Oh man it’s been a while since I made a blog post, but I wanted to share all about my new dress that I’ve been making, and I realized to some degree, that I think that blogs might be somewhat easier to use than video tutorials. Let me know in the comments what you think, but for the next few projects, I’m going to try to do a few blog tutorials and see if people find it easier to learn from and help with projects. In part, because it’s so much faster to scroll through and skim and read closely on the steps you want vs learning about the whole process. On the other hand, I feel like for certain things, it’s a thousand times easier to see a thing with video vs describing something. For instance, when learning a new stitch, I find a video inherently more helpful than a thousand words! So let’s see how well this works!
In any case, for this one, I’d like to talk all about making my Felicity’s Birthday Surprise dress.
This is right up there in my “favorite Felicity gowns ever” – it’s hard because she has so many. But I really wanted a pink Italian gown to wear, and this one is just so lovely and has so many wonderful little elements to it.
The original gown on the doll is a cotton dress with a little pinner apron. The pink dress itself is one that closes in the back – and very likely, the original dress that a ten year old girl wore would also close in the back.
I plan on making another post for the apron in a week or two, but this is the write up about the dress itself.
In summary, this is what I used.
- The Scroop Pattern – The Angelica Gown – View A
- 8 yards of a 100% pink linen fabric from Sai Silks in NYC.
- 2 yards of cotton twill for the lining
- Lightweight linen for the lining
- 6mm wide boning from Burnley and Trowbridge
- ½” cotton tape from Burnley and Trowbridge and ⅛ cotton tape
- Silk thread (50wt #48 to match my linen) for handsewing and machine sewing
- Tulip needles – #9 sewing needles
The Scroop Pattern comes with some great instructions, but here is my write up on how I made it, since I used a combination of 3-5 different sources other than this pattern, so if my instructions seem different from the pattern, that is why:
- 18th century Dressmaking by Abby Cox and Lauren Stowell
- The English Gown pattern by At the Sign of the Golden Scissors
- Patterns of Fashion by Janet Arnold –
So first off, I used the front, back, back, and shoulder pieces to make a mock up. The mockup overall fit great except that the front was just far too long on me. I ended up putting it on and redrawing the front to make it just the right shape to fit my torso. But otherwise, I didn’t have to change the back or straps all too much.
Once that was all set, I took it off and used the pieces I had cut to edit the paper pattern pieces to exactly how I wanted it, also adding in the 1/2 “ seam allowance with a transparent ruler and a marker.
My favorite ruler by far is this one, that folds for easy stowaway.
I then tried it on and it was perfect!
I then started by cutting out the linen fabric as well as the cotton twill I planned on using as a lining. Now mind you, a historically accurate gown would be lined in linen. However, linen is very wibbly wobby and has a strong tendency to stretch, and I really didn’t want the interior of this to stretch. Meanwhile, cotton twill, especially the kind of I love (the Gardenia twill from burlapfabric.com) is really strong, soft and doesn’t stretch much at all. So I prefer to make my linings out of that one. However, I am very picky about the feel of sleeves, and prefer to use a thin handkerchief weight or medium weight linen for my sleeve linings. Just a heads up if you notice that the lining for my sleeves are different.
Anyways, once all the pieces were cut out, I started out with the back. Here I used my American Duchess book instructions. I folded the center back, and marked a place at the top of the center back neck to sew in an eyelet by hand. I then sewed in a 6mm wide channel my machine on my Babylock Soprano. Why do things no one will see by hand anyway? I did that for both back pieces. This way, a piece of boning can be inserted into the back later and removed for easy cleaning as well. I then ironed down the seam allowance on the top, and all the sides but not the bottom of the lining. I ironed down the seam allowances on the exterior pink lining pieces as well.
I then pinned the wrong sides together of the back and the back side pieces together. This was basted together using a brightly colored thread.
Now this was sewn together using the English stitch. Arguably, this could have been done by Machine, but I honestly love how this makes thes lining look – where you have all the wrong sides already in with a thin line of the exterior fabric showing at the very center of the stitch. It’s so neat, and strong, and it’s honestly a lot of fun to sew, so I didn’t mind doing it by hand. Seriously – that’s my thing – I do all the fun parts by hand, and if I ever tire of it, I make my machine do it!\
I’d say a good 90% of this gown was done by hand. The not fun 10% was done by my Baby Lock Soprano.
So the English stitch is where you have all those fabrics all pinned together, the seam allowances already tucked away. You pin the two pieces you’ve basted, right sides together, wrong sides out. Then you get a very strong piece of thread a thimble, and you start from one end, skip the lining, go to the fabric, stitch through all three layers (the outside fabric, the outside fabric, the lining) right at the edge, and then pull through. Then from the side you’re on, do that back, always skipping the layer closest to the needle. If this is still unclear to you, check out my video on my Meet Felicity Dress – https://youtu.be/dT8wZTs_MO8 – it’s right there for you to watch. (See? This is where youtube is superior to blogging!) Also, this was explained beautifully in Abby Cox’s book so that should help too.
