A LOST BLOG POST: 1873 PINK STRIPED SEASIDE DRESS

A long long time ago, I was going to make a pink seaside dress to wear to the Port Townsend Victorian Festival in March of 2020. Due to the Covid Pandemic, that event never happened. So, I thought I would just still make it and have it ready to wear, since some of us who do the fashion show there were talking about just getting together there and strolling around town in seaside dresses, since the weather would be warmer. Except the Lockdown continued longer than any of us thought it would. But I still started it in April that year in the hopes that it would be ready just in case. 

This is the extant dress I wanted to copy. I liked the combination of the striped top over a floral print skirt. In the end I picked a white with pink polka dots for my skirt, and decided to keep the sleeves in the striped fabric too, putting the polka dot fabric as the cuff trims. I loved the pink strips of ribbon around the bottom of the skirt too.

I also came across this version from the Manchester Art Gallery, and really liked the lace at the collar and cuffs. So, that’s an idea. And I liked the dark belt.

I purchased this pattern from Black Snail Patterns on Etsy, #0116, for an 1870s Seaside Costume, that looked really similar to it. She has some really nice patterns for styles you don’t often see. She’s in Germany so I ordered the downloaded digital pattern. I decided to just print out the bodice with apron, and use Truly Victorian #201 for the skirt pattern so I didn’t use a ton of paper for it.

In April of 2020, I sewed up my skirt. 

I made the muslin for my bodice, but then had to wait for the pink striped fabric I found online to be shipped to me. As with everything else we were trying to buy during the Pandemic, supplies were limited or sold out, and waits were very long. So, it got shoved to a corner. As the year and a half went by, it just gathered dust but I still kept thinking about it.

ZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz……….

In January of 2021 I was starting to feel like sewing again. I played with a few other outfits and ideas, and worked on bits and pieces. Then I caught Covid, and everything went down the drain. It took me 3 months to get any energy or even enthusiasm to sew again. Once again, I played with a few dresses, and discovered I have a habit of either making 2-3 of the same pattern at a time, or work on one dress, set it aside, then go work on another. I finally had an a-hah moment when I realized I needed to quit fighting that and go with it, because nothing was getting done otherwise. So, one day I worked on an 1830s dress for about a week. It got close enough that I could put it on my dress form to look at it. I had another fabric I was going to cut out of the same pattern but I wanted to work out how to do the gathers in the front of the bodice since I had converted it to a front closure. And it sat there.

A month later, I felt some more enthusiasm for that long-lost pink striped seaside dress. BTW, the fabric had arrived about a year ago for that. I pulled out the fitting muslin, and it still fit after losing weight from Covid, so I cut it out. The bodice went together fairly quickly, as I’m familiar with the construction on Truly Victorian’s #410 1870s polonaise. But I stalled when I couldn’t figure out how to construct the back apron of it. And that’s as far as I got with it after I had to travel out of state for a week.

In case you make this pattern, make this correction on the sleeve piece. It said Cut 2/ x 2. But its easier if you just say CUT 4 of fabric. The front and back of the sleeve are the same. 

A week after we came back home, there was a sewing workshop scheduled and I thought this would be a good time to take this and another 1870s polonaise I had been working on, to sew on for the day. My 2^nd one is a blue and white striped fabric (using the TV #410 pattern) that will go over either a solid white skirt with blue trim, and for a patriot outfit, over a red with white polka dots skirt.

At the workshop I finished up the construction of the blue Truly Victorian one, and then started on the Black Snail one. Except the back apron panel was different than TV’s pattern, and there was no mention of how to sew the two gore panels or where to attach them in the directions.

The large back panel was fairly obvious what to do with it, as the instructions mentioned pleating it to the center back. Although from seeing others version of it, I think they’re too tightly pleated into such a small area in the back, and I want to try spreading it out a little more. The photo on the pattern of the back was confusing too. It looked like there was a peplum coming down from the waist, but mine didn’t have that. The gore panels I had were about 25” long, much long than this. This was my drawing of the gore panels.

There weren’t any line drawings in the pattern instructions so I didn’t know what got sewed to what, and no markings on the pattern pieces either. Looking at the picture of the back, it looks like the two long edges of the gore are sewn in the center, so that was a start. But what to do with the smaller ones, and where do they attach? And what gets sewn to the side of the front apron panel?

After racking my brain for a day, I went to the Black Snail pattern Sewists group on Facebook and asked if anyone had a photo of the back of their dress where it wasn’t bustled up so I could see the construction. Everyone showed me bustled ones. Finally, after explaining back and forth with one lady what my problem was, she took a photo of the pattern pieces laid out how she sewed them. That finally turned on the light bulb!

I began constructing the back and decided I would spread out the pleating across the entire back, and not just in the center. You know that photo where it looks like it has a peplum? That’s actually the center back piece pleated and then pulled up under so it LOOKS like a peplum. Except the ones I saw others make just look bunched up in the middle. Later I also found out the pattern designer had uploaded a file awhile ago with some additions to the instructions. So now that short paragraph looked like this with more sentences added.

After getting that figured out, I added my sleeves to the bodice and put it on my dress form. I kept fiddling with it, but wasn’t happy. It looked like a maternity dress! What the heck? Then I realized I didn’t sew the front darts in. Duh. In the 2^nd picture I just pinned it in a bit and it improved the shape a lot but more is needed.

ALL THAT WAS FROM JULY 2021, and I had to delay working on it due to multiple trips to WA to clear my Mom’s house out to move her down closer to us in CA, and put her house on the market, which it sold within a week. During all that time my brain didn’t even think about sewing. There was just so much to do and keep track of, so there was no room in there for creativity.

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Now here we are in March 2023, and I am finally getting back to finishing it because I’m going to wear it at the end of April in Port Townsend, WA, for the Victorian Festival fashion show.

Just a few updates: today I bought some ribbon to sew around the skirt hem, and ordered some buttons on etsy to use on the bodice. I also bought a brass buckle that I may use for a pink ribbon belt on it. On Friday, I’m going to see how the bodice fits me at a sewing workshop and the next blog will most likely be after that fashion show with a completed outfit, and being worn by me.

I decided I'd add some photos of my almost completed dress to this blog. I'm still on the hunt for a little bit lighter color on the grosgrain belt but still want it to stand out. And the ribbons on the skirt actually look better now since I ironed them.