The Beginnings of the Dress Itself

 I was leaning toward a day dress style, something more practical, but... plans changed :) When I made my first muslin of the pattern, I knew it would be big and need adjusting, but it was HUGE!! Like, the entire bodice. A friend helped me to fit, and essentially redesign it, and I sewed up a second version. (I never could have done it alone!) This one fit much better, but still needed some tweaking. She helped me again, and here is #2, showing pinned, cut, taped and drawn changes. (You should have seen #1 before I took it apart…)

I made #3 from #2, just to double-check that those changes worked, and that I didn’t make a mistake while transferring it to paper.  It still wasn’t perfect, but the fixes were so simple that I’m moving on to the fabric now! Here is the last mock-up with the hoop and a petticoat. I’m starting to see it come together, and can’t wait to see it in color : )

The petticoat is made from the directions on Elizabeth Stewart Clark's CW sewing website, and was wonderfully simple. If you don't mind a little math. A very little. The best part is the cartridge pleats! (Well, technically these may not be cartridge pleats.) See, a petticoat needs to condense an average of 175” of fabric into a waistband! Regular gathering won't do the job, and regular pleating makes the skirt lay flat, instead of 'poofing' out from the waist like you want a skirt from this era to do. So we have a combination.

To make the cartridge pleats, you 'gather' the fabric with two rows of 1/8” running stitches. The trick is that the two rows must line up as closely as possible (with the stitches going behind and in front of the fabric at the same time) so that when the gathers are pulled up, they actually form teeny tiny accordion-like pleats. Very fun.

1/16" pleats!

Technical note: When referring to petticoats, the term stroked gathers is used more often. That term refers to using a needle to smooth out the ‘dips’ of the gathers. For the petticoat, the gathering stitching was done at the raw edge of the fabric, and then encased in the waistband. For cartridge pleats, or gauging, (used on dresses) the raw edge is usually folded over to the inside, and the stitching goes through two layers. The folded/pleated edge is then whipped to the waistband or bodice. I still don't know why they're called different names, when the difference is the treatment of the upper edge, so don't quote me.