V189: Beginning a Robe a l’Anglaise a la Polonaise

I’ve been procrastinating on, well, everything costume-related, and with Costume College a mere month away, it’s time to get down to business with this striped gown.

My material – I have enough for both a gown and a matching petticoat

The gown is really for our trip to Williamsburg in October, but I might as well get it done for CoCo in August, lest I continue to procrastinate and truly run out of time.

So here’s a start…

I’ve hmmm’d-and-hawwww’d on the design, but have finally settled on a simple pin-front Anglaise from Patterns of Fashion 1: Englishwomen’s Dresses & Their Construction C. 1660-1860, page 37-39, that can be polonaise’d up in back.  Here is the original dress from the Snowshill Collection, National Trust:

And here is Janet Arnold’s sketch:

Janet Arnold, Patterns of Fashion 1, pg 37

And lucky me, here is also Nancy Bradfield’s drawings and notes from Costume in Detail: Women’s Dress 1730-1930“

Costume in Detail, pg 57 and 58

Now to draping.

I decided to drape this pattern instead of scale it up from the Janet Arnold gridded pattern, because I find it quicker and more accurately fitted to my measurements.

Back draped

I tried out some draping techniques from Period Costume for Stage & Screen, primarily in correcting my bad habit of not leaving enough at the waist and in the armscyes to accommodate adjustments when finishing the paper pattern.

Front draped, without corrections to CF, or grainlines

Here is my paper pattern:

Front, Side, Back, and for the first time, a proper sleeve draped and corrected as the pattern calls for, and specifically for this dress.

The back piece is quite a bit different from Arnold’s pattern, due to my sway-back-edness.  I also made sure this time to lay the center front on the bias, instead of the straight grain, a mistake I made in the Revolution Dress.  I’ve given 3/4″ seam allowances, to be safe, and plan to tailor out any excess through the back, on Franken-Lilly, hopefully resulting in a super-awesome-accurate fit, and no warps. Fingers crossed. 🙂

Arnold’s pattern – you can see the CF on the bias.

Now for the cutting!