I read an interesting blog post from one of the blogs I follow, entitled "I'll do me, you do you". I have a post railing against the treatment of costumers by the HA crowd, and I decided last year that I'm no longer pampering to their needs.
I felt bad for this project for a long time because I started with such high hopes and then it languished almost done in the sewing room for the better part of 2018, then I finally finished it almost 12 months after I'd begun. And after all of that I still don't particularly like it.
I'm wearing my natural form era corset, and a petticoat underneath. There are 3 layers, underskirt which is made of orange polycotton, overskirt of silk, and the silk bodice.
I even took a video!
Background/inspiration
I don't know what it is but it doesn't shout natural form to me. There just isn't enough trim. The bodice is a little too plan, the lace bertha is more 1840s than natural form, and the apron just isn't apron-y enough. The only nice things about this project is the colour (still don't regret my choice) and the cut of the bodice. I think I could have left the apron out altogether now, instead just making the underskirt out of DS with the rows of pleating at the bottom because in its current state the rows of pleating are a little lost. I should have just made the train a detachable panel. It looked better in my head, or rather on this fashion plate that I based it off. |
| The one on the right |
I think I should've used more fabric for the apron to get it as tightly gathered as the one in the fashion plate, but I was cheap....oops. I was also disappointed on the rebellion front with the colour as I later found this fashion plate for a little earlier in the decade with the exact colour pallet I've used.
The bodice is actually a reproduction of this one, I think it's from The Age of Innocence film, where this gown was worn by Wynona Ryder's character (I've never seen the film so don't know her character's name).
I obviously put pleats in my bodice, whereas they didn't with the costume. But I pretty much nailed the front, sans the buttons because CBA with that.
Overall, as much as I like the natural form era, it just doesn't fit my general sewing style of minimal trim. It's a bit like Claire's red dress in Outlander. It was made of such a bright colour that Terry Dresbach (the costume designer) decided not to trim it. I prefer bold, bright colours with minimal to no trim, to trimming something up to its seamlines. This will possibly always be my downfall when it comes to costuming, which means me and the natural form era will probably never get on. I also can't see me revisiting this period for a very long time, but at least I have a few pointers on how I'd do things differently.
The Making of...
Just a slight warning folks, because this project took me so long to complete, this post is very, very long.It started with fabric. I have been at least 95% accurate regarding natural fibres since I began my costuming journey, even if they are expensive. I must admit, I used cotton for last year's ball because I wasn't willing to fork out the hundreds of pounds on another silk dress, but I was disappointed with it because I knew it wasn't worth much, therefore I didn't try. I vowed that 2018 would be different. However, for the natural form era, the few repros I've seen use Duchess satin (DS), and have you seen the price per metre of 100% silk DS? The most expensive I've seen is over £100 p/m, and one of the top suppliers of the fabric in this country (UK) was charging £79 p/m. To make a Victorian gown, you need quite a few metres, making the price shoot up for the natural form era. Sorry, not sorry, but I'm not paying that amount of money for a dress that's getting worn once.
So, I found the cheapest DS I could find, and obviously not in the colour I wanted, instead, as a f**k you, I bought as little metres as I could of the most garish and non-elegant colour ever. Bright orange.
I was rewarded for my rebellion. Customer services emailed me a day after I placed an order for 4 metres, stating they only had it in 2 pieces, one of 2m, and the other of 2.8m. They'd send me both if I wished, but still only charge me for the 4m. Score! Although a few weeks later I did stumble across something that took a tiny amount of joy out of this bargain, but I'll get to that. I, however, was very aware that there were no mess ups permitted from that point on because there was no more of the silk left, however, that remedied itself quite quickly.
I had a design in mind for the dress, which involved my first foray into pleating. There seem to be about three staple ways to do these. One is "divide and conquer", or measuring and pinning by hand, the other is literally using a knife or fork to make the pleats, and the third is, of course, a pleating board. I won't go into detail about why I didn't chose the other methods, but I ended up doing all my pleated ruffles with a cut out mini smartie packet. Resourcefulness is my new sewing mantra.
In my laziness I didn't Google how to work out how many metres you'd need to cut to get the pleated length long enough for what you wanted, so I did an experiment. I got a scrap of cotton, measured it, then pleated it into 1" pleats (I could have done the arithmetic, but I'm a visual learner). I have now proved to myself that the 3 times the length is, in fact, true.
