertha collar and at the neckline. The pleats in the bodice are stitched in before the bodice is cut out, I don't know if that's a period technique or not.  :)

Instead of a ruffle I trimmed the collar with 100% cotton twill tape that I dyed dark brown. This is my first attempt at a bertha collar and I really like the way it turned out, it's a nice finishing touch.

There is a slim fitted undersleeve, cut on the bias, that the fashion fabric is tacked onto to give the pouf at the elbow. Without the undersleeve the pouf would fall down the arm and drag off the hand. Not the fashionable look we're shooting for. 

Godey's Ladies Book February 1838