Today let´s start with sewing! The fabric from stock is a lightweight wool with a very small diamond pattern, flatlined with a lightweight cotton fabric.
The front pattern with it´s two darts is quite a large pattern piece. With modern fabrics you can cut the whole thing in one, the extant dress is pieced to be cut from a fabric with a width of about 90cm.
Today I want to start this sew-along to show you some more details of the extant 1870´s wrapper dress as well as detailed pictures I made during the sewing process of my replica. My personal challenge was to use materials from stock only, what I have achieved.
Preparing for the WGT 2019 I bought some meters of a brown striped taffeta fabric. It was mentioned to become a coat and trousers for my husband. But when I was finished, I still had 6m of that fabric left. First I was thinking of a steampunk inspired bustle dress, but reflecting this idea several days I decided to make a 1780´s Redingote dress matching with my husband´s 1780´s suit.
As usual I tried to make lots of pics during the sewing process and as I really love the dress, it became the first sewing pattern for a series of 18th century patterns. Please don’t be impatient, I´ll try to launch some of the new patterns this year (including some men´s patterns).
This tutorial should help to facilitate the sewing process of the Redingote, some things will be slightly different as described in the sewing pattern. Pictures and a tutorial for the petticoat are missing.
Here you see the bodice from lining, all parts sewn together and the seam allowances pressed open. Every seam is covered with a boning channel, I made mine from twill tape. The side seams are curved, filling that channels with plastic boning serves, but with a stronger bend I´ll recommend not to follow the seams anymore. Let the channel run straight towards the shoulder seam.
For small folds (minimum ¼” (5mm)), measure the distance of the waistband or bodice section, where you want to attach the skirt.
Let´s say 35cm for an 18th century robe a l´Anglaise. Determine the width of folds and therefore the number of folds – with a width of 5mm there would be 70 folds each side (that makes a total of 140! folds).
Measure along the top edge of the skirt, from center back to the front edge, subtract about 1” from this measurement (e.g. 138cm-2cm=136cm). Divide this measurement by the number of folds (136cm/70=1,9cm). This is how much fabric each folds contains. Transfer that measurements to the wrong side of the top edge of the skirt. Mark the fold´s width (5mm) beside. As a rule, the skirt width has to be minimum three times the distance at the bodice/waistband.
In this sample I wanted to gather 45cm into 10cm, with pleats of 5mm. That means I divided 45cm by 20, that is 2,25cm for each fold. On the picture above I marked this 2,25cm at the wrong fabric side along the top edge. On the picture below, I marked the fold´s width of 5mm beside.
Sew two rows of gathering stitches with a thicker thread on both sides of the seamline. Above you see the wrong side, below the right fabric side of the skirt with the gathering threads already stitched.
When I first planned my redingote it seemed there was no time left to do all that soutache embroidery I wanted to do. Sadly the event I made the redingote for was canceled, but fortunately now I had enough time. As I am a little bit lazy I was searching for a method to attach about 70 meters of soutache braid neatly to the skirt.
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