Civil war ball gown

Our homeschool group has held a Civil War ball for a few years now. It is our alternative to a prom. The first year I made E13 a dress using the birdesmaid dress pattern from my wedding dress, the second year E13 made her own dress using a pattern we made from Authentic Victorian Fashion Patterns, by Kristina Harris. This year I designed a new dress for E13. She made her own elliptical hoops using a pattern from Laughing moon Mercantile and I made the bodice, sleeves, and skirt from slopers I made for her.
She had decided she wanted a bodice and skirt (which was more historically accurate) rather than a dress. After having studied many period outfits, with many features she did not like, we came up with her version. The bodice was to have a rounded neckline in front and in the back that was not too low, a small puffed sleeve with a cuff,  a sharp point in front and back, corded edges and a zipper instead of hooks and eyes. The skirt, which had four panels, was to be flat in the front, gathered at the sides, lightly pleated at the back and have a scalloped bottom edge revealing a lighter colored layer. We choose a deep plum colored taffeta (the photograph looks blue but the taffeta is a deep plum purple).
I began by taking E's measurements and drafting a bodice sloper on graph paper. After making the paper sloper, I did a quick "eye-ball" fit and then cut the bodice and one sleeve out of an old sheet.
I used the fabric sloper to make adjustments, mostly adjusting the armcyse for her and adjusting the depth of the neck-line, and then cut out the bodice lining and fabric.

Side view of bodice and small puffed sleeves with cuff

To give the bodice an authentic shape, I added boning channels to the lining which I then flat-lined to the top fabric.  Once the bodice was assembled, I inserted spiral steel bones into the channels and hand stitched the openings shut. The zipper was hand sewn into the bodice.

Back view of bodice with a zipper

 

 

 

 

 

 

Front view of bodice

Front view of bodice and skirt with scalloped edge

side view of bodice and skirt

Next I sewed the four skirt panels together, gather the sides, and sewed the skirt to a narrow waist band. To create the bottom edge of the skirt, I hemmed the skirt, then drew vertical lines on the inside to show where to gather the edge. By hand, I sewed a small line of stitches and gather up the skirt. Next, I sewed a hemmed strip of light purple satin to the bottom of the skirt.
The bodice fit E perfectly and as a whole I think the dress was lovely. I think I would still like to get right of the slight puckering and wrinkling on the bodice. This may be due to the zipper as opposed to hooks and eyes and also because I sewed another lining to cover the inside of the bodice. Still E was the belle of the ball. I added a small flower corsge to her left shoulder but otherwise left her dress plain.

Swan Lake's Queen Mother

 A Titian inspired Queen's gown:

I decided to make the queen mother's gown more as a whim than anything else. I love reading other costumers blog's and one that I discovered recently is Jennifer Thompson's blog:  Festive Attyre. I was especially inspired by her Italian Renaissance gowns and the corded corsets intrigued me.
It looked like so much fun making something like this and "How hard could it be"? I did not want to spend any money making a sample gown, which I did not think anyone would wear, so I asked around and was given several old prom dresses. At the thrift store I bought a 100% linen, plus sized dress and one ball of hemp twine for the corset and set to work.
The first thing I needed to make for an authentic looking  Italian Renaissance style dress was a chemise or camica. I had a few yards of cotton lawn in my fabric stash and although a camica is usually made of handkerchief weight linen I decide to use it. I followed the directions on the Festive Attyre websites to make what basically was a three rectangles sewed together  with gussets under the arm. The sleeves are about two to three times as long as the arm length so that they can be pulled up in and over the sleeves to create big poofs.
 I finished the top edge of the shirt and the bottom of the sleeves with some smocking and gold and pearl glass beads.

Italian style chemise: camica

smocked top edge of camica

front of linen corded corset

side back lacing on corded corset

Following Jennifer's descriptions I also made a corded corset out of the 100% linen dress I bought at the thrift store with four 1/16th inch hemp cords pulled into each channel.
After having worked with Rigeline boning and spiral steel, making a corded corset with hemp twine was awesome and easy. I machine sewed the channels, top to bottom on the linen, then using a loop turner I pulled the hemp cording through the channels. Then I sewed across the top and bottom to seal the channels, trimmed off the excess cording and finally covered the edges with bias strips of linen.
I used side, back, spiral lacing. I sewed two strips of heavy duty twill tape, with two parallel lines of tape for threading the ribbon. The details are all as Jennifer described in her blog.
For the dress I used two periwinkle satin prom dresses and some pale green and gold brocade which my mother had given me.  The brocade was left over from some Christmas decorations but had become water damaged in a flood in my parents' basement. By turning the brocade, the water stains were covered up and it looked better. I also turned the satin so it was less shiny and used two strips of  a flocked satin to outline the front of the skirt. At the back, I cartridge pleated the skirt to the bodice.
Finally the sleeves were made of some upholstery fabric, again from my mother's stash. I made them a little darker by spray painting them with Design Master, floral spray paint and lined them with fabric from one of the prom dresses. I sewed some metal rings to the top of the sleeves so that they could tie onto the bodice and by pulling the sleeves up create some nice poofs.
The dress turned out really well I think, especially since it cost me all of $5.00.  I am thinking of making others to order using quality materials, now that I have worked out a pattern  and basic design.

queen mother's Titian inspired dress.

I also took a headpiece which I had originally made for Cinderella Fairy Autumn but was not used and redecorated it for the queen. This is what the dress looked like on stage:

Queen mother and Siegfried, Ryan Camou ( Swan lake)