I made a Historically Accurate Belle Gown || Historical Disney Costume

You know what I said that I had a choice to make and it could either turn out great or be horrible? Well I think I made the wrong choice. Hello everyone and welcome to a new video. So in today's video I'm going to be focusing on trying to make a historical Belle costume. Now instead of going the route where I placed Belle back in her era which would have been the 18th century, I'm going to be changing things up a and making something from the early 19th century. And the reason I've decided to place her in the early 19th century is because of this gown that I found on Pinterest. So this is actually a fashion plate from 1828 and when I saw it it just screamed Belle to me so I knew I had to try and recreate it. Now my deadline for this project is the beginning of April to middle of April because I really want to try and get photos of this in the cherry blossoms that are starting to bloom because I just think it would be so beautiful. I do have a little bit of a dilemma though because the deadline is quickly approaching. I do not have time to make a full set of undergarments that would go under this project so instead I'm going to be fudging it with the undergarments that I already have from other projects. So hopefully that all works out and I can fake it and once I have time in the future then I'll be able to make proper 1830s stays to go under this. As you probably noticed several of my friends from in the costuming community are also making historical Disney cosplays so if you haven't seen those yet I will link their videos down below and if you're here from one of their videos thank you for coming to my channel. So without further ado let's get started. Okay so we are here, we've changed locations, technically still the same location just a different angle but we are going to talk about fabric now. Now I have a bit of a story with the fabric. The chaos that ensued from trying to get this fabric is quite crazy. I've ordered this fabric on three different occasions. They're actually from three different companies that I ordered from and only one time did it get delivered which was the third time. So I was able to get this beautiful butter yellow silk for a very good price. So I have several yards of this for this project. Now when you look at this picture here if you zoom in you can see that there's some type of layer over top of that. So I assume that it is organza and so for that I picked up some beautiful organza to kind of mimic that style. So I hope I have enough because this organza it appears is also in the sleeves and in the front bodice area. So fingers crossed I have enough. We might have to make these skirts slightly narrower to make sure I get all the different pieces of organza that show up on this outfit. Together these will be quite beautiful. The organza looks a lot more darker I suppose when there's layered up like this but once it's separated it blends together quite nicely. Now to give these skirts some structure I'm going to be underlining it or flat lining it with cotton organdy. So I picked this up online. I don't know if it's actually supposed to be this firm. This still needs to be washed before I do anything with it so we'll see how that goes. And then finally for the bodice I have a canvas. Now I might be changing the canvas for some linen. I'm not exactly sure yet. When I was looking or researching online some suggested a lighter fabric others suggested a more sturdy fabric so I'm going to experiment to see which one I like best. So those are the fabrics I have planned and now it's time to talk about the pattern. So these are the costume books that I'm using for reference in my outfit. This I'm using for construction details. I think I have a page marked in here. So I'm using this gown for the construction details for my outfit. For the skirt pattern I am planning on using the 1827 to 1829 skirt pattern which is slightly gored but does have mostly rectangular patterns in it. So that is that one. The bodice pattern I'm using is from period costume stage and screen and that is going to be bodice B. So that is this one right here. So this is the main bodice that I'm using. It's going to be fairly straightforward I hope and then it'll give me the outcome I want. Now the sleeves in this project, if you look at the sleeves, look like they have two separate pieces. So the outer layer is the organza and the inner layer is silk. Now the organza layer does look larger so for that I'm going to be using this pattern here which is mostly just a circle or I guess it is a circle and then has another circle cut out and then that's gathered in. And then for the inner sleeve I am going to be using this pattern here. So it looks the same as that right there. So I think it'll turn out quite well. That is the plan and all I need to do now is enlarge the patterns. While Sewing Marika transfers over those patterns I want to take a moment to talk to you about the sponsor of today's video, Acorn TV. Acorn TV is the largest commercial