Starting my biggest costume project EVER | Robe a la Francaise gown pt 1

Hi, I'm Dixie, and sometime around last September, I got it in my head that maybe, just maybe, if I worked fast enough, I could make my big Robla Francaise gown project in time to wear to my local customer's guild's annual Georgian picnic in mid-November. Spoiler, if you watched my last video, but I got a vicious cold and ended up missing the entire event. But I did at least get some time to work on this gown. If you're new here, I bought a whole roll of striped silk taffeta that I knew was destined to be a Robla Francaise, the century-defining garment that is often a dream dress for many costumers. Originally, I wanted to take my time and not stress myself out on such a big project, but you know, why be reasonable when you have the option to make yourself suffer? With any new project, I worked from the skin out. You've already seen me make these pocket hoops in an older video, so the next layer is the petticoat. I've made plenty of petticoats before atop silhouette enhancers like false rumps, but this one was different because of the width of the side hoops, which makes the sides of the petticoats so much longer than the front or the back. So after some measurements and some math, I compared my numbers to an extant example from Patterns of Fashion 6. So my fabric is 54 inches wide. This is obviously separate panels, like, looks like six panels. I thought I would do three whole panels around, but that might be too much if this petticoat is only like 126 inches-ish. So maybe I don't do three whole panels of my fabric. Maybe I just do two and a half? That would certainly save me some fabric to use for other things. Skirts from this era range from about 90 to 130 inches around at the hem. I find between 110 and 120 to be the sweet spot, and I worried that just doing two panels of fabric would only amount to 106 inches. So I tore a strip of fabric about 10 inches wide to insert between the two full panels. Luckily, I could hide the seam easily within the stripes. Previously, I mentioned I wanted to make an under petticoat out of plain cotton, but I chose to skip ahead and just make the silk petticoat, which was for the best. I don't think I need the under petticoat after all. So in my last project, I had mentioned that the stitches were a little bit wonky, and I thought, well, maybe if I try a new needle, it will be okay. Clearly not. I'm getting like skip stitches, short stitches, longer stitches. It's not an even stitch length. Something is really wrong. So I think I'm gonna have to take this machine in today. I will probably do the other panel for this. Just sew it all up. That won't be too bad. This isn't like structurally deficient, and I would have had to hem the bottom by hand anyway. So okay, I guess that's what we're doing. Since this petticoat does not have a train, I went ahead and hemmed the bottom edge. Next comes pleating the waistline. And when you're working with such a long piece of fabric, it's important to mark the center front and back and the side points. I used the fork method, which I first tried on another 18th century petticoat that I haven't yet shared in a video, but this was one of those techniques where I just can't believe I never tried this sooner. It's so simple. It's so easy. The hardest part was going all the way downstairs to fetch a fork. And I'm glad it was quick and easy because I soon discovered that my work was in vain. So I realized I was actually doing this wrong. I was trying to pleat this and level it the way I would for like a skirt over a rump or something. But this is different. This one I need to just do measurements based on the side and the front and go from there. So I guess it's technically easier, but I already wasted a lot of time doing pleats that I don't need. This is the American Duchess guide book, and this is how you do it. So you can see rectangles higher on the sides, shorter in the front, which I've done something similar to this in another type of project, but that's like an 1840s dress. I don't know why I was getting ahead of myself and trying to do the pleats first, but oops. Pleating before cutting is how I've normally done 18th century skirts, so I just assumed I'd do the same here. And clearly that did not work out. So after more math, I trimmed the top of the skirt down and refolded about half of the pleats. I also cut the slits for the side pocket openings here. This would be simpler if the openings fell on a seam line, but since I added that extra panel sliver, that throws off my seam lines by just a tiny bit. Which is a shame because as I was pleating the rest of the skirt on the dress form, I soon figured out that I probably didn't need to even add that extra 10 inches of width to the skirt. It would have been plenty wide with just two full panels of fabric. To make the waistband, I slimmed down a strip of fabric that I had torn to get a level edge when I first started making my skirt panels. So at least that scrap did not go to waste. I finished off the waistband with a mix of machine and hand sewing. My attitude generally is if it doesn't get seen from the outside, I'll machine sew it. Otherwise I do it by hand, and sewing the underside of a waistband by hand doesn't take much time at all. Lastly, I threaded a length of twill tape through the waistbands for ties. Today is Monday, my kid is in school, so I have a few hours to work on this. Today we're going to work on the gown. I've spent most of last night referencing examples and patterns and books, so I think we can get it done. Or at least get started. This dress is going to be a little different than previous projects because I am draping the entire thing. And you know me, I prefer working with paper patterns. It's how I learned, it's what I know. But there are not many good patterns for this style of gown out there right now. The most famous one is an American Duchess simplicity pattern. However, I don't really trust the big pattern companies to do historical grading well. So here we are. I first worked on the lining by pinning and drawing on muslin. And this is me using three different marking tools because nothing wanted to work on this fabric for some reason. And I didn't want to use chalk because I'm not going to wash any of this, and I didn't want to risk transferring chalk dust to my silk. This piece became the center back, which is split partially up the middle to allow for a series of ties, which were used to tweak the fit. And of course, I used my tiny twill tape for this task. From there, I worked on the sides and the side front panels using the same method. Okay, I've sewn up one half of this bodice