1911 BLUE NARROW PANEL DRESS Pt 1 & Pt 2

Over a year ago, in May 2023, I started the bodice for a 1911 dress using a very lightweight blue cotton voile fabric with embroidered appliques running along both sides of the selvedge. Part 1 of this post was written then. 

PART 1

For the bodice I started with the Truly Victorian 1911 bodice, TVE 45, that I cut out at Shelley Peters' workshop. With the fabric embroidered on both sides of the selvedge, I had to cut parts of that to make the trim on the sleeves, and then sewed rows of it onto the center piece to make it look like a blouse. I added one row to the back piece for a nice visual. I was going to take the side seams in because it’s just too wide on me. I guess I overestimated my own hip size.

One of my ideas is to make the skirt with the embroidery going down one side of it (I ended up not having enough fabric to do that), and also a white lace guimpe to wear under the blouse. And I'm thinking of adding white cuffs to finish off the sleeves.

I tried it on this morning, and the shoulders were falling off my shoulders. So overnight my brain had come up with a solution: make the center panel narrower. Then I'll pin it on me to get a better fit. I can't remember what I did with the first one I made years ago. I just need to take out the stitching there, and probably then don't have to take in the sides of the blouse.

(I swear my dress form has football shoulders.) 

Next day: I've been making way too much work trying to make this 1911 bodice fit me better. At first I thought I'd just take in the sides. But as mentioned yesterday, I thought maybe just making the centerpiece narrower might work better. Except after ripping those out and pinning them on like that, the shoulders were falling even more off me. ??

Back to the drawing board this morning, and after looking at versions my friends, Mara, Sandra, and of course the creator, Heather, made, I think part of my problem is the centerpiece was too low on me. Mine was just above the bustline, and theirs are up closer to their necks. I’m short-waisted & short-shouldered, so that might be part of my problem. But I swear the previous one I made DID fit me.

So I'll be putting the centerpieces back on their original size but a bit higher, and just take in the sides as planned. These were versions of the pattern that my friends made with it. 

6-10-23  Today I basted the center panels back in full size and raised both front and back up 2”. The shoulders are still falling off me. And I’m back to the bottom being too wide which I’ll need to pin on me to take that out. Intuitively, I feel like I should make the panels narrower, at least at the top because it does flare out there.  These two photos show my first and my second fitting after narrowing the center which pulled the shoulders up higher. 

And if you're wondering why I didn't make a muslin before sewing it, I actually did with the first one years ago. I never actually wore it, just put it on to make sure it fit. I don't remember the shoulder issue though and I don't have it anymore to try it again. I even double-checked my measurements, and I used the pattern one size smaller than it indicated to use.

I did a search for this pattern to see if I could find other photos of it made up, or other people having made it. One of the blogs I follow quite a lot, "Its All Frosting", wrote about the exact same issue in her post and the solution she came up with, which was widening her panels.         ??? This is driving me CA-RAZY!

I think I’m going to go with half her idea and do the panel less angled. 

https://itsallfrosting.wordpress.com/2018/05/25/1915-picnic-dress-part-ii-bodice/                                 From her post: “I endeavored to fix things first by altering the shape of the front and back panels to be wider and less angled. I like the angled look in general, but here it was not only causing the above-mentioned fit issues, but also reducing the amount of visible space available for my lace bodice insert, which I’d intended to show off. Making the panels wider gave me more space, and making the sides straighter kept the neckline stable. I also raised both panels up several inches– the front for modesty’s sake and the back to keep the neckline where it belonged.  The photos below show the difference in the neckline shape– I’d already widened the front panel and raised it up in the left photo, but the low back still let the sides fall towards the shoulder and you can see how the bust is pulling oddly (it’s more obvious when worn– think how much worse it would be with a lower neckline!). The photo on the right shows the fixed version.” 

To give myself a break from all this angst, I started saving inspirational photos of different ways to trim the bodice. There were so many ideas that I decided to make multiple versions and specifically an all-white dress with lots of lace. 