free British streaming service with an extensive library of hard-to-find gems, timeless classics, and your new favorites from Britain, Australia, Ireland, and beyond. And you can watch all of them for just $5.99 a month on any of your favorite streaming devices. Now this is my second time working with Acorn TV and I personally really enjoy watching them while I'm hand sewing in the evening or with a nice giant bowl of popcorn and I'm just relaxing on the couch at the end of the day. Also with new releases coming to Acorn TV weekly there's always something new to watch. I just started a new series called the Broken Wood Mysteries and it's a quirky New Zealand murder mystery type show and so far I'm enjoying it and I'm looking forward to the next episode. To escape to Britain and beyond without ever leaving your seat try Acorn TV free for 30 days by going to acorn.tv and using my promo code enchantedrose. Thank you so much Acorn TV for sponsoring today's video. Okay so this is the pattern that I have so far. I am going to try mocking this up and see how it goes. I've marked my waistline on here so hopefully that will be fine. So notice here the green line I have marked on my pattern. I was looking at the Workwoman's Guide and they recommended that the shoulder be on the straight of grain and the front of the bodice be on the bias. And then this pattern, because I am on the larger side, it also recommends that the straight of grain travels from this point up to this point. So there's just a little bit of stretch in here and then the back panel is on the straight of grain and then this will be on the bias. So a lot of bias and straight of grain working together for this pattern and we'll see how this goes. With the gown mocked up I then transferred any new markings to the pattern and traced off any patterns that were very different. And with that complete it was time for the scariest step in the whole process, taking the first cut into the silk. To make this easier on myself I decided to cut the skirt panels out first. I cut two panels that were 45 and a half inches long times the width of the fabric and then pulled a single thread to get a straight line to follow for cutting. My skirt also had two shaped side panels that were cut on an angle so they were six inches at the top and 13 inches at the bottom. And with first cut anxiety gone I started cutting out the rest of the And because my theatrical sewing techniques carried over with me from school I like to mark up my stitching line with a friction pen before I cut everything out. Theoretically these lines should disappear once they've been touched by heat but that's not always the case sometimes so it's always good to test it on fabric before you use it otherwise you may have ghosting lines. Before cutting my bodice out of the silk I like to cut out the inner layer of my fabric as that's the side I'm going to be seeing after it's been flat lined to the silk. And once the under layers are cut out I then place it on top of the silk and cut out the rest of the bodice. And finally it's time to cut the organza. Now most of the time organza can be a real pain to cut but thankfully this time it wasn't too bad for me. And it's done! Well at least the cutting is. The cutting took a lot longer than I anticipated but it is for the most part I'd say 99% done. I still have two more things to cut out but I'm waiting until later on to cut those out. So anyways I have my organza skirt, I have my waistband, sleeves, more sleeves, skirt, and bodice. So the next thing I need to do is flat line all my pieces. This process will probably take me the next couple hours so let's get started. A few of the organdy pieces didn't really match perfectly with the silk layer but I wasn't too worried about it because once everything had been flat lined I was going to serge the edges for a nice clean finish. With all the pieces flat lined I cut out the last thing I needed before I could put the bodice together and that is two inch wide bias strips for all 940 inches or 24 meters of piping for pretty much every seam on this gown. Now I didn't feel like spending a pretty penny for the piping filler so I used three strands of cotton yarn that I twisted together and zigzagged for a more affordable option. It takes a little while to create this but I think it's a great alternative if you don't have any filler on hand. Once I'd finished making the filler I simply folded the bias in half and using a zipper foot sewed the cord into the fold and with the piping finished I moved on to sewing the bodice starting with the darts. Next I added the organza overlay to the front of the bodice. I gathered up the center front of the upper half of the organza overlay to create a lovely ruched effect over the bust and then I pleated the opposite side over a tailor ham and pinned it in place. And then I repeated the steps on the opposite side and stitch it in place with a quick basting stitch along both sides. And once that was finished I serged or overlocked around the edges to keep them nice and tidy. Piping