Making an 1870s Victorian Era Bustle Dress

I got invited to a costuming picnic on the 5th of June. I was just going to wear one of my Edwardian costumes. I was like, I'm not going to make something new for this. Like, that's silly. Like, it's fine. It's fine. But then my fabric came in and I was like, let's see if I can do it in time. So here we are. Another very close deadline. But I'm not going to stress about it. If I don't get it done, I have Edwardian clothes I can wear. But I'm going to try because wouldn't it be great to be able to wear this bustle dress to an event. So I don't know why I do this to myself. So I'm going to make the bustle dress. I've got my three truly Victorian patterns here. I've got this beautiful striped cotton lawn. And then I'm also going to be using this navy cotton lawn. Yes, I know it is the same color palette from my last video. I'm apparently determined to make this color palette work. I just like blue and green. I just like blue and green, okay? So anyway, let's work on a mock-up, I guess. Thanks to my lovely husband who took my measurements. We are notoriously bad at taking each other's measurements. So let's see how well we did. Now we get to choose a size. I think we must have done back length really wrong. Hey, Derek, can you take my back length again? 18 is not on this chart. After remeasuring, we are going to sit there. So I'm basically going to do B for all of my bodice measurements. And I guess I'll do A for my sleeve measurement. I have tiny arms apparently. I am going to get out of all of these undergarments and put on my regular clothes. And I'm going to make this mock-up out of this terrible blue poplin fabric from my last video that I never, ever, ever, ever want to use again in clothing. So I'm going to use the rest of this for a mock-up. Mock-up. I think it fits well up in this area. It's clearly too long in the waist. I think there's some wrinkling back there that might go away once I shorten it. My waist is here. And here's where the peplum is sewn. So it needs to go up like an inch. Is that an inch? That's my waist. Other than that, I think the shoulder is a little bit wide. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's where it should sit. So I'm going to fix these two things and come back to it and see if that fixes the fit problem. Honestly, it's not terrible. Cute. I'm going to be pretty. It's not perfect. Like, when I do this, it does that. I'm assuming that has something to do with the arm's eye. But like, I don't know how to fix that. I feel like it's sitting close to my underarm. I don't know. Maybe I can do some research tonight and figure that out. But if not, it looks good. It looks good at the waist. There's my waist. It fits perfectly there. There's no, like, weird bunching anywhere that I see. I may call it good enough. So last night, I got a wild hair and decided to cut out size A. Which, I think the back for size A is spot on. The side seams are perfectly at my side seam. But it's clearly too small in the chest area. I don't know if I'm ever going to get this fit right. But I'm going to try to cut out mostly B. I think I like the shoulders and the underarms of A. But I think I definitely need more room here. But it fits well in the waist. But I don't know how to fix the chest. But I know how to take out from the waist. So I'd rather the chest fit and then take out from the waist. Okay, just as I suspected, there is a little bit of room. But I mean, there's going to be two other layers and bones. So I don't want to make it too tight. Because I want to leave room for those layers and bones. So I think this will be fine. This will at least be fine for my first ever Victorian gown. I'm still getting like a little bit of movement when I raise my arms. But it's not nearly as much as it was. This is how it's going to be. It's really hard for me to just go, okay, we're done. We're moving on to the real thing and be okay with this fit. I'll probably make many, many more Victorian gowns in my lifetime, hopefully. And each one will get better. And I will have more knowledge. I just don't have the knowledge right now. And that's fine. That's what this is all about. It's all about learning and figuring it out. It has taken me all day to cut out the striped fabric. Painstakingly cutting out every individual piece. Because I'm pretending like I know how to pattern match. I need to stop getting geometric patterns. Because I cannot pattern match. But that doesn't stop me from being very fussy about it. So it's taken me all day. I still need to cut out the lining and the interlining. But I'm tired of cutting. So I am going to work on the skirt. And hopefully get the skirt pieced together by the end of the night. First things first, I have to figure out which is my left from my right. Because I need to put the placket in the left side. And I, as a 33 year old woman, still have no idea what my left from my right is. Surprise! Guess what? This skirt has pockets! I had no idea that this pattern had pockets. But it has pockets! I'm not gonna lie, the pocket instructions confused me. So the first time I accidentally sewed the pocket to the right side of the garment. The second time, hey, it's on the inside of the garment. But the raw edges are on the outside. Third time's a charm. Moment of truth. Yes! Finally! This is where we got last night. Basically, the skirt is completely pieced together. I need to sew in the waistband. And then gather up all of this into the back. Into the tiny space that is left on the waistband. Yeah, and then I'll just let it hang for a while. So that it, you know, does its thing before I hem it. On to the overskirt. Now, I usually don't like to machine hem. But this is going to get covered in a ruffle or trim or something. So I am not worried about how this looks. Couldn't figure out which was the right way to pleat. But then you know what? If I had read on to the next sentence, it says pleat should fold up on correct side. I fail instruction reading. Pattern matching. Yeah. I'm not gonna lie, the entire time I was making this overskirt. I was convinced I had done something wrong. But look! It worked! It's an overskirt! I did it. Well, I've got my lining, my interlining, and my fashion fabric. For the interlining, I had intended to use this canvas. But when I pulled it out, it just seemed a little thick. The pattern suggests either a twill or a denim. And so I went to Joann's to see if I could find those