1810 Blueberry and White Regency dress

 

This dress has been trying to get made since January this year. Well, two dresses. I really liked how my Nehelenia Regency dress fit me for Costume College in 2024 and was determined to make another one in a cotton fabric. My friends and I have been talking about going to a tearoom in Regency, or having a picnic but some of us needed to make or finish a dress for that. I was one of those.   

 

Besides the blueberry print cotton voile fabric I bought from India, I also wanted a white one that could be used with multiple-colored accessories. So the planning was on! I pulled a windowpane cotton from my stash for it.  

  

This painting was my favorite for my accessory inspiration for the blueberry fabric. It gave me a few ideas of a belt and a headwrap I might try too. I found a blue beaded necklace on Dames ala Mode, and hubby graciously claimed it as his birthday gift for me. Then I ordered a cute little reticule from Shocking Bad Hats after admiring the ones she made to go with the hats & bonnets she custom made.      

 

For the white one, the world is my oyster in what color accessories I can try. This one with red was the first photo I found. In the meantime, I plan to use my coral necklace I had from Hawaii and a pair of earrings I had purchased from Dames ala Mode a few years ago.

This is another idea for using blue accessories on it and making a blue Spencer from my blue silk dupioni. You can have so much fun with a white dress!

     

I dug through my hat collection and decided this simple one would work for either dress but also have an unfinished straw from Austentation.com that I like the wider brim on it better. Having them both trimmed in a generic color, with a splash of green, makes them very functional.

              

I found this very interesting when I was looking at this unfinished bonnet again online. They also sell a 3 in 1 Day to Evening bonnet/turban. The turban fits over the crown of your bonnet for daytime and can be worn by itself for evening. Genius! And last year I took a turban-making class at Costume College so this can be done!

     

One of the changes I wanted to make to my pattern was to make it easier to get in and out of it by using ribbon ties on the back closure rather than buttons or hooks & eyes, since I can’t do that myself. Yes, one day I am going to try making Laughing Moon’s bib-front gown that came so highly recommended to me for ease of dressing. But first I wanted to try the Nehelenia again because it fit me so well.

 

The bodice of my fabrics came together easily, and I added pleated ruffles along the necklines, which I loved. I repeated the center insert of lace on the white bodice but I pleated matching fabric instead on the blueberry one. I thought lace might be a little too dressy for it.

       

At this point, other projects had to come first with some deadlines coming up for events. I also needed someone to check how it fit in the back and if just using ties would work. Yesterday I was finally able to get that done at another sewing workshop. The back edges butted up against each other which meant I could close it with ties. My original thought was to have a channel inside the neck and waistline to have the ribbon like a drawstring, but it’s not necessary. I’m going to use grosgrain ribbon so it’s not slippery.

This meant I could now attach the skirts to the bodices and was on the way to getting them done. However, the neckline pleats on the white one didn’t quite match up in width when they were lined up in the back, so I’m unstitching part of one side to correct that. In the meantime I will continue working on the blueberry one and put the sleeves on it. I’m getting close!

Here they are a couple months later, all done! Except the hemming of course. These are both on my dress form with a Victorian corset because I can’t change the height of the bustline on it so it doesn’t matter to me. These aren’t ironed yet so you can still see the center front seam down the skirt. 

 

Not wanting to stop my momentum since Costume College was coming up soon and everything would come to a halt to work on those projects, I started both the Spencers for my dresses since they were small. Instead of cutting into my royal blue silk (which I haven’t gotten down from the top shelf in my closet yet), I’m just making the red linen and green cotton twill ones first. And this way I can practice on the pattern before cutting into the more expensive stuff. I used Laughing Moon’s pattern #129 for them, and used View A in blue so it followed my crossover dress style.

After fighting with the multiple pattern sheets to find the correct pattern pieces, I got the bodice portions traced, cut out and fitted on me in another workshop. This pattern contains both #129 (Spencer) & #130 (redingote/tunic), in sizes 6-34, so you can imagine how many sheets of paper there were, and I had to find the pieces I needed that were mixed in there. It was a massive undertaking to say the least. I’m no longer cutting out the pattern pieces but tracing them because with the demise of many pattern companies, we need to treat these as treasures and take care of them.

After a quick look through the instructions, I sewed the pieces together and then sewed the lining together. I followed the instructions to sew these right sides together and left my opening at the bottom to turn them right side out. After being very happy with how this looked on me, I cut out the pattern piece for the neckline ruffle. Hmmm….something’s not right… Shouldn't those have gone in already? I hadn't even cut out the ruffle fabric yet. I continued looking through the instructions and found it pages later where it tells you then to sew the ruffle to the inside of the bodice before sewing it all right sides together. I went back to the first part of the instructions and it was referring to sewing the lining to each pattern piece. So I guess to my brain, this meant sew the lining as a bag-lining when actually it was referring to what I call a flatlining. Or was that the reverse? Either way it was sewn. I guess if I had read through the entire directions I might have caught that. Instead of taking out all my stitching, and under-stitching I had done on the lining, I let my brain think about this for awhile and came up with an alternative. I sewed the ruffle piece in half, turned it right side out so it had a nice finish, then pinned and ruffled it to the inside on the lining, and top-sewed it really close to the edge. After I finished that I whip-stitched the exposed edge inside to the lining to keep it flat. It turned out nice and no one can tell any difference.

 

 

I questioned the ladies on a Regency costuming group I’m on about what they used for a closure on the bottom points of the bodice. The inside one that doesn’t show was easy, either a pin, safety pin, snap or hook & eye. The same response came for the outside point but quite a few added a decorative button or brooch. Also using a pin or safety pin, it makes it adjustable too. These are only for daytime and don’t have to be fancy, so I wanted something understated. I had a bag of leftover metal buttons and after pinning one on, that was going to work. I’ll have a safety pin on the underside to make it adjustable and have the button sewn on as a decorative design.

My next step is to make a fitting muslin for the sleeves but that’s going to have to wait until after Costume College.