Creating a Gown, Part II: Second Time's the Charm

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 My first attempt at a gown was stressful and disheartening. Even with help from experts, I wasn't able to get things right. I trashed the muslin and took a longer-than-planned break from working on the 18th century project. When fall semester started, the break was extended, as I'm not only working full time and going to school full time, as of the beginning of the school year, I'm also teaching a sewing elective at the K-12 school where I work. I love it, and my class is fantastic, but teaching is new to me, and definitely added a lot of stress in conjunction with everything else. With the completion of my grad school semester, I began to get my creative energy back. 

For my birthday, I had treated myself to the new pattern from Scroop and Virgil's Fine Goods, the Angelica Gown. Then, between Thanksgiving and Christmas, I found a sizeable amount of lightweight chocolate-colored wool at Needle & Thread. Using the glorious free time I had over Christmas break (working at a school most definitely has its perks!), I began to work on a new gown. This is an Italian gown. To my uneducated eyes, it doesn't appear to be wildly different than the English gown I first attempted. However, the process has been a difference as stark as night and day. 

I cleared the first of the tragic fit hurdles when I remembered to add length to the bodice when cutting out the muslin. Literal muslin, I planned for it to serve as the lining of my gown if the fit was correct. Another major change was in the details of construction. The Angelica gown is constructed in a very different manner than the J.P. Ryan English gown, and these construction differences mean a lot of hand sewing. A LOT. While I could have reworked the instructions slightly to make it more machine-sewing friendly, I decided to push myself and do as much by hand as I could. I surprised myself by being able to do much more than I ever thought. I'm not sure if it's because my wrists have improved, or if it was because I wasn't doing anything else to cause strain (typing, knitting, etc), but I had no trouble at all! I did fudge a few places and use the machine (the skirt seam, for example), but that was more because I was excited with how things were coming together, and wanted speed. There are a lot of different stitches in 18th century costuming, and I am new to all of them. However, the very handy stitching guide explained and illustrated them all! It was my first time using the English stitch or "Catch 3, Skip 1" stitch, but the instructions made it simple to understand, and I love the pattern they make!

Teeny tiny English stitches joining back bodice pieces

I chose to go with the simpler View A, as well as the least-voluminous skirt option, also A. The skirt comes in four widths, from A to D, and has two different bodice options. Even though I used the narrowest skirt, it still required three yards of fabric in fullness, a big change from my usual sewing projects from patterns made under WWII restrictions like order L-85! You can see below a portion of the pleated skirt in progress of being sewn onto the bodice. 

Basted pleats of skirt being attached to bodice

At present, the gown is on my mannequin. I need a second set of hands in order to properly mark the hem, but I may make an attempt to mark the hem on my mannequin, then check the fit on myself, depending on my level of impatience. The sage and brown color combination makes me even happier than I expected, and I'm positively giddy with how close I am to making this dream come true. 

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