is a very popular addition to 19th century garments. I added it to the center front seam, the side back seam, and the shoulder seam first. Most of the time piping is only added to the seams that won't be majorly altered. After the piping has been added to one side of the bodice pieces I then stitch the seams together. And for a clean finish along the neckline I also added piping there as well. So something I like to do for my bodices if I ever need to do alterations is leave this little extra bit in here just in case I need to make it longer. But for now this is just going to be folded down and the placket is folded back. And so that's all nice and tidy in there but I still have the extra bit in there if I need it. So I'm gonna start whipping down the neckline so this will be all nice and clean. I am really happy with how the bodice is looking so far. The neckline came out really nicely. Everything is looking really good. So the next step is I'm going to pipe the sleeves and then I'm going to sew up the sleeves and get those in there. And then once the sleeves are in I can put on the collar trim thing. I still don't know what I'm going to call that thing. It's like a collar but it's not really. So that is what I need to work on next. And then I can start on the skirt. The sleeves consist of the inner sleeve, cuff, outer sleeve, and piping. First I gather the top and bottom of the inner sleeve and stitch up the underarm seam. For the outer sleeve I've added a safety pin to the right side of the fabric to keep myself from accidentally stitching the layers in backwards because that totally didn't happen when I made mock-up. Nope, not at all. I then gathered up the inner and outer circle of the outer sleeve and stitched it to the inner sleeve. For the cuff I stitched up the short ends and then added piping to one side. And then I stitched the sleeve to the right side of the cuff and finished off the cuff with a stitch in the ditch along the piping to hide the stitching from the exterior. The first sleeve is in! It took like two hours to get it in but it's in. Doesn't look half bad either. And there's no stuffing in here yet. There still has to be puff stuffing. I still have to make that but uh yeah. On to the next one. After four hours of work the sleeves are in! This is exciting. So I have completed everything actually on my list that I wanted to do today. So that's very exciting and I think I'm going to continue working and just try and finish up the bodice. And lastly I added the collar bit to the bodice also by stitching in the ditch along the piping. Okay so this is my first I guess official try on of the bodice. I've got pretty much everything attached. I only have it pinned just at the lower back because that's all I can reach right now. Overall the fit is pretty good. I think because I'm wearing an 1890s corset the waist is like cinched in quite a bit more than it would be in an 1830s corset. So it is a bit loose right now. I don't know if I'm actually going to bring it in or not. I could bring it in. The next step is I need to apply the waistband to this and then I can attach the skirts. For ratio I need to have the bodice on to figure out where I'm placing the waistband. There is probably good but overall it's looking really good. The sleeves are a little droopy right now because I don't have any fillers in them. So that will be fuller once I get the filler in there and then it's just onto the skirts. So I've just pinned the waistband in place and I will deal with the back once I get it off myself. I think it's looking really good. I can hardly wait to get the skirt on here. It's gonna be like floof. Okay so I have the waistband all pinned on all the way around. It's looking pretty good. I just need to actually sew it in place. I'm gonna be doing some hand sewing on that so that can wait for the moment until I've got some more things to hand sew. So before I finish that I am going to start working on the skirts. Now I've been trying to figure out how I'm going to actually attach the skirt to the waistband. Looking at historical dresses there are several different ways they can be attached. The waistband can first be finished and then the dresses or the skirt is attached to it afterwards. Or the skirt can actually be attached inside the waistband how you would like a normal modern gown. Now because my gown is going to have both knife pleats and cartridge pleats I'm trying to figure out a way where I can do that and still have a nice clean finish on the inside because I love clean finishes. It's like it just makes me happy when I see a gown has clean finishes on the inside. So anyways what I'm thinking of doing is I'm going to attach this waistband on, pleat the skirt, and then attach it to the inside of the the bodice and then put a inner waistband to cover that for a nice clean finish. And then when I want to switch to the cartridge pleats in the back, since my skirt has three panels, two of the panels are going to be pleated and then the third panel is going to be cartridge pleated. So when I get to