Civil war era dress - undergarments

As this dress was made not for the re-enactment but for larp, the "correctness" was not so vital. I think proper undergarments are important for the dress to have right "shape", so I still try to make them but I am not so worried how they look and usually I am quite sloppy when I make them. They have to be easy as the main costume will take most of my effort anyway.

So, for this dress the undergarments I needed were the pannier, petticoat, shirt and corset.

For the a knee length shirt I had  piece of really fine cotton and nice cotton lace for the sides. It was sloppy without a pattern shirt I made. Took hour at maximum.

 

I opted the easy choice with corset - I ordered one very cheap pure white corset online. I was looking at more authentic ones but I had put already so much money into this project that I was just trying to do rest of it as cheap as possible. I was ready to receive some horrible "made in china" corset but to my surprise, it was really nice. The fabric was not as reflective as I thought. It wasn't cotton but it was matte.

For the pannier, also, a cheap way around. I have that kind of very simple and quite cheap modern wedding dress pannier that I bought like 10 years ago and never really used. It has been sitting in the closet but it was perfect. It is little bit too weak as the main fabric for the dress is very heavy but it was fine. It hold the dress perfectly and saved me the trouble of making the pannier.

As the pannier had three rings that were very visible without petticoat, I decided to make extra large petticoat. So It has a lot of ruffles, lot of fluffiness. I got really nice black cotton fabric for amazing price for it. Again - main effort went to working with the edges.. but I could use this petticoat with other dresses and I think it was time well invested.

<<Previous || Next>>

Civil War area dress 1

At the end of last year I signed up for western style larp taking place in Czech republic. I was reallye xcited when I got my casting as I got to play high society lady and that meant I could do one of those fancy dress projects. The story takes place 1866 so I decided I will go with the civil war area dress as it should be almost fine. 

The LARP was inspired by TV series "Hell on Wheels" so my first source of costume ideas was from the tv series. I really loved Lily Bell on the show and would have loved to play her but its fine. Playing char (who to my knowledge has not been in the show) gave me more freedom to choose my costume. 

The costumes from the TV series were all very practical and quite simple. I do understand that as they were living in that wild west. So, I did not get any specific good ideas from shows screencaps.

I started with gathering some general idea of the dresses and fashion of the area. I first thought that I do not like those dresses or.. I loved ball gowns but for that kind of out door event I needed something more casual. I did a lot of sketching and I think I finally fell for the era's fashion when I saw photos of Ada's dresses from movie "Cold Mountain". I particularly fell in love with the following:

So that was my starting point. I loved the ornaments at the sides and I really wanted to add them.

Then I started to look for a pattern. At that moment I did not know that simplicity has almost perfect pattern (4900) for that costume and the pattern I found was 4510:

So, I did some sketching to figure out what exactly do I want. I went to the fabric shop with following sketches:

So, I decided to use the pattern I got and add the bottom part of the jacket myself. I tried different options for skirt but decided to go with layers of ruffles. I also decided not to make it as a dress but more like separate parts: jacket and skirt. As I had no idea what kind of weather awaits me at the start of May, I might have needed to add layers below the costume or I was worried it may be too hot to wear and I might want to remove the jacket and wear simple blouse under it.

I actually spent a lot of time finding suitable fabric. I went to different fabric shops and returned empty handed. I wanted something that wouldn't be very thin and would be strong. I wasn't sure about the color either. I love bordeux red but I was worried that on that time it would be more suitable for "other kind of ladies". The shot on the pattern was done using purple fabric. My boyfriend tried to suggest me dark blue. I was still amazed by that amazing green fabric I found for my robe ala francais dress. I was torn until I walked to that amazing purple fabric with amazing pattern and texture on the clearance sale. 70% off. Wow. It was very expensive fabric still but I thought it is perfect.

Fabrics used in the project

 The pattern also stated that i needed contrast fabric (I went with the black lining fabric I have used before) and organza for the sleeves. I managed to find amazing piece of organza with gorgeous embroidery that I used for the sleeves and decorative layer on the collar.

So, after the research I figured out I need the following pieces:

• Jacket
• Skirt
• Blouse with organza sleeves (pattern had the sleeves as stand alone but I wanted them to be connected to a blouse I could wear without the jacket)
• Underskirt
• Bonnet
• Corset
• Pannier

With the corset and the pannier I took the easy way out: I had that kind of cheap "made in China" wedding pannier on my costume stack. Actually, it was good choice as I needed to travel on plane and other girls were having horrible time managing to make their pannier fit into their luggage. With my "wedding pannier" I was able to wrap it around itself three times and fit it without troubles. I ordered a cheap white corset and first I planned to change the overall fabric on it as on the image it looked to be really reflective horrible white material. In the end, it came out, it was really nice and matte so I used it the way it was.
Next>>

Robe à la Française - Petticoat & panier

Previous:Robe a la francaise - corset

So, now when I was done with the corset, I started with the actual dress. The dress itself will contain many pieces and I went with the most easiest one at first - petticoat. I had nice silver fabric for that. The main question for me was how will I decorate the petticoat.  As the fabric itself had quite a lot of pattern, I decided to go with just a frill at the bottom. As most of the petticoat is going to be hidden under the dress, I only made the frill at the front part of the petticoat.

Making the petticoat was quite easy. The petticoat contained two rectangular pieces. Both sides had been gathered and lined. For wearing the petticoat,it has ribbons that could be used to knot the petticoat around the waist. In order to have the side pockets (that became out to be brilliant to put hide things under the dress with a little bag) hold together, I used hooks on both sides to force it to be closer.

(sorry for not my so great drawings)

Petticoat is ready (without pannier)

 Then, the next step for myself was making the panier. I did not had pattern for it but just followed instructions from this great site: http://www.marquise.de/en/1700/howto/frauen/paniers.shtml The difference was that I decided to make not a long panier but quite short and modified the suggested pattern in a way that i could cut it out from two pieces of fabric. I used really strong linen and strong metallic corset supports (they were quite expensive but I knew that in order to hold that weight that the dress is going to be, I need something strong.

So, first I sewed two pieces of panier together and then I used satin ribbon to make tunnels where I pushed in the metallic corset supports. My mistake was that I did not thought that the metal is going to push itself out of the satin ribbon and I tried to fix it by adding extra pieces at the end of the tunnels from even stronger fabric and it helped a little but it is not perfect solution.

Using ribbons at the bottom to make the panier be in the right shape

To hold the panier in the right shape, I added four ribbons (atlas ribbon again) at the bottom of the pannier that could be used to knot together and therefore force the panier into the required shape. Also, there are ribbons at the top that are used to knot the panier around the waist.

In the end, I must say, panier was much more trouble than I expected and metal was hard to work and tunnels took long to make. I am not happy with my result as it contains some sloppy sewing but my excuse was - it is going to be under the dress: noone is going to see it.

Panier under the petticoat.

When I had finished with panier and tried petticoat under it, I realized that the petticoat was wider than my panier (and even thought I felt myself so wide when I tried panier on myself and had to go trough doors sideways). So, I took the pleads at the sides together more, almost 1/3 I would say as the original pattern seems to be for so much wider skirt.

Fixed petticoat with panier