Attempted recreation of the Furr Homespun Dress

I wore my pleated wrapper dress three times before washing it, and after I washed it I realized those beautiful pleats were going to make it a bitch to iron. Maybe it wouldn't have needed ironing if I'd put it in the dryer, but I was afraid the dress would shrink so I hung it dry and it was wrinkled all to hell and it was horrible to iron because manipulating all of that heavy fabric on the ironing board was really cumbersome.

So I made a second one with the gathered bodice/back style out of a lovely navy calico and it's so pretty! It should be much easier to iron, and cooler for warmer weather. The pleated back and bodice version is not only hard to iron, but those overlapping pleats make the bodice rather heavy because of the increased thickness of the fabric.

Apologies for the terrible quality of the photo. The belt is just a temporary one. I've made a matching belt. Buttons are MoP.

Around this same time, I went down an Internet wormhole starting at Pinterest, and ending with my discovery of the Furr Homespun Dress, analyzed in great detail. I'd been looking for a pattern that I could use to make a dress with 5-6 yards of fabric, as opposed to the 8 yards of fabric required for the wrapper dress. Because it can be difficult to find 8 continuous yards of fabric, and expensive, too. Plus, I had this gorgeous yellow calico that I found at Walmart for $1 a yard, and I bought all they had, which was just barely 5 yards.

I was determined to make a dress out of this fabric somehow, and when I saw that the yardage for the Furr dress was 5 3/8 of 34" wide fabric, I thought surely I could get a dress out of a scant 5 yards of 45" wide fabric.

I bought a couple of patterns: Simplicity 3723, which The Pragmatic Costumer modified so spectacularly for her 1850s dress, and McCalls 3669. In the end, I didn't want to spend time modifying these patterns to fit me (in one review I read, the McCalls 3669 was reportedly HUGE, and the Simplicity pattern needed an armscye adjustment, and then I wasn't sure if I would have to adjust the sleeve as well, and couldn't really find an answer and thought about it way too much and became overwhelmed and aaaauuuuggggghhhhh).

But, I knew that the wrapper pattern fit me quite nicely through the shoulder area, armscye, and sleeve, so I decided to spend time modifying that pattern instead.

Here's what I ended up with, followed by how I did it.

 First, I joined the front and back yokes to the front and back bodice pieces, respectively. I aligned them at the armscye. Since the bodices are gathered, the bodice pattern pieces were significantly wider than the yokes, so when I redrew the pattern I simply ended the bodices in alignment with the center front and back of the shoulder yokes.

I made the bodice much longer than my natural waistline because I wanted to drape it on my dress form to accommodate my bust. I have never tried to do a full bust adjustment. Anyway, I figured it is supposed to be gathered under the bust rather than be a really fitted bodice.

The pattern ended up looking like this:

And fitting like this!

I put a belt around it to mark where the top of the waistband would go, then adjusted the pattern again.

I laid the pattern pieces out so that the center front edges used the selvedge. I had to face the CF edges to create the placket for the buttons/buttonholes. I had to place the back bodice pattern along the selvedges as well. Unfortunately I didn't have enough fabric to lay it all out in one piece. I redrew the pagoda sleeve pattern to have straight edges, and used the cuff pattern for the bishop sleeve. Then I managed to get three widths of fabric 39-40 inches long for the skirt. I will have to face the hem of the skirt.

As you can see from the finished result at the top, it turned out QUITE nicely, if I say so myself! I am really happy with the results. It looks even better when I try it on, than it does on the dress form.

That being said, it's not perfect. The neckline got all funky when I finished it with the binding, for one thing. UGGGGHHHH.

I used binding that was cut on the cross grain, but not bias. Is that why it lays all funny? The neckline on the original dress was finished with binding that was cut on the straight of grain, so I thought I'd be fine not making bias binding. Oh well, the crochet lace trim (which I haven't applied yet) should hide it well enough (I hope).

Also, not pictured, but the back somehow sits a little higher at the waist than the front! I was really really surprised at that. Usually it's the front that is higher, because I never plan for my boobs. I really hope it isn't terribly noticeable. It looks fine from the back, and from the front, but you can see it from the side. However, if I wear an apron, it won't really be noticeable. Since all these dresses I'm making are for my volunteer work at the pioneer farm, an apron will be perfectly appropriate.

