I love this little early 1870s lady, she has a skirt, an apron, and a pereline in this dress suite. Notice the lack of trim, it’s all drawn thread work from the original silk. This will be fun to draft a pattern from.
Dress Designs
Designing For The 80s – Part 2
In Part 1, we discussed design approaches for early 1880s fashion, with a dash of late 1870s thrown in. In contrast with the early 1870s, the emphasis was on the vertical rather than horizontal with minimal bustling and trains. Today we move forward into the mid-1880s when the bustle seemingly returned with a vengeance.
Works In Progress
It’s been a year and I still haven’t altered this old thing…oh well. Life got busy. I’ll just shelf the bodice and start from scratch. Some day.
Interior Finishing
In the course of sorting out some period garments for Tombstone, we happened across one of the bodices in our collection and after looking at it, it struck me that this demonstrates some of the key elements in period seam finishing. First, the seam allowances have been finished off with an overcast stitch. Also, note the use of boning to add structure to the bodice- this didn’t replace the corset but rather aided in helping to define the bodice shape.
Also, we want to note that this bodice employs flat-lining- this is where a reinforcing piece of fabric is attached to the interior side of the fashion fabric to add stability. This is especially useful when dealing with lighter fabrics and especially silks (polished cotton was frequently used).
Finally, we note that hooks and eyes are used, all the hooks one side, the eyes on the other. You will see an alternating pattern with some bodices but either way is good and both were used.
And Finishing Off The Skirt…
Fun fact: there’s no good way to level all of these hem layers except to sit on the floor and pin, pin, pin. Yay. Worth it, though.