Aware that I only had 4.8 metres, I hesitated cutting it, and honestly when I did, wished I had used taffeta. I forgot one important thing about DS; it curls like an absolute bitch. There aren't enough non-sweary words in the English or Scots vocabulary that can fully express how much it curled. From a 5 inch width strip of DS, I had a tube of it instead.
However, I'm getting ahead of myself. The base of the underskirt isn't silk, it's equally bright orange cotton. Why? Well, because I haven't been able to grow my money tree yet, and this is actually HA, but that's coincidental. Because fabric was so expensive, especially silk, seamstresses used different fabric on base layers up until the point they would be seen. There's a really good example floating around pinterest, a grey 1880s day ensemble. the underskirt has three panels of different fabric, with the silk velvet only at the hem.
Another technique I wanted to try was flatlining skirt panels. I didn't intend on it, because that's another amount of fabric, but since the underskirt was going to be bottom/hem heavy, I thought flatlining it would give it more body. Still undecided as to whether it made a lot of difference, apart from the weight aspect.
Instead of constructing the whole skirt, then hemming and waistband-ing it, I did things a bit weirdly. The main reason was that I drafted the skirt pattern myself, from a book. Not my first foray, but certainly with respects to skirts (all I did before this was stays). Unlike the 3 panel petticoat (CB, CF, and SF), I decided to use 4 panels for the outer layer (CF, SF, SB, CB) taken precisely from the book. I flatlined all panels, then constructed the 3 front panels, leaving the CB unattached. Why? So I could mount the pleated ruffle to the front of the skirt.
Ruffles, and a lot of skirt decoration in this period don't go all of the way around, especially if there's an overskirt covering them. My overskirt will start to cover the hem of the underskirt at roughly the side, making it pointless to ruffle the hem all the way around. I also have an awful track record of putting ruffles in straight. I swear the ones I've done up until now have been pure luck. I also wanted to face the hem (I know, it still seems a little OTP), which I find notoriously difficult, so to make life easier I did that separately for both panels, and then attached them when mostly everything was done. It was a lot easier.
I only attached one pleated ruffle to the hem before finishing construction, mostly because I was waiting for another fabric to arrive. No, not silk, but polyester! I truly think this is the point when this gown truly became a f**k you gown. The colour scheme for this dress was always orange and black, very halloween, but I always do white and wanted a change this year. Originally, there were going to be 2 ruffles at the hem, but I was afraid I wouldn't have enough orange silk left if I did that.
A solution was to have the second in another colour, mainly black. I didn't want to fork out more money for DS in black, and so I ordered poly instead because it was cheaper, and for one ruffle on the bottom of the gown, I don't care. Whilst looking for black DS on ebay, I came across the exact silk I was using.
From the company I ordered mine from, there were many equally offensive shades, green, bright blue, red, etc, and I chose orange because I found it the prettiest, and didn't want another red dress. The seller on ebay wasn't the one I'd originally bought the silk from, and they had a 5m length of it, for cheaper than my supplier had been selling 1m! So that went in my basket, along with 4m of the horrid green that was nearly half of the price of 1m. After looking further at this seller, I realised that orange and green must be unwanted colours, hence the low price, because both the red and pink were far more expensive. Don't ask me what I'll ever use the green for, but that's what a stash is for, right? I did find it annoying that 2 weeks after I'd paid full price for 4m of the orange, worrying if it would be enough, that i found 5m ridiculously cheap on ebay. That's life, though, I suppose.
The second issue came with the overskirt. I had spent a good while thinking about the logistical design of the overskirt because it wasn't typical. I had decided last year that I was going all out with this dress, and that bled into design. The overskirt would be of black silk Georgette, apron fronted, and the CB panel would be DS in orange. They wouldn't, however, be attached to one another. If I'm not making any sense, I don't blame you. I based the skirts from these fashion plates, taking the things i liked about both of them and merging them into one design.
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The CB panel would be free hanging, attached to the same waistband as the apron front and silk sides. They would be tied together, to prevent the CB panel from gaping and showing the cotton underskirt beneath.
My first semi-unforseen problem involved the Georgette. I used a Truly Victorian pattern for the apron overskirt, and ignored the recommendation that you use a study-ish fabric. For those of you who have ever used silk Georgette, it is not sturdy in any way, shape, or form. it is the complete opposite. Rather than pleat the sides, I gathered them to create the apron front, however the CF of the panel dropped, understandably. There's not enough body to hold the shape of the gathers from one side seam to another, so the CF touched the floor whilst the side seams were gathered. One good thing was that the apron overskirt consisted of 2 panels, a CF and a SF. I had done french seams because Georgette frays badly, and decided to do another row of gathering stitches at the SF seam in the hopes that would maybe solve the problem.