Please notice the edges along the bottom were kept raw. This gets folded down and stitched by hand, the edges left raw on the inside. Don’t fret though – this is completely historically accurate. You’d be shocked at how many seams were left raw and unfinished in 18th century garments on the inside. Even ball gowns, beautifully finished in every way on the outside will have just unfolded, unstitched edges on the inside.
So I did the English stitch for the center back seam as well as the two side seams between the back pieces and the next side piece. I have a finished picture of the back because I forgot to take a photo of it before I added it to the sides.
Now for the front piece, which also acts as the side piece. I started with the lining portion first.
I cut this out in some strong cotton twill, and folded over the line at the center front. I sewed in the channels in the center front by machine. This has three channels – the center front for boning, the next column empty so you can sew in eyelets, and then another channel for boning. These channels are made by folding over the front edge under. I did sew the eyelets in by hand using a very sharp awl and some buttonhole thread.
By the way, I HIGHLY recommend the tapered awl by Clover if you don’t have one yet. https://a.co/d/6plHlag But never travel with it – I had my last one taken away by TSA.
Honestly, this step is so silly since it would only take me an hour and a half, but these two center pieces with the need to do the buttonholes – sat in my “two sew” bag for a good 8 months before I finally got around to sewing the eyelets. Once they were done, I then ironed down the seam allowances at the top and bottom, and sewed them flat on my machine (since this part is boring), and was finally ready to add it to the back.
This, I sewed in by machine to the prepared back pieces (meaning the four back pieces I’d already sewn together using the English stitch). I pinned on the straps and made sure that it fit, and it fit beautifully so I stitched that part down by machine.
Now I added in the front panel. The two front panels pieces were ironed around on all four edges, and then I pinned them, wrong sides together to the front panel lining piece in cotton twill. Now heads up, the front edge was about 1/2″ wider than the lining piece in front so that there would be overlapping in the center front of the gown. This was stitched down with a spaced back stitch by hand since this would be seen on the top, the bottom and the side back. I did NOT sew the front of the pink exterior fabric to the very front of the lining where the eyelets are – this way I can still lace it up in front, and then the fronts will then be pinned together.
The 18th century method is to iron down the seam allowances first, put the fabrics wrong side together, and then sew it using tiny pin prick stitches. It’s very satisfying but of course, more time consuming. I do find the fiddly bits a lot of fun though!
I was now ready to add the sleeves. I stitched the sleeves by hand – I could go into it more – but since it’s fairly complex to describe, and I don’t want to take the wind out of someone else’s sails, I’ll just say that I used the method described in the English Dress Pattern by At the Sign of the Golden Scissors. It’s done by hand but is so satisfying to sew that I always just use that method. I did use machine to sew in the darts at the back of the sleeve, but did do everything else by hand.
Once the sleeve was stitched, I attached it to the bodice along the bottom 6″, from the back point (where the strap meets the back arm hole, for around 6-7″. I then put on my corset, put on the dress, and closed the front (this is important), and then had my husband pin the sleeve onto the arm strap for me, pinning all the way back, smoothing the fabric over my shoulder head and pushing all the bulk to the back. This is how it was done historically as well. After, the excess fabric was pleated to 3 small pleats in the back, and then stitched to the shoulder strap with my machine.
I then covered up this mess with the linen fabric, with the seam allowance pre ironed in, and the wrong sides together. This was stitched down by hand.
MEANWHILE, I prepped the skirt.
I knew that I wanted the skirt to be 43″ long in the back and 40″ in the front, and go over my little split bum pad. I wanted this portion to be 120″ wide, or twice the selvedge. So I sewed two pieces of fabric together to make one long piece of fabric 45″ tall and 119″ wide.
I hemmed the front edge by folding it over twice and sewing the edge down by hand using a matching silk thread.
I hemmed the bottom 2″ all the way around.
I then pleated the fabric up to around 8.5″ on either side of the center seam line with 1/4″ pleats. (The 8.5 was what I determerined to be the length from the point at the back to the side where I wanted it to sit in the front. This might be different for other people).
Once this was all pleated with pins, I sewed it down with a basting stitch in a contrasting thread for easy removal later.
Then, using a very strong thread, well waxed, I stitched the skirt to the bottom edge of the bodice, 2-3 stitches per pleat.
The fabric on the inside gets pushed downwards. The center seam in the back is cut open so that it folds down easily.
And the dress portion is done!
The petticoat was done using the American Duchess method – as described in her book, and I didn’t vary this at all. Also I forgot to take photos so I’m going to skip this portion. 🙂
But yes!! The dress was done and I was madly in lvoe with how it came out.
I’ll have a new post about the apron early next month (with free patterns!) but I hope you love the dress as much as I do! Felicity was a great model!
sewstine.com 