lining. I did try it on just to make sure that the armhole fit, the armhole does fit. The shoulder is a little wonky. It's a little too long up here, but I figured that would be the issue because this is not an exact replica of my shoulder line. So I would rather it be too long than too short. So I'm going to keep it as is, make the other side, unpick this out, and then when I layer it all over and I do the sleeve, I'll do the final fitting for the shoulder. But the rest of it looks pretty okay. So next, I'm going to do the other half, and then we get to do the fun part, the pleats. This is the longest section of the gown, spanning from the back neck well onto the floor. And I was nervous about cutting such a big piece of silk, and also because I had to consider how my fabric was going to wrap all the way around my body. At first, I thought I'd make the entire gown out of two widths of the fabric, with the seam making the center back. If that was the case, I needed to start my pleats lower down to accommodate the extra room needed for the shoulder strap, which is what I'm doing here. I referenced the American Duchess guide for how to do these big back pleats, which don't make much logical sense until you physically fold the fabric. It's a trust the process kind of moment. Okay, I've got my pleats in place, and I put it back up on the dress form just to make sure everything looks okay. I think it's okay so far. Just looking at the sides over here, I think I am going to have to add another panel in the side. It's just not enough volume to go over the sides without, I think, pulling on the dress. I don't know, we'll see. I think this is about all I can get done today, in the sewing room. I have to go pick up my daughter from school, but I may do the hand stitching of these pleats downstairs tonight. We'll see if it gets done. Well, surprise, surprise, I did not sew those pleats, so I guess I'm going to do that today, right now. Sewing through at times seven layers of densely woven silk was no joke. This took as long to do as hemming that entire petticoat. Next came the tricky part, attaching the silk to the lining. And I really struggled with aligning the layers symmetrically and figuring out how the pleats were supposed to lay over the lower back. And it was just so much fabric to wrangle. So the next step is to pin the back underneath where the pleats are. So I've got the pleats. It needs to be pinned to the lining, like here's my waistline. And I did sew it over here. Just basted it and it wasn't laying right. I realized I did it wrong. So I took it out, repinned it. But it's like not fitting well in the waist. I don't know. But trying to sew inside this pleat into the lining flat is really difficult. And there aren't very good images here in the book for this step. It's just this. They just have you sew it flat on the table. And that clearly did not work for me. So this is going to be a little bit of a trial and error. All right, I re-sewed into these pleats back here. It doesn't really seem like it, but there is stitching there. And it is holding better than it was before. I think it's okay. But man, this has been a bit frustrating. And I think I'm going to take a break for today because this is just too much stuff. One problem I had was that this fabric was never going to lay properly without adding extra width to the skirt. It was just too tight over the hoops. So I ripped some more silk and built up enough courage to cut into the giant silk panel. And oh my god, I am holding the scissors here like some kind of fabric butcher. But I swear, I had a plan. I trimmed up the back to make it match the lining and basted everything down. Okay, she is back on the dress form. I feel like this whole project is just putting her on the form, taking her off the form, putting it on the form, taking off the form over and over again. Now that I have the back piece kind of cut out and pinned, I'm feeling a lot more confident. And the next thing I was going to do was insert the side panels that I had torn. But I think I'm actually going to work on the front instead. So the way this dress is made, you've got this is the skirt portion, this is the front, that's the back. If you see, this is basically just one giant rectangle with another rectangle kind of cut out over here. So I want to keep this section of leftover fabric as intact as possible, which means I don't want to just go hacking halfway down the whole panel to split the skirt. So I'm going to work on that and then come back to that. The gown I'm referencing has a pleat at the shoulder, so I wanted to mimic that design element. It also has a kind of wedge taken out at the waist, which was harder to copy. I knew this wasn't going to be the final look of the front, but it was a good enough place to start. So I got to cutting and at last I split the sides to add that extra skirt panel. I used one side of the body to cut out the other side. So at this point during the process, I stopped to work on the stomacher, but to keep this video streamlined, I wanted to show that part in the next installment. So for this upcoming clip, you'll see that I have the stomacher on and that's why. So I put the whole thing on. It's so big, I can't even fit it in this mirror. I still need to work on the skirt pleats over here, but I'm going to save that. I just need to get this bodice fully fitted because I'm going to go to my friend's house tomorrow and she's going to help me with the sleeves and the shoulder, hopefully, because that is not attached at all. I was having a problem with working it on the dress form. This side just did not want to lay flat, so I was a little bit concerned, but now that I have it on, it is pretty much laying flat and it's creating the pleat up at the shoulder like how I wanted it to, so I'm feeling more confident. But I do need to get this stitched or basted to the lining all around, and I need to patch this gap right here. And that's where I'm ending this video. I've got the bulk of the main shape done and fitted, and while I'd love to say that the hard part is over, well, you'll just have to tune in next time where we will be drafting the stomacher, making buttons, fitting sleeves, learning new skills, and making some mistakes. So please stick around next month for part two of... Honestly, I have no idea how many videos this is going to take. In the meantime, you can check out some of the other videos in this series. Thank you so much for watching and commenting and subscribing. I'd love to know your experiences if you've ever made this style of gown, or at least send me your encouraging thoughts because I'm going to need it. And until next time, happy sewing.