things. And literally the only light colored twill or denim they had was a stretch denim. And that is definitely not what I wanted. So I went ahead with the canvas. Hopefully I don't regret it. But I guess we'll find out. Let's flatline this and hope that it works. Okay, making sure I have pinned everything correctly before I sew it down. And realize I have made a mistake. Yep. Looks good. The darts ended up being a little bit bulky. So I just decided to cut them down a little bit in the middle. So I'm working on the boning for the bodice. And the instructions say for the back two seams to use spiral steel boning. And I was like, I don't have spiral steel boning. The plastic boning is just gonna have to do. So I went and I pulled out my boning. And underneath it was the two spiral steel bones from my corset kit. And I went, wait, are those 11 inches? And I measured them. They're 11 inches! They're exactly what I need! I have spiral steel bones! Thanks corset kit! I followed the directions for all of the boning except for the ones at the darts. I decided to just hand stitch those in. I haven't quite figured out all of the trimming that I want to do yet. But I know I want to add a pleated ruffle at the bottom of the sleeve. So I think I'm going to do that before I add the lining. So that that pleated ruffle is in the seam. So I've just put on the mock-up to see where I need to cut off the sleeve. Because the sleeves are a little long for what I want to do. So I've just marked it here and then I'm going to measure it and cut it on my actual sleeves. If my calculations are correct, and they probably aren't, I basically am adding what I took off. I took off four and a half inches. So this is five and a half inches for seam allowance. And it is 26 inches wide for one inch pleats. I don't know if that's correct. It's probably not. But I don't think I'll need longer than this. So this is the pleating pattern that I came up with. But I don't like it. I think this will be great for like the hem when I need to conserve all of the fabric. Because I'll have a lot of pleating to do. But I think it just needs to be denser in the sleeve. So let's try pleating 43 inches. Okay, yes. This was so worth it. The hardest part was actually just ironing all of this nice and flat at the end. I didn't use the most precise method to pleat. But I did use the most efficient way. And then I just ironed it flat at the end which was much more difficult than I expected it to be. But I got it. It looks beautiful. I'm so excited about these sleeves. They're so cool. And I'll probably end up adding more ruffles and whatnot later on once I figure out what the heck I'm doing with all the trim. I need to put these sleeves on the bodice. And then the lining on the bodice. And then buttons. And then I'll have a working garment. And if nothing else, next weekend I'll have a dress to wear. Now it's just a matter of how frilly I want it to be and how much time I have to make it frilly. So let's get this bodice finished. And then we can do the fun stuff of trimming. Oh my gosh. As long as this took me to do, I am not looking forward to the ruffles I'm going to have to do. Why did I pick the 1870s? Why did I pick the time when like more is more? Okay, here's the deal. I put this on and I'm a petite person normally. Like I'm five foot and very skinny. But this dress makes me look even tinier. So I'm afraid if I add a whole bunch of trimming to it, it's just going to swallow me whole. And then it's going to wear me instead of me wearing it. So I think I'm going to have to rethink my plan of what I put on this. Which sucks because the whole reason I picked 1870s is because of all the trimming. Because I wanted to force myself to put a whole bunch of trimming on it. Because I feel like I make very plain things. And I want to explore the world of not making plain things. Because I want to make exciting things. I want people to be excited about what I make. But I just don't think it's going to work. So I think I'm going to put a pleated ruffle at the bottom. I'm going to put some kind of ruffle. I don't know if it's going to be pleated or gathered on the overskirt. And then a ruffle on the neckline. Again, I don't know if it's going to be pleated or gathered. I haven't decided that yet. And then to keep with my green and navy blue theme that I wanted, I have all of this velvet ribbon. And so I'm going to put this on all of those ruffles. And I can save all of this navy blue lawn for another project. It may be a slight bit small. But I guess I'd rather it be too small than look like it doesn't fit me. And I think it'll stretch out. Because all of this is cotton and cotton tends to stretch. So I think, especially when I wear it next weekend when it's like 90 degrees outside, I think it'll fit my body really well. Hopefully. I mean, I can get it on. It just might be slightly tight. This actually came together way faster than I expected it to. Though the bottom ruffle did take forever. I bought these little clips on Amazon. And oh my gosh, were they a lifesaver when it came to pressing these pleats. And I actually have a lot of fabric left over. I mean, to be fair, I was planning on doing more ruffles. But I really like what I have going on right now. The bottom pleat I think is 14 inches long. And I used five widths of the entire fabric. Which I think this fabric is 58 inches. So it's a lot of fabric, but oddly less fabric than I expected it to be. On the overskirt, I used a width of the fabric and it's three inches long. And then I took a strip that was three inches long and fold it in half into a tube. And that's how I was able to get these pleats up here. I ended up having to sew all this stuff around the neckline by hand. Because oh is it dense fabric up there. Other than that, I'm just going to sew the rest of this velvet ribbon by machine. But I have one more thing I have to do before this project is complete. And that is a hat. So this hat I believe is a 1940s hat. It is like the most awesome thing I own. But it also works really well as an 1870s hat. So I am just going to take off the ribbon and the netting that I have on here now. Don't worry. I will put it back on later. But I have a yard of this blue velvet ribbon and some navy blue ostrich feathers. Which is honestly why I wanted to include the navy in this dress. Because I wanted to use these feathers. And I'm going to make this hat look like an 1870s hat. Ah yes, I love tree.