Erin's 1790's Round Gown.

I've been sewing along like a busy busy bee these past 2 weeks or so, and now it's time to show off some of my pretties! Last weekend I spent in Ohio attending a bonnet making workshop taught by Lydia Fast, who is the big dog in regency bonnets. I'll write a more detailed blog post about the workshop later. This past week however I have been working on getting some 1790's outfits together.   Holidays at the house my favorite event at Woodville is tomorrow and new finery is needed for that! Especially since I will be giving tours for the first time! http://www.woodvilleplantation.org/uncategorized/111812-holidays-at-the-house/252
I made a 1790's round gown for my friend Erin and I'm working on an open robe and petticoat for myself.
My gown is still in the works but Erins is done and looks lovely!

The finished dress, sorry for the ropey picture i will get abetter one tomorrow!

 
Erin gave me a really nice hand block printed cotton she got from Regency Reviseted at the Fair at New Boston. All she requested was that I make her a dress with long sleeves. So I decided to make a 1790's drawstring round gown, it's simple and versatile and turned out really cute. After I was done with it I found out that my friend Angel has a 1790's dress from the same fabric! Oh well as long as they don't wear their dresses at the same event it will be fine.

Fabric detail

Anyway, so I started out using the pattern pieces I had drafted this summer for my open robe, and drafted a front piece for the drawstring style, which petty much consisted of adding a couple of inches to the bottom of my trusted regency drawstring dress front pattern piece.

The re drafted pattern.

 The real challenge where the sleeves, I did not have a long sleeve pattern for the 1790's, just an elbow length pattern.

My original elbow lenth sleeve pattern

I figured it would be easy to just add some inches to the elbow length pattern. oh how I was wrong.
Adding a couple of inches to the elbow length pattern sounded all swell but it yielded a huge baggy sleeve and while I know that Erin prefers her clothing on the loose side for ease of movement, this would just not do. So I drafted more of a curve into the sleeve pattern to give it a slimmer line, it still turned out a bit baggy but I think it looks fine and I have seen examples of ratehr wide 1790's sleeves, so all is good.

And the newly drafted long sleeve mock up

 I had 5 yards of this fabric to work with which seemed like plenty but it was just enough because the long sleeves ate up quite a bit of fabric. The skirt was just long enough before hemming, so instead of doing a regular turn over hem I got out some vintage single fold bias tape and used it as hem tape. it worked really well and it gives the skirt hem some shape. I also love the different color and pattern, they just don't make bias tape like this anymore it's real cotton ( I think it may be a polished cotton as it has a bit of a sheen to it) instead of the poly crap they sell today, and the little floral pattern is just too cute!

the hem bound with cute vintage bias tape.

This was one of those projects that went swimmingly, all in all even with handwork it took me less than 2 days to make, not bad. I wish I could say that of my current project!I hope Erin likes it.
And as a bonus here's a sneek peek of my robe in progress....

A back vie of my new 1790's robe