the third panel the plan is is to leave that loose and then just finish the rest of the waistband. So the skirt will be attached partly but it'll still be cleanly finished. I'm not making sense at all. I think I'm just gonna start doing what I'm trying to explain and then hopefully it'll make sense that way. The skirt panels went together very quickly and I realized now that the only thing I didn't show was the fact that I left two five and a half inch openings along each side of the front and side panels so I could access the pockets under my dress. Because in what world does a ballgown not need pockets? The organza layer is the same as the taffeta layer except I stitched the seams up with french seams because the organza loves to fray. So I reached a bit of a standstill. I'm at a part where I have to make a choice and it could either be the right choice or the wrong choice. And I don't know what the choice is going to be until afterwards. So what I have to do for the organza over layer I need to add the triangles onto it. But before I can add the triangles I need to figure out what length it'll be and before I can figure out what length it will be I need to have this skirt finished. But before I can finish this skirt and figure out how long it needs to be it needs to be attached to the bodice. But before I can do that the organza has to be attached to this so that can be attached to the bodice at the same time. So I've kind of reached a part where it'd be easier to attach the triangles when they are flat but I can't attach them until I figure out the hem length. And so I don't know what to do. And I've just been staring at my fabric for the last, I don't know, 10 minutes trying to figure out what to do. I don't know. You'll see what happens when I figure this out. And so after much debating I decided to go ahead and attach the skirt to the bodice before adding the triangle ruffles because I was really unsure of what the finished hem length would actually be. To pin the skirt to the bodice I matched up the center front and side seams of the skirt and then pleated the fabric in between in place. And then using an applique stitch I hand sewed the waistband to the skirt. So this is where I'm at right now. I am really loving how this is looking. I've just attached this ribbon on here with this belt buckle to just kind of give myself an idea of what it's going to look like. The main skirt is attached except for the back. So all of this needs to be cartridge pleated into this section right here. So that is what I'm going to do next. I marked the finish edge of the skirt a quarter inch down every half inch for the first row of stitches and then repeated this pattern a half inch down from the first marks and then added a running stitch through the marks with a heavyweight thread. For cartridge pleats to work these stitches need to be even or else it won't give the desired effect. And because the thread is going to be staying in I like using a button thread because I know it'll be strong enough. Once I finished stitching I then gathered the pleats to the correct length and knotted the ends and then whipped each individual stitch to the finished waistband of the bodice. The skirt is on! So the dress is pretty much done. All I need to do is the ruffles that go along with the hem of this. I need to put the back closures in and then I think that's it. Oh and I need to make the belt for the buckle. So other than that I'm loving how this looks. These sleeves are a little deflated right now because I don't have the puffers in but that'll be fine once the sleeves are all done. But oh my goodness I'm loving how this is looking. It looks so good! Okay time to get back to work. After confirming the hem length I added a two inch wide horsehair crin along the bottom to help hold out the skirt even more. So this is all the fabric I have left to make for the ruffles. I think I have enough for all the ruffles but the problem is is it's going to be very difficult to actually put it on here now because it's on it's on a dress it would have been so much easier if it had just been on the flat but I don't have that option anymore because I needed to make sure that the hem was long enough or it wasn't going to be too long before I applied the new trim. So we're going to see if I can actually attach the ruffles now like the fashion plate. I have a bunch of janky math um trying to figure out the depth of these so I divided the amount of the skirt by the amount of ruffles that I have or that I'm going to need so I'm going to need eight triangles to go around the bottom. So I divided the skirt by the amount of triangles that I need which came out to 18 but for each triangle there's going to be a wedge of fabric so I'm going to split that in half and that gives me this right here. So each triangle is going to be 9 by 40 is what I was originally hoping so I can get the double width but I don't actually have enough fabric to do the double gathering so it's going to be 35 inches and so essentially I'm just cutting out a rectangle that is 9 inches