So far these are the three fabrics I’ll be making mine with.

Look at how many ideas I found! I noticed a lot of the dresses use buttons as trim on the front, so I plan on doing the same.

I even came across this photo showing a very fancy version that could be made using this pattern. I need to keep this in mind next time I want to make something dressy for the 1912 Titanic era. 

I want to have a belt on mine so I collected some photo ideas of a belt I could make for it, which I plan to do from the dress fabric.        

 Now here I am in February 2024 and the bodice was finally finished but I had to set it aside for finishing some projects for the Port Townsend Victorian Festival fashion show in April.             See Part 2- The Skirt.

PART 2- The Skirt

In May 2024 I had my knee replacement surgery and lost two months of sewing where I couldn’t even get to my sewing room. When I was able to get there my original plan in July was to get my skirt at least started because how hard can a skirt be to sew? I wanted to wear the entire outfit to an afternoon tea on July 27, the week after Costume College.  But I didn’t get finished with everything I needed to get done for the convention on July 18, so my next idea was to make it in the four days after I got home. But exhaustion and reality got the better of me and I came up with an alternative outfit to wear to the tea.  I pulled out a black polka dotted skirt and a white blouse I’d made and added an antique Edwardian lace jacket to it, so my stress level dropped.

I had already tried making the matching narrow panel skirt that Truly Victorian has for the blouse, but I didn’t like how it looked on me. TV E30 was a bit too narrow, and the high waist wasn’t working with my short waist.

I started looking for an A-line skirt pattern so that I could get this looser look.

 

The two patterns I had, Laughing Moon 104 and Butterick 6610, both 1910-era dresses, looked like they might work. But my Laughing Moon pattern wasn’t big enough, so I went with the Butterick. And of course the photo is deceiving because the model doesn’t have hips. And I do. *More on that in the construction portion.

 

I also want to make a guimpe, or lace under-blouse for this, using Wearing History’s 1910 guimpe pattern. I’m not sure when I would get around doing that but then I heard from some friends on the east coast about a stretchy lace blouse they were all buying on Amazon, and even though its stretch, it was also fitting the larger ladies. I was told to get the largest size possible, 3X, because this is an Asian version, and they always run small. And even better, it was only $26. I think it’s well made and looks nice under my blouse. It may look a little yellowish in the photo but it’s over a yellowish dress form. It’s definitely a white-white. I’m hoping it won’t be too hot when I want to wear this but if it is, I’ll just go without.  

Amazon lacy blouse

 

 

Now onto the battle with my skirt. I was also inspired by the front panels that “It’s All About Frosting” had added to her skirt. I drafted my own pattern for that, which was just long rectangles and a sharp angle on two of them. When I pinned the front panel of my skirt to my dress from and pinned those on to see what it looked like I was very happy with them. Except when I laid the fabric out flat to make sure the front panels were straight, I suddenly had a problem. I was going to sew the sides of those panels into the side seams of the skirt. But because it was an A-line skirt, it angled out and the side panels went all catty-wampus. Because of the width of my hips, the flare starting at my hips made the bottom really wide.

 

 

I couldn’t figure out how her peach dress had its panels sewn on because there wasn’t a photo showing the back or sides. Then I started reading more on her blog, and found it was actually an overskirt that was round in the back and brought forward, when I thought they were just separate panels. So it’s not attached to the skirt.

 

https://itsallfrosting.wordpress.com/2018/05/29/1915-picnic-dress-part-iii-skirt/

I don’t have any more fabric that I can do the same with. So my alternative is to cut the skirt narrower so I can get the panels into the side seams. I’ll probably pull that Laughing Moon pattern back out and use it for the line of the skirt.  OR I may just follow her example, and let the panels hang loose which means they’ll be flapping in the wind.

And now my dress has a new “must need by” date. I’m going to wear it in a fashion show in October at the Fred Harvey Historical Museum in Perris, CA as part of an afternoon tea fundraiser. The next photos will be of when I wear it.