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.