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. 

THE LITTLE BLUE DRESS THAT TRIED

I’m shocked that I haven’t written a blog post since last Christmas. I partly have an excuse for not sewing because I came down with the “mega-cold” that was going around just before New Year’s Day. It literally knocked me off my feet for the whole month of January, but then the cold continued until the end of February. So, I blame that for doing nothing. But then I’ve read other costumers haven’t been posting much lately, so maybe it’s not as bad as I think.

I had to go back through my blogs to find when I even started thinking about making a late 1880s dress in blue plaid. It was last September 2022, and the first thing I did was cut it out. The dress I wanted to make was this green plaid 1880’s version of the polonaise dress. Many people are familiar with the Truly Victorian pattern for the 1873 polonaise, and then I found a pattern of an 1888 version. I’m not able to grade these up so I ended up using Truly Victorian’s pattern #410 for it and lucky for me, it has a closed neck version.  You wouldn’t know it from looking at the cover, but its on the pattern pieces themselves. I also needed a pattern piece for straight sleeves. 

In December, I cut out all the pattern pieces from the 14 yd bolt of blue plaid acetate taffeta fabric I had, and set myself a goal of finishing it for the fashion show at the Riverside (CA) Dickens Festival fashion show on February 25. I got quite a bit of the main bodies and skirt sewn together, but lagged on making all those ruffles. It took forever but I finally made enough to at least have one row around the bottom of my skirt. I intentionally cut that fabric off grain so it would contrast with the grain line of the skirt fabric. I have plenty of fabric left, and who knows, maybe someday I make one or two more rows. (We’ll see if that ever happens).

There was a sewing workshop scheduled in January and I planned on getting a final fitting done on me for it so I could do the buttonholes & buttons, and also pin in the altered sleeve pattern I’d come up with. Due to my large upper arms, I need to increase the size of any pattern I use for the sleeves, but can’t pin it on myself to fit them. Unfortunately, two days before New Year’s, I caught the mega- cold my husband had, and was down for the count. I mean down in bed for 5 days straight, then got a sinus infection. I didn’t even have the energy to get out of bed to go to Urgent Care for some antibiotics. And it would still be a week later, towards the end of the month that I did go out for that. I also had to take Chloe to the vet for antibiotics for her sinus infection. Yep, we’re a pair. This cold also threw me back into my Long Covid extreme fatigue, and that took a couple more weeks to finally ease up. So, obviously I never made it to the sewing workshop. I doubt I could even have driven the 1-1/2 hrs. to get there.

Towards the end of January, I had a couple days where I started getting some energy back, and was able to sew some black velvet ribbon trim on my dress and skirt. I pinned it around the edges of the bodice and along the bottom of its skirt, and then along the top of the ruffles on the underskirt. I saw the plain sleeves needed some bling, so I sewed a band of bias trim of the blue fabric around the cuffs, and sewed more ribbon around it. My machine didn’t like sewing through the velvet ribbon so I hand-sewed it all on. But this gave me something to do while I was recovering.

I’m well known for finally sewing my sleeves onto my dresses at the completion of it. Since I knew I was running out of time for the fashion show, I had to sew them in as is, but do it so I could take in the seams where needed once I was able to get fitted in it. They looked good in the front but I had puff-balls on the back.

On February 17, one week before the Dickens fashion show, I made it up to Shelley Peters’ sewing workshop and she pinned my sleeves in on me, and I marked it for my buttonholes.

Now that my dress was starting to look like a dress, I could figure out how I wanted to trim it, and what buttons to use. My original thought was black velvet buttons but remembered some antique black etched glass ones I’d bought years ago in the Port Townsend Antique Mall, and used on one dress, but when I sold it, I removed them. I had ten of them, and that’s the best part. Its hard to buy enough buttons sometimes if you need more than eight. I ended up with two left that I can put on the sleeve cuffs too. I had four vintage passementerie braided black disks with tassels that were perfect to trim the dress. Originally I was going to put two at the waist where my bodice splits open and one on each side of the hips where its pleated up, but decided to put the other two around the neck. They added a nice touch to it.

I had been trying to decide on a hat to wear with this for a couple months, and had a specific one in mind but at this time there are no patterns available for making the shape I needed. One thought was cutting a straw one to the correct shape and covering it completely, since this is a winter outfit. I finally decided on what I wanted; a black bonnet with black trimmings. And I could wear it with more than one outfit.

I also noticed on a couple of the dresses in the bonnet pictures that they had ruffles or lace around their neckline. Hmmm. That might be an idea too.

As much as I like to make my own hats and bonnets, for my Xmas present to myself, I ordered a custom-made hat from Shocking Bad Hats. I knew of her quality and talent already from my friends, and had admired many that she made, but none were in the time period I needed. She specializes in Georgian & Regency hats & bonnets, but sometimes has a couple others in different time periods. I proposed a challenge to her, with a due date of February, and she took it up. She drafted her own pattern, and made a couple practice ones to get the shape right. In the end, I received an absolutely beautiful bonnet to wear with my dress! Now if I could only talk her into making the pattern for sale. https://shocking-bad-hats7.mybigcommerce.com/  

For the past two weeks prior to Dickens, we were checking the weather forecasts for the weekend of February 25-26, as rain was expected one day, and then both days. It went from a 25% chance, then 50% for just one day. Its not unusual to have one day raining, then the next sunny. We just dealt with it. The vendors on the street hunker down, and our fashion show is indoors. And then suddenly a major storm was blowing in. Blizzard warnings were predicted for the mountains. Riverside borders the San Bernadino Mountains, and can get very windy there. Vendors and performers were getting nervous. Even those of us who would be driving up there were getting nervous. Three days before the event, the hard decision was made to cancel it. This was the first time in the history of the Riverside Dickens Festival that they cancelled. It had always gone on, rain or hot & windy. It was so sad but we all breathed a sigh of relief. Due to the amount of work it takes to run the event, they’re not able to reschedule it either, so they put on a nice video of presentations from some of the performers for everyone to watch online.

Sadly, there are now no photos of me wearing it. My dress is sitting here still waiting for me to finish sewing those black disks on and make a big butt bow to put on the back of the peplum. Its debut has been delayed, maybe for a month or two, until I can wear it, possibly for an afternoon tea. And maybe going to WA with me at the end of April so I can wear it to the Port Townsend Victorian Festival. In the meantime, I need to finish the pink striped seaside dress I was making for that fashion show for our seaside theme. There’s not much needed to finish it. The biggest holdup is finding lots of pink ribbon to sew around a couple times on the skirt. I’ve given up on a grosgrain ribbon due to the limited color choices I’ve found, so now I’ll focus on a satin ribbon. I changed the sleeves to the striped fabric, so I need to bling those up a bit now too. 

On top of all this, I’m preparing once again to be Dean of Costume College in 2024, so am catching up on all the changes and updates since 2018 when I did it before. Oh, and running the Costume Exhibit this year at Costume College.