There’s always something going on at the Atelier and December is no exception. 🙂 Drawing once again on the Mid-Bustle Era, another day dress design is in the works. One of my first steps was to determine what sort of a dress it would be- in this case, a day dress, or more precisely, a visiting dress. At the same time, I had to determine my color palette. After some thought (and looking at the vegetation in our back yard), I decided that it might be interesting work with the color green and in particular, olive. After some more thought, I worked out a preliminary color palette:

Of course, this is not set in stone, but rather, it’s just a starting place…

OK, at this point you’re probably wondering about the actual dress design…after all, don’t we need that in order to guide what fabrics we’re going to need? Well, yes…here’s what I have  mind for the moment, starting with this inspiration from an 1879 fashion plate:

However, there’s going to be some details that I’m looking at changing, possibly on the bodice front and possibly the sleeves:

Now that we’ve established the general style idea, here’s some of the fabric I sourced:

Essentially, I’m looking at two silks in olive, one striped and one solid. I bought 10 yards of the striped and 5 yards of the solid. This should cover the majority of the dress although there’s a little more to do in this area. This is just the start on what should be an interesting and productive project. Stay tuned for more! 🙂