Finished Dress

I have finally finished the dress that I have been working on for the past month. It has been a great experience but I am ready to move on to the next job. This dress is for a docent at the LDS Church Museum of History and Art. Some of the docents portray a pioneer that they have researched and using the museum artifacts tell about the person using first person reenactment. I have made several of the dresses for this program. This is the pattern that we started with.

My client wanted a few changes so we made it have a back closure instead of in the front. She wanted princess seaming and to have the bodice come down to a point in the front instead of going straight across the waistband. Then she wanted to have the fancy collar (called a berthe) be detachable so that she could take it off and wear it with a different collar. Finally she wanted the shirred area on the sleeves to be smocked instead so she did the smocking. She wanted to contribute something to the making of the dress.






Here is a picture of our inspiration





Finally we got it all worked out. The fitting was quite a process but we finally got it to work. In 1837 they were not using hoops yet so I made a quilted petticoat for her to give the skirt a little body without have to wear 3 or more petticoats. A quilted petticoat is like wearing a quilt attached to the skirt of the petticoat at the knees.



Here's the finished product.

The sleeves appear extra long in the pictures. They really are going to be extra poofy when there are arms and hands holding the cuff in place.






Now that it's done I can start working on the next order which is not custom so it should work up pretty quickly. I like the custom work but I also like to break it up with some straight sewing.


Earl had done really well today. He and Charlie are working to get Charlie's room cleaned out so that it's not like he's living in a storage room. They made quite a bit of progress today.