It did, but not quite the way I was hoping. It turned into a double-apron overskirt in that there was a CF panel apron, and then SF apron panels. Honestly, I quite liked it. It was unique, and I liked the floofy floatiness it gave the side panels. The other option was to buy black silk organza, which may hold the shape better, but that would involve forking out more money during a month where I felt like my entire expenses had been on fabric for the stash. I decided to keep the Georgette solely because of the unique way it now looked, and continued on with the design.
I attached it to the DS side panels I' designed myself, and then came the monster that was the train. I decided to experiment with this. Because I wanted a long train on this one, it meant I would have to make a Bayaleuse, or a dust ruffle, and also because the silk is quite thin, I flatlined the back panel in white cotton poplin, like I had done with the underskirt. However, I baglined it, in that right sides together, I stitched around the sides, and then flipped it the right way. I've always had issued with this way because the lining always tends to peek out over the top of the fashion fabric, and that's ok if they're the same colour, but not so if they're not. I thought, if the lining was slightly smaller than the fashion fabric, then surely this wouldn't be a problem? So I did that, and thought it worked really well, until I put everything together and started walking around, and spotted the edge of the bright white cotton peeking out from underneath the silk at the hem. Not at the sides, at least. I know how i was supposed to do it, with a method that ensures you can never see the lining, but that would have involved a lot of hand sewing, and CBA.
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| It's kind of hard to miss peeking out at the hem |
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| Looks perfect with that lining hidden |
I got the pattern from the bodice from the same as the skirt, Fashions of the Gilded Age, which focuses on the natural form era. It took 4 mock-ups before I was satisfied. Then I constructed the bodice that weekend and by the end almost had it complete. I never drafted sleeves, because I wanted them to be straight rather than poufed, and it needed hemmed and decorated.
The one minor problem was the fit. I had to take one of the side seams in a little weirdly because it was bubbling, and over all of the skirts the entire thing became a bit snug. It went from having a 3/4 inch overlap at CF to a meagre 1/2". I was still undecided on what closure to do at CF, but with so little an overlap that put functional buttons out of the picture, not that I was champing at the bit to do them again. My mind leaned towards hooks and eyes, possibly with fake buttons, but I have actually never learned a hard and fast rule for doing openings. I just fit bodices so there's some kind of overlap, and then figure it out from there.
I had the same issues last year in that the bodice was a bit too snug, however I hadn't finished the inside seams, and the fabric was forgiving, so I just took out the side seams. However, DS is not forgiving to the picker, and I'd already sewed on boning channels and stitched the seam allowances down, so I was reluctant to take any of the seams out.
There are two things I began to love about this ensemble. One is the colour, which really started coming to life when I made the overskirt and the bodice. Two is the back. It's my first time working with back pleats, and I'm so happy how they turned out.
Unfortunately, I ended up taking the bustle pad off, and still had a massive arse; turns out I just have a large backside that doesn't need help. The whole thing looked more like first bustle era than natural form. The fact that I didn't make a cuirasse bodice also didn't help. I don't know what happened. The fact that I flatlined the skirt meant that it held its shape well, and all the pleating at the back from three layers of skirts made it so that I had a poufey backside. The look improved after removing the bustle pad, but this style is still more reminiscent of 1876-1878, the first years of natural form, rather than the later years when the skirts were very close fitting. To be honest, I prefer the first years anyway, so no love lost there.
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| The double apron! |
The first thing to come off was that front panel of silk georgette. I bought silk organza instead and it actually had the opposite problem, it had too little apron, but was still better than the above.
I fixed the front closure by moving the hook and eye tape, then stitched it to the edges. Time was of the essence at this point because the longer it dragged on the less likely I was to finish it this year. The sleeves were drafted (badly) and sewn in, then the lace I bought as the bertha was sewn on to finish the upper neckline. It was so long it made me wonder why I went to the trouble of the sleeves when you can't actually tell there are any.
After 9 months of being thrown around the sewing room the bows I hadn't stitched into the over-skirt were lost, and I couldn't find the black duchess satin anywhere, so 2 bows are actually from the remnants of the organza.
I pleated one more row of orange DS for the underskirt and sewed that on, and bam! Done!
The last thing to do, and quite a rare thing TBH, was to sew hooks and bars to each of the skirts, and I was done.....except not quite. I still needed to hem the organza apron.....I think we all know that unless I'm going somewhere in this gown that isn't my back garden to take pics, that hem is going to stay unfinished.
