1660's dress

I have always had a fondness for Dutch paintings from the 1650's and the 1660's. My favorite is Ter Borch, but Gabriël Metsu has painted my favorite dress and that became the dress my project was mainly based on. I also found the 1660's bodice pattern and construction notes on the book Seventeenth-Century Women's Dress Patterns: Book 2 extremely useful. The dress is completely hand sewn from duchess silk satin, linen canvas, mid weight linen and a finer white linen using linen and silk threads. I'm wearing it over a shift, a linen petticoat and a rump. I plan on making the appropriate shoes with the square pointy toes and colored stockings soon, but I want to make sure I get my other Costume College dresses done before that. Meanwhile I wore it with my 18th century shoes and stockings.

And a fun artsy photo taken with a phone application.

Construction:

The panels are two layers of thick and stiff linen. They have seam allowances only where they are joined to other pieces and the seam allowances are folded inside before joining the two sides together. The channels are stitched with a spaced back stitch. The pattern is based on the 1660's bodice in Seventeenth-Century Women's Dress Patterns: Book 2

The panels are whip stitched together and boned with cane, except the two CB bones that needed to be very narrow but durable. I used the spring steel strips from windshield wipers that keep the rubber parts in form. They are only 2 mm wide but durable and bendy. And won't rust.

The project continued by completing the middle layer. The original had all kinds of small fabric pieces scattered around and even paper, but for simplicity I just cut the pieces in same shapes (without seam allowances and tabs) than the boned layer and used only one kind of mid weight linen.  In the picture below I have also already added the silk layer on top of back panels and made the lacing holes.

Then I covered the rest of the bodice with silk. I stab stitched all seams through the boned layer.

Then I bound the neck edge and tried it on.

The I made the wings and the sleeves. The sleeves have an inner layer of linen canvas, doubled in the top half.

They have silk on top and are lined with fine linen. One sleeve cartrige pleated and bound and a finished wing.

The wings are two layers of linen canvas wrapped in silk from the underside.

And then with an added layer on top, stitched from the right side. The underside:

The wings were back stitched to the edge.

And the sleeves whip stitched and back stitched on the bodice. Some time before I had bound the tabs with silk grosgrain and lined them individually.

After whip stitching in the lining, the bodice was finished.

I loved the construction on Kendra's skirt so I pleated and bound the waist the same way. 

There is a small train to the skirt. Otherwise it's just straight panels running stitched together.

A masquerade dress and a truly scary mask

I'm currently awfully busy trying to make my ambitiously planned Costume College wardrobe happen and when the accomplished people of Tampere announced that they were going to be hosting an 18th century masquerade, I knew I couldn't even think about making anything new to wear. Or even re-trim an old one. But I didn't want to pass an opportunity to do some period dancing. And, more importantly, to see friends who are scattered so far all around Finland that they might as well be living abroad. 

So the dress had to come from my existing wardrobe. I chose the black round gown because the severity of the color makes it one of my most unusual 18th century gowns and so, perhaps, most masquerade-like. 

I also struggled with coming up with an idea for a mask. A thought of a fancy, flirty and decorative mask didn't sound tempting at all to me this time. So I turned to 18th century portraits for inspiration and I chose a simple black moretta mask. I bought a cheap leather version and cut it a little smaller and the eye holes larger to look more like the ones seen in the portraits. Then I tried it on and it looked so freaky and scary that I almost chickened out of wearing it. But with no plan B, it had to do. 

And here it is, 18th century minimalism with a touch of spookiness. 

And now, brace yourselves.

Luckily the other guests had had more time to get ready and make costumes and there were many detailed, cute, exotic, alluring and funny ones for us to admire. And I did get to dance. And met friends. Heard all kinds of wonderful things. And got to talk all the piled up costume things with Sanna (Rococo Atelier, you all know her for sure) whom I hadn't seen in ages. And the food was excellent. 

I tried taking a few pictures, but low lighting and dancing people made them too blurry.

Big thanks to everyone who made the event happen. And apologies for not "concealing my identity" for the entire evening. The mask was a bit impractical for eating, drinking and socializing. 

This was the first wearing for my new rump and now I have pictures to demonstrate how it looks on me. I'm wearing it with one linen petticoat under the gown in the pictures above. And here it is with just the petticoat.

My stays pattern

After posting about my new 1780's stays almost a year ago, I've had a steady flow of inquiries for the pattern. The amount of interest has been so vast that I'm very sorry for not being able to send a copy to everyone interested personally. But I hope my decision to share it here instead will make up for that. 

There is nothing revolutionary about the pattern, so I hope you are not disappointed. Most of the late 18th century pattern diagrams I've seen look more or less identical anyway. It's always the same four pieces with slightly different shaping and proportions. These seem to work for me.

The over 200 pieces of boning eats up a lot of the width, so if you want the stays to be about the same size and are using less boning, you need to make the pieces a little narrower. More construction tips and boning layout can be found from the original post.

Thank you very much for all the wonderful compliments about my stays and for your interest in the project! I'm sorry it took me so long to do this, but never in a million years expected anyone to be interested in the pattern and taking the time to go through my unorganized storage and finding the pieces was a daunting task.

Thank you very much also for the recent blog awards! I'm very grateful for each one. I hope you understand if I don't pass them on. It's not that I don't want to spread the joy and make others happy. It's just that it breaks my heart to have to choose the nominees from all the wonderful blogs that all deserve to be rewarded.

Late 18th century quilted rump

Ever since Kendra posted her fantastic article about late 18th century skirt supports I have wanted to try out the number 3. My version is basically a roughly guilted thick layer of wool between linen layers, pleated and whip stitched in to a linen waistband. It might be ugly, but I really like the effect it has on my skirt shape. (It's a little fuller on me than on the very narrow hipped dress form.)

Construction pictures: