Laurel Gown

Just having the bone in the seam was not enough to keep everything smooth, turns out that the best way for that to happen was to have the lacings go around the bone each time they enter the bodice. That shouldn’t be very surprising, since corsets also have the lacing supported a bone on the very edge by the eyelets or grommets.

I’m very excited by this lacing method, I think it will be a great way to have a very smooth look with no boning channel seam.  I make absolutely no claims as to it’s historical authenticity, this is purely a modern experiment.

Now I can start working on the actual pattern. I have a note on the pattern paper letting me know that it does not include any seam allowance, so I must add that now, as I trace out the pattern. I tend to prefer a 1 cm seam allowance, but use whatever works for you.

Pinning the fabric before you cut the layers out helps keep everything aligned.

This bodice is going to be three layers of fabric, a bright red silk for the outside and a linen interlining, then another linen layer for the lining. I keep the red and interlining layers together, essentially treating them as if they are one piece of fabric. I can sew the shoulder and side seams now, keeping that one centimeter seam allowance I mentioned before.

Once the seams are sewn, I like to open them because that makes them lay flatter on the finished garment, then I fold over the edges, again, about one centimeter, and pin them down. Then I can sew the seam allowances down, and you can see why I needed an interlining now:

With each stitch I am going through the seam allowance edge and tacking it down to just the white linen interlining, not letting the needle go all the way through the red fabric where my stitch would be visible on the surface of the bodice. I might not worry so much about visible stitch marks if I were sewing with a different fabric, especially wool, but this red shows every little pinprick.

The lining comes next, I set it on the bodice and line the pieces up as best I can and start tacking it down with pins so it doesn’t move. Then I can start folding the edge under and pinning the lining in place.  I like to hand sew my linings in for historical outfits, it’s not nearly as fast as machine bag lining, but you get a lot of control that bag lining lacks.

I could have sewn the entire lining shell together, and then hand turned all the edges, but instead I am putting the pieces in one by one. There are only three of them, so it didn’t make much difference which way I did it. This method is kind of nice if you ever need to alter your side seams later.

Whip stitch all those seams down, again taking care to not have your stitch end up on the outside of the fabric where it will be visible.

I left the front lacing edges unfinished so far, so I can still add in some canvas interfacing to reinforce the lacing holes, and I still want to decide how big I want my lacing gap to be. I’ll fold the edges temporarily for now, and try it on to see how it looks.

It looks pretty good, but I think I want a wider gap like I have seen on some late 16th century Venetian dresses.  The skirt is just going to be a giant rectangle, with a little bit of waist shaping to account for the point of the bodice in front and back.

I pleated the waist of the skirt down and pinned it on to my dress dummy, so I can see what the fullness of the skirt will look like. This is two widths of fabric, so a little over 100 inches at the hem. I decided that I wanted it a little fuller than this, because I am going for a very over-the-top look with this dress.

I sewed all the vertical seams of the skirt on the machine then ironed them open and folded the selvage or seam allowance in at the top of the front seam, since I need to split the skirt a bit here and I want it to be nice and neat.

The waist of the skirt is going to be hand-sewn onto the waist of the bodice, so first I need to finish the seam. Nothing fancy, just turning the edge twice and whip stitching it down.

Back to the bodice! I added the canvas interfacing and turned the front edge once and sewed it down by machine.

Now comes the tricky bit, I need to bone the front seam and also lace it at the same time. First, I measure out my lacing holes (I think I did about an inch apart here). Unfortunately I wasn’t quite thinking clearly, and set my holes to be spiral laced, forgetting that I wanted to ladder lace this dress. So after I poked one set of holes I had to redo them to fix my mistake.

Once the lacing holes were correct, I ladder laced the opening and cut my boning pieces down to size, and wove them through the ribbon bars. Then I could hand sew the seam allowance down, carefully stitching so that I went all the way through the canvas interfacing, but not all the way out to the front side of the bodice.

The downside of this lacing method is that you really do not want the ribbon to come undone out of the lacing holes, because you would then need to undo this whip stitching, fix the lacing, and then resew the edge down. It wouldn’t be the end of the world, but still annoying, so I made sure to use a very long ribbon that hopefully will not ever need to be undone in order to get in or out of the dress. I think I cut it about 3 meters long.

Lots of whip stitching later and I have a dress to try on!  First I put on my supportive layer, the polka dot farthingale, then I add a temporary canvas placket to cover the front of my under bodice. I slipped the red dress on over my head and tighten the laces until everything lies smooth. Now you can see the Glorious Mass of my new dress! The skirt on this thing is absolutely huge!

The hem does not need a lot of adjustment, it is already about right. I made it a little longer in the back on purpose, hoping to get a slight train effect. Looking back on this now, I kinda wish I had gone for a little bit longer in the back, maybe 5 – 10 inches.

Hem hem hem.

Since the length of the hem is good, I went ahead and finished the hem with my favorite stitch.