The Green Blob, a 1790s Gown : First Fitting and Sleeves

First Fitting:

When I drafted the bodice of this gown, I wasn't sure where I wanted the neckline to sit. Accordingly, I cut a very shallow neckline, and once the gown body was assembled, ran a rudimentary drawstring across the top of the neck, gathered up the bulk, and shoved wads of fabric down the front of my stays until I had a level that I liked.

Next step was the hem - I still didn't have an assistant, so I begged 15 minutes from my very busy neighbor and ran across the street in my bustled petticoat and gown to have her put in some pins at the level where she reckoned the gown ought to stop. In her full length mirror, the result was, well -

The gown had a LOT less flow than I had been expecting. 

This right here is a perfect example of the effects of underpinnings on a gown.  This particular under-petticoat was originally built for a later mid-regency silhouette. I'd tacked on a little bustle pad at the level of the 1790s back waist seam and expected all would be good - but over the relatively stiff fabric of the petticoat, the yards of gathered 1790s voile looked less like a classical goddess and more like a bale of bedsheets. There was no DRAPE!

 

Making a mental addendum to ditch the under-petticoat, it was time to take care of the sleeves.

This gown is a mashup between the American Duchess book and the American Duchess Simplicity pattern. I worked from the AD book to draft the bodice, but by myself without a mannequin, draping sleeves were NOT possible.

Accordingly, I bought the AD simplicity pattern and took the sleeves and shoulder head from that - and it was a disaster.

 

I don’t believe I was misreading the marks and notches, but i ended up having to rotate the sleeve seam almost 3 inches up the bodice to get it to fit the armscye, and attempts to formally redraft the rotation went absolutely pear-shaped,  and no matter what I did, I never could get the sleeve to a point where I could lift my arms more than about an inch.

 

Fortunately, by the time i actually needed to attach sleeves to the body of the gown, I had an assistant again, and I took a very simple and direct approach:

i cut a very loose sleeve with an overly large shoulder head and sewed it to the gown, then had my assistant progressively pin out the fullness, making sure that I could still move my arms at every step.

 

When i liked the look, i stopped and transferred the markings to my pattern, and voila -a sleeve.

 

The Linen Mitts of Discontent

 

 I am a genius!  And it only took 10 iterations to get there.

 

 Some time ago I was gifted a pair of large purple linen napkins. I knew exactly what I wanted to do with them, but it took me several years to get around to it - until I was living in a coastal city in the driest desert in the world, where the summer sun is FIERCE. I have the sort of skin that blisters and peels and goes straight back to blistering again, so up here in Iquique, a pair of light linen mitts was, at last, exactly what I needed.

There are some excellent kits and patterns for 18th Century Mitts available with a quick google search, but i wanted to draft my own.  Happily, there are equally excellent resources on the google for drafting your own mitt pattern - notably the excellent tutorial by Sew-Loud.

I found that drafting the base shape went quite quickly, and then the pattering came down to a long process of fine-tuning - small iterative changes to the thumb and point placement.

 

 

Once I had my final mitt design, I unpicked and pressed the fabric, and traced it onto paper - making sure that I had proper seam allowances not only on the side seam where my mockups were stitched, but on the top and bottom edges as well. It is surprisingly easy to forget that. 

 

And then I traced!
 

Somewhere along the way,  I had dug up some red kona cotton and decided I needed a pair of bright Christmas mitts as well as light linen ones.  

 
(Gratuitous historical note: While there are documented examples of unlined cotton mitts out there, the extant ones of which I am personally aware are all pale, neutral colors.  I don’t know of any dark cotton mitts, but cotton was what I had - so that's what I sewed. Regardless, the "red-green-gold means Christmas" scheme only became the default later on during the 19th Century, so 'Christmas' mitts were already a big helping of happy what-the-heck.   Hurrah!)

Tracing done, it was time to embroider. I very sensibly (I thought) decided to embroider the mitts before I cut, so that I could keep the fabric taut in an embroidery hoop.

When it comes to embroidering mitts, there are no limits. From a simple tambour hem to full-body polychrome embroidery, the sky's only where it STARTS.  I was in a hurry to get these done, so I chose a very simple motfi:  - three lines of chain stitch down the back of the hand - a common design  that would embroider up very quickly so that I could get on with the work of sewing the mitts up.

HA.

 

  Oh yes, I did.  I really really did.

 

And then I did it again.

The same evening I set down to embroider my mitts, I came down with an attack of gastroenteritis. When you're busy leaping up and down off the sofa all evening, embroidering a pair of mitts is definitely EXACTLY what you should be doing.

I'll take my wobbly chain stitch for 100, Alex…

The gastro won.  I quit.