Whew. Well, I spent the entirety of the Thanksgiving weekend finishing my Victorian gown and sewing a jacket to wear over it in the cold weather. I used my Netflix activity log to add it up (I usually binge on shows while I sew), and figured out that I spent about 40 hours sewing this outfit over the course of four days (not counting the 30+ hours I had put into it prior to Thanksgiving weekend).
I’m so glad this is done. For some reason near the end I was really stressing myself out about finishing it. The one thing I ran out of time for was the front closures on the bodice. I was going to do covered buttons, but realized that I wasn’t going to have time to do all of those button holes on top of making a jacket (which I ended up desperately needing). Instead I used hook and eye closures, and I’m not really happy with the effect, so I plan to go back and do the buttons like I wanted (in theory, at least).
I’m going to do a separate post about the jacket that I made, because I sort of threw the thing together by drafting up a pattern from the TV bodice pattern. Here are photos of my finished gown, though:
The front of the gown.
The front/left 3/4 view.
From the right.
Back view.
Underneath the skirt is the Imperial Tournure that you can see in my last post. I draped the overskirt myself, because I wasn’t crazy about the options that I could have purchased patterns for.
The complete list of materials I used for this is as follows:
- Truly Victorian Alexandra bodice, Imperial skirt, and Imperial Tournure patterns
- 8 yards grey cotton twill
- 1 yard burgundy velvet
- 1 yard black cotton sateen
- 2 yards lining fabric and 2 yards of interlining
- 14 sets of hook and eye closures and three sets of skirt tab closures
- 2.5 yards black cotton and the Imperial Tournure wire kit from Truly Victorian
After all the work, it was quite easy to wear, and I was excited to have something perfectly period-appropriate for the two Victorian events last week. Unfortunately, with it being so cold, I had to keep my jacket on all the time, so no one could see the top half of the dress. I have one decent worn photo so far, with the jacket that I will cover in a later post:
The hat and muff are vintage, from local antique stores. Hopefully I will be able to get some worn photos without the jacket sometime in the future. I’m hoping I can find someone’s fancy Victorian living room to use as a backdrop.
The Victorian Archivist 