I'll probably make a million of these gathered wrapper dresses. They're just so EASY and so flattering. I'm not sure it was worth the extra work to squeeze out a dress from less yardage using my modified pattern. I think I'd rather spend the extra money on fabric and make a quick and easy wrapper dress than save a few bucks and spend more time on the modified pattern. I am happy that I went to the trouble though. I just love this yellow fabric and the color looks really good on me. :D

Victorian wrapper dress

I started volunteering at a pioneer farm in October. I already had the appropriate underpinnings (chemise, corset, petticoats) but nothing to wear them with, so I was really excited to have an excuse to venture into the Victorian period. As a child, I was obsessed with pioneers and read all of Laura Ingalls Wilder's books.

I'd been making due with some long, gathered skirts paired with a white blouse with white embroidery. It looked good, but wasn't all that comfortable to wear. Plus, I looked fat. So for the sake of my vanity, I decided I needed a dress.

I chose the Laughing Moon #120, 1840s-1860s Pleated Wrapper. Reasons for choosing it: unlined (except for the yoke), no darts to mess with, seemed straightforward and it's very pretty. The dress can be pleated or gathered; I pleated it because I used a medium-weight homespun fabric and I wasn't sure how well it would look gathered.

I was a little bit afraid that this dress would look dumpy but it doesn't. It looks amazing. I freaking love it.

The fabric is a lovely homespun plaid in shades of cream, olive, blue, and rose that had been in my mother's stash for over 20 years. I fell in love with it when I first saw it and took it for MY stash--a couple of years ago. I think it's perfect for this style of dress.

It was a bit of a challenge to find a big enough work space to lay out the pattern pieces, which are basically huge rectangles. I finally had to lay my cutting board and fabric out on my bed. My fabric is 60 inches wide; I can't remember how much of it I had, but I believe it was 5 yards. I had fabric leftover after cutting all the pieces out.

I was a bit stressed out about the pleats and transferring the markings to my fabric, and then I decided to just insert pins where the pleat markings were.

To make the pleats, I picked up one pin, brought it over to its partner and laid it on top, and pinned in place. It resulted in really beautiful, neat pleats.

The instructions said to stitch the pleats down along the waist line, but that was difficult for me, so I just stitched them down along their length. It keeps things nice and neat and looks more tailored.

I had an easy time putting this dress together, but the problems came with finishing the neckline and front. I'll edit this to show pictures of those instructions, but basically they were as follows:

1. Finish the neckline seam with piping (I didn't make piping, so I just made a strip of bias tape from the dress fabric to finish the neckline), stopping at the fold line for the front edges. The piping is long enough to extend to the front fold lines, but you are to leave it loose.

2. Fold down the top edge of the center front 5/8 inch. I'm presuming this is referring to the unpiped part of the neck line, but... How the hell do you do that? I consulted with two sewing friends and they were baffled as well. If you fold that part down, it folds down into a triangle. I ended up snipping the fabric at the edge of the piping so that I could do the fold.

3. Press the raw edge of the center front in 1/4 inch, then fold the front edge along the fold line and stitch down. That's straightforward, except... What am I supposed to do with the piping that's still dangling from the neckline? It's never resolved. I just ended up cutting it off with pinking shears.

4. Finishing the closures--it's simple enough if you want to put buttons all the way down, which I didn't. Buttons are expensive! That's a lot of buttons! I chose to go with the option of stitching down the center front from just below the waist to the hem. The instructions made zero sense to me. So the center front edges are completely finished at this point. You are supposed to overlap them at the center front line, then flip the overlap over the top of the underlap and sew along the fold line... How can that possibly look right. When you put hooks and eyes or buttons in the bodice, the front edges will overlap, but below the waist they are sewn together like a normal seam. I gave up and just plonked one edge over another and top-stitched it down.

It's not perfect--the plaids don't match up perfectly, but it's hard to tell unless you're looking closely. This isn't my fault. I marked the pattern pieces all along the edge where the cream strip in the plaid starts and stops, and I cut them out one layer of fabric at a time. But the stripes didn't match up with my markings when I laid them out on the second layer of fabric, and I have no idea why.

The hemline is shorter in the front than the back because: boobs. I hadn't thought to take that into consideration. It's really not very noticeable though, and it does make it easier to walk in the dress.

The hem was also slightly longer on one side of the front, so when I lined up the front edges to sew them together, I had to try to ease in the extra length on that side. I didn't do the best job at that, but after fussing with it for so long I finally just stopped caring and decided my next dress would be better. :D