by 35 inches and then one of these rectangles gets flipped and gets turned in like this and then it's going to be gathered down to the correct length and then it's going to be applied to the dress. But now the question is is whether I can actually apply it to the dress easily or if it's just going to be a pain in the butt so we'll see. Wish me luck. Now you can't actually see it here but I did draw out all the rectangles for the ruffles and I'm not just chaotically free cutting. Once I finished cutting out the rectangles I then drew another line a half inch in for seam allowance and then drew a line from corner to corner to cut out the triangles and then I stitched two rows of gathering stitches along each side of the triangle. So this is just a quick sample of what it's going to look like. This organza it presses beautifully like I just steamed it and all the gathers went into place so I really like how this is looking. I just need to stitch the piping in between the layers and then around the edges and then I can attach it to the skirt. I created the first sample so I could make sure then blasted them with steam to help set the gathers in place and to slightly tame them. Next the piping was applied down the center of each triangle and then the opposite side was added. And finally each triangle was finished off with the piping around the edge. I'm so close to finishing the dress. The ruffles are done. I completed them last night so here they all are here. I have no idea how long these actually took. If I had to guess I would say between eight to ten hours to make all of these. So that that was an insane amount of work and I did not expect it to take that long. So I am going to start attaching these to the dress now and then hopefully I can finish it all up today. I really need to stop jinxing myself by saying I'm going to finish things by the end of the day because that almost never happens. Now before applying the triangles I sorted them into two different piles. The pretty ones and the not so pretty ones. And from there I narrowed it down even more until I had the prettiest looking one for the center front of the gown. Since the bottom of the skirt was flat I knew I could use that to help me keep my triangles straight. So with the help of my handy dandy friction pen and my ruler I was able to mark out the line for the center of the triangle to follow. I applied the triangles to the center front sides and back first and then added the remaining triangles in between to make sure that everything was symmetrical. And to keep myself from accidentally pinning into the taffeta below I kept my long ruler underneath as I pinned. And here comes the chaos. You know what I said that I had a choice to make and it could either turn out great or be horrible? Well I think I made the wrong choice. So I discovered that the weight of the rest of the dress was pulling the organza terribly causing the feed dogs to kind of chew on the organza. So after taking a long break I figured out a way to sew on the triangles without that happening but there were many tears before I figured that out. Once that was done I finished up the bottom edge of the organza with a two inch taffeta hem and then finished the gown by adding hooks and eyes up the back. With the base of the gown complete it was time to add the decorations. To finish off the design I created eight rose pins to attach to each point of the triangles. I decided that putting the roses on pins would be the easiest way to attach them and then this way if the gown needs to be cleaned I could just take the roses off and don't have to worry about them possibly ruining the silk. And the final step was adding a length of red ribbon to each triangle. And just like that the gown is complete. I am beyond thrilled with the outcome and I cannot wait to wear this to a ball one day. I had a wonderful time diving into the romantic era and I'm really looking forward to exploring it more in the future. I hope you enjoyed this video and I would love to know who your favorite Disney character is. Belle is obviously my favorite princess and I think I've done her justice. Again thank you to Acorn TV for sponsoring this video as it made it possible for me to afford the silk for this gown. And don't forget to check out the other historical Disney videos I've linked down below. Also if you've made a historical Disney garment yourself I would love to see it so feel free to tag me on Instagram. Thank you so much for watching and I will see you next time. Bye! This is my first time working with cotton organdy. I have no idea if this is how it's actually supposed to feel. Just just listen to this. I'll get it nice and close to the microphone. You hear that sound? This is after it's already been washed and dried. This is very special. I have no idea if this is what cotton organdy is supposed to be doing. I know it's supposed to be stiffer but I didn't expect it to be this stiff and I've no idea if any of that was actually in focus. Question is do I chance it or do I just reshoot that? Endless lady!