Starting The Plaid Sheer Wool Late Regency (1810's) Dress

 Once upon a time, Joann’s Fabrics had a sheer wool on their shelves for a season. It was 85% wool, and 15% nylon, so not entirely wool but pretty darned close. It came in several different plaids, and when it was clearanced out I bought all they had. Thus, for years I’ve had three bolts of sheer plaid wool on my shelves, and a plan for each!

One bolt became an 1840’s dress for my mom (which I still haven’t blogged)

Another is earmarked for an 1860’s dress for me, but that has yet to happen.

And the third was to become an 1810’s dress, based off of this extant 1811-1815 dress, which is held at the Rijks Museum.

This dress, like most of my historical projects, had been in my mind and plans for years, I just didn’t get around to doing it until I had a reason to do so. Last summer I signed up to do a 1790’s through 1820’s fashion show at a local historic site. This dress would fit right into that era! Thus, I had my excuse and deadline for finally making my plaid sheer wool 1810’s dress.

I gave myself about 6 or 7 weeks to get the dress done and started by scaling up a pattern from Regency Women’s Dress, by Cassidy Percoco.

I used the 1813-1816 Morning Dress pattern from pages 70-73.

I altered the pattern to be approximately my size and added seam allowances.

A mock-up was made.

Alterations were done.

And the dress was cut out of my wool, with a bodice lining cut out of linen.

I referenced the construction notes of 1810's dresses in both Regency Women’s Dress and Patterns of Fashion 1 and hand sewed the bodice together.

For the most part the lining was constructed and then the wool pieces were top stitched in place along the seamlines. 

Once the basic bodice construction was done, I put it on over my corset and pinned the bust darts in place - this was standard 19th century dress construction. Darts were marked and pinned on the body so they would be sure to fit the wearer correctly.

Once the darts, 2 on each side, were pinned in place I top stitched them down with a prick stitch. Once again, sewing darts from the outside was standard 19th century practice as it gives you more control and a better end product than the modern “sew the darts from the inside method”.

Once the darts were sewn, I added a narrow waistband to the bottom edge of the bodice.

Onto the sleeves! The underarm seams of the sleeves were sewn up with a French seam by machine - by this point it was sinking in that I had a lot of trimming to do on this dress and I couldn't completely hand sew the dress if I wanted to have all the trim on in time for the fashion show. A hand sewn bodice and (hopefully) hand sewn trim would have to be enough! Machine sewn sleeves it was!

As for the skirt, that was cut with a shaped front panel and a rectangular back panel. As my fabric was a full 60" wide, one panel was plenty of fabric for the back of the skirt. In the era, fabric was narrower and more than one panel would have been used.

I machine sewed the skirt with French seams, just like the sleeves, and hand hemmed the pocket openings and the bottom hem. I'd be wearing this dress over my 18th century pockets - I'm not sure if this is strictly historically accurate for the 1810's, but I like pockets!

With each of the three elements of the dress (bodice, sleeves, skirt) completed in their own right, it was time to start on the trimming, as I'd decided it would be easier to trim the dress before it was fully assembled. So I cut a bunch of strips of my wool and got started.

With the help of two very cute kitty cats! I'll tell you all about that, how I chose to replicate the original dress' trim, and how I opted to change it a bit, in a blog post next weekend!