SHANNON'Sdresses

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Making ofGeorgian dress

This Simplicity pattern #4092 looked a lot like something I've had in mind for ages that I've been wanting to make. Kind of a mix between a Renaissance style dress I found on a costuming website, a costume from the film Never Been Kissed, and Elizabeth Swann's gold dress from Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl. My concept sketch is on the right.

The bodice at least is already a little different from my drawing - but I'll explain all the details in the construction diary below.

The bodice for this dress provided a good test run for my new sewing machine. And believe me, it purrs like a kitten. Anyway, I decided to ditch the narrower open bodice with lacing in favour of simply following the pattern as is. I'd rather get a good idea of how this pattern works before I modify it, which I may still do later. Holding it up against me, I think it's actually a little small. I probably needed to cut a size 10, not a size 8. But I'll just either add some extra panels to the back or replace the bodice back with larger pieces, I'll figure that out later.

Here is a picture of the bodice with the skirt and arms attached. It looks a bit haggard and misshapen here but that's because there's no boning in it yet. Since this picture was taken I have replaced the dark burgandy coloured front insert because I messed it up a little, but it looks a heap better now. I was right, the back panels don't quite match up when i put it on, but to fix that I'll just use lacing to close it up as much as possible, and sew in a modesty panel behind it. I would add extra panels to the back, but I'd rather see how the original pattern actually fits on me first before I go changing it. I don't mind if it looks a little off.

This is a detail picture of the boning inside the front panel. There are three longer pieces of boning and two shorter to make the bottom point of the panel nice and stiff. In the end this didn't really work as well as I wanted it to, so I cheated and glued/sewed a piece of cardboard over the top, to stiffen it and give it a really nice shape.

The lining I made for the bodice incorporates the boning for the rest of the panels. As you might be able to tell from the picture, I sewed boning onto one piece of fabric, then sewed this onto another piece of fabric with the boning inbetween, as you would do with a corset. This makes it nice and stiff and won't let the fabric of the lining buckle, because of it's two layers of fabric. This will then get sewn to the neckline of the bodice, attached down the seams (somehow) and handsewn to the bottom.

Here is a picture showing the lining sewn to the neckline of the bodice. I will later iron that into place and slip-stitch it to the inside seam. By this stage I have also attached the sleeve flounces.

Part of the reason I decided to embroider a design down the skirt and the up the bodice was to help hide a small stain on one of the bodice panels that I didn't notice in the light of my lamp late at night, but noticed the next day in daylight when I'd sewn it up too much for it to be worth redoing. But in the end the design I had in mind fit in very well with the design of the dress anyway. The picture shows the stencil I made and the start of the actual embroidery on the skirt. The design I chose was the design I used for the neckline of Eowyn's White Wool dress, which I gratefully got off the Alleycatscratch 'Eowyn's White Wool Gown' page. They actually featured my own embroidery on the page after that, which I was quite pleasantly surprised to discover.

This shows the lining fully attached to the bodice, and the eyelets I've attached down the centre back.

Here is the almost finished dress, with attached lining, eyelets down the back, secured sleeve lining, completed embroidery, and the skirt half-hemmed. Now all I have to do is finish hemming the skirt, decide whether to play with the sleeve flounces or not, add a modesty panel behind the lacing, and make up the underskirt (which at the moment is proving a hassle as it is so big that I don't actually have enough of the same kind of fabric that the pattern demands - so the front insert is going to be slightly different from the rest.) But anyway, excitement! The next update will probably be a photo shoot of the completed dress. Let's hope I can breathe in it.

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