SHANNON'Sdresses

REGENCYdress

2003

This is the second dress I ever made. I caught the sewing bug in the holidays between the end of school and the beginning of university, and this is one of the things I came up with. We had studied the BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice for 7th form English, and I was instantly inspired by the costumes. This dress isn't based on any particular costume in that movie however, it is just made in the regency style out of what I had lying around at the time. Namely, a bed sheet and an old skirt. But oh my lord how it was hard to make the pattern. I didn't want to go out and buy something, I wanted to make it myself, so through trial and error, making shapes based on clothes I already had, I came up with a pattern that fitted me pretty well.

The bodice is made out of a sheer fabric I took off a skirt, so it is lined with a light cotton. To make it more interesting I gathered the front section of the bodice, as you might see in many of Elizabeth Bennett's costumes. The sleeves didn't come out quite as poofy as I had intended, but they still look fine, I think I enlisted the help of the internet a little to come up with the pattern for the poofyness, I can't quite remember. The skirt is made up of two layers of light cotton - of which I had to avoid the places where it was quite worn - this is the old sheet. But you can't really tell unless you're up quite close, so that's fine by me. I pleated the back of the skirt to make it fuller, and also to try and hide the zip - by this stage I hadn't mastered the art of invisible-zips. Still don't think I have actually. But anyway, that also didn't quite work. But, I am quite proud of this dress. It was a first attempt at pattern-making, made out of scraps of fabric, and it fit me well. In fact I think it fits me better today than it did when I was 18. Or maybe it just seems more comfortable compared to all the other uncomfortable costumes I've made since then.

I also made a spencer jacket to go with it, as per the spencer jackets you'll see in Pride and Prejudice. Well I didn't really make it, I just altered an old jumper that was again just lying around - cut it to an empire line, put a new button on, and gathered the back to make it tight-fitting. You'll find a picture of this in the thumbnails below.