I might well have titled this post “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, because this project was a bit of everything.
First the bad.
Many dresses of the mid-1800’s were made from lightweight wool. The fabric I chose for Lavinia’s morning dress is an antique challis – probably a quilt back at some point. It’s faded in unevenly distributed blobs, which made it perfect for the experimental purposes of any doll’s first dress.
I never waste my best stash items on first dresses!
The primary difficulty was figuring out how to pipe everything without creating too much bulk at the seams.
The 1840’s had an absolute love affair with piping and the feeling has not been mutual. My cording was too thick and don’t even get me started on piping sleeve openings. . . I never drink anything stronger than wine, but the piping . . . Argh! I was tempted to make an exception.
Take the sleeve ruffles, for example. Here’s a photo of my circa 1838-39 inspiration dress:
Each of those ruffles is held in place by a narrow, piped band. My mistake was trying to copy this detail exactly, instead of using a plain band or eliminating the band and just piping the ruffle. As is, the number of layers at each attachment point are almost beyond counting: there’s the band itself, it’s turned under edges, the two layers for the piping (times two because both sides of the band are piped) PLUS the ruffle itself.
The sleeves of Lavinia’s dress fit very tightly.
And sewing them gave me a week’s long headache.
The lesson learned: even though challis is very fine wool, stacks of it mashed together are in no way dainty. I need to learn how to compromise, passing on details that just won’t scale down well. I also need to choose which dresses are best made of tissue silk vs wool.
As for the ugly . . .
I can’t even look at the placement of the sleeve seams without wondering what I was thinking. On the next dress, I’ll definitely be shifting them about 1/4″ toward the underarm.
Despite these issues, I’m not completely displeased. Check out the gallery photos over HERE.
I do think the skirt shape and overall proportions work well, and the placement of the slightly-raised waistband feels exactly right. The color suits Lavinia to a “T”. And her new wig is everything I’d hoped it would be and more (it was custom made by Diana Boettger, and you can learn more about that HERE.)
One last tidbit I just have to share: I won’t be needing to bother with fussy thread loops for the closures of Lavinia’s dresses (which is awesome because mine ALWAYS twist). After studying oodles and oodles of photos taken of real 1840’s dresses I can confidently say they used curved METAL EYES all the time.
To follow along with my sewing of Lavinia’s First Dresses, pop over HERE.
And as her wardrobe grows, you can watch that happen over HERE.