1840s Morning Dress Sewing Tutorial Part 2 – The bodice

If you´re interested in sewing the dress you can purchase the sewing pattern via my Etsy shop. At the moment just a digital pattern version is available, the printed version is coming soon.

The first thing you should do is a mock-up of the lining layer. As you can see, mine got too short at the waist, had to add some centimeters. The armhole was pretty narrow as well, even with the seam allowances clipped. This picture was taken, when I was starting to take the pattern from the extant dress and adjust the pattern for my size. The original dress size is about EU 36, I need a size EU 42.

This is the back lining, with the back and side back from the fashion fabric lined up and basted in place. I tried to imitate the fine and regular back stitch from the extant dress, but I failed. Thank God, the print is hiding my stitching!

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1840s Morning Dress (Wrapper) Part 1 – The extant dress

Some weeks ago, I got this beautiful extant dress from the 1840s as a loan from a friend and – what a surprise – she asked me to make a sewing pattern out of it.

It is made from a fine block printed muslin and seems to be a very simple dress at first glance. At second glance, it offers many details, like the finest hand stitching I´ve ever seen, silk cord for piping and drawstrings and a very interesting sleeve cuff. To save as much fabric as possible, all bodice pieces are pieced, sometimes several times.

This kind of dress would have been worn in the morning, on hot summer days, or as a maternity dress, and is called a wrapper. Made from printed calico fabric, this style was worn by women of the working class during the pre-civil war era.

The original dress is completely hand-stitched. The fashion fabric is mounted on a tight-fitting, boned lining bodice and closes at the center front, the fullness of the front panel is gathered with drawstrings to fit the waist and kept closed with pins.

If you´re interested in sewing the dress, follow me to the next post.

The sewing pattern is available via my Etsy shop.

1890´s Skirted Jacket Part 1 – The Cut

Hi everyone!

In this tutorial I´ll show you how I made View B of my pattern #0520. The jacket is a pretty old project from the beginning of my historical sewing journey when I needed a coat or jacket for cold winter days. I browsed extant fashion plates, dresses and sewing patterns, decided to make View A of the jacket for my purposes. I developed the View B with the thought of a perfect winter jacket for history bounding.

First, some words about the pattern and how to cut all the pieces from the fabric. The maximum for my patterns are three sheets of the A0 format, sometimes difficult to realize for historical patterns. For this reason I can´t offer extra pattern pieces for all the pieces needed, sewing a historical dress or jacket, just trying to keep the pattern clear and easy to follow. Ever seen an extant pattern sheet from a fashion journal?

There´s just one pattern piece for the large leg-o-mutton sleeve of View A, with the smaller View B sleeves (or lining sleeves) integrated to the large one.

All my patterns come with a seam allowance of 5/8” (1,5cm), just where you can see the arrows (the back sleeve seam) you´ll have to add when cutting from the fabric.

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1890´s Skirted Jacket Part 2 – Sewing the bodice

Part 1 – The Cut

When sewing the jacket, I tried to document the sewing process as accurate as possible, paying special attention on all the tailoring techniques coming up throughout the instructions. I´m sorry for the coat fabric being absolutely not photogenic, and the threads merging with the background. I had to use all material from stash due to the Covid Pandemic. Some steps are deviating from the instructions of the pattern, because many things can be made in different ways with the same result. In the first post I showed you how to use the pattern and cutting the pieces from the fabric, now it´s time to sew!

A very important step is to mark essential lines on the bodice, like the center front, darts and waistline. Best serves a contrasting basting thread, visible on both sides and which can be removed without residues.  I recommend hand-basting the bodice for the first fitting, as well as basting the darts before stitching with the sewing machine.

Hand-basting allows more control over the fabric, without the risk of shifting the layers while machine stitching. This is important as well, when basting the lining to the backs and flatlining some selected pieces.

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1890´s Skirted Jacket Part 3 – The Bodice Lining and Peplum

Part 1 – The Cut

Part 2 – The Bodice

This is my padded lining, the fronts and back ready prepared. I had to be very careful pressing the seam allowances, as the polyester fibers where melting when pressing with an average heat.

This is the front lining with the dart just basted, to get some ease later. As you can see, I stopped basting about 2” (5cm) from the bottom edge as I´ll have to attach the skirt or peplum later.

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