It Took 215 Hours to Hand Sew a Victorian BERRY DRESS

The completion of the berry dress has been a very long time coming, or at least it feels like it. I first fabricated this concept in the summer of 2021 and subsequently on this channel a series of four videos has followed, documenting the journey of this ensemble from the making of the skirt over a month ago, to the swiss waist, the bonnet, and now finally the bodice. Some of you have been patiently waiting for this very video here today, to see the grand reveal of all the pieces finally paired up together. Before you get to see the final look however, I wanted to take you along the process for one last journey, the making of the bodice. For the time period, this bodice is by no means a complex garment, but it has been challenging because fitting a garment bespoke to a body is hard. In total, I estimate this entire ensemble took around 250 hours to hand sew, with the bodice by itself requiring around 70 hours, and all of the elements are of course completely hand sewn. If you would like to see the entire process of the making of this four-part ensemble from start to finish, I have linked a berry dress playlist in the card above. The bodice construction process began where many garments do, as a mock-up. I used some cheap linen from my stash for this and tried it on over all of the underpinnings, including the crinoline and the in order to make sure I was more or less happy with the fit. The pattern I used is the 1860s darted bodice by Truly Victorian. My measurements are very far from standard, so I really had to play with the fit a lot, which was incredibly time-consuming and honestly at times quite frustrating. Since I've only been sewing for about a year and a half, I really don't have that much experience and my first year just consisted of trying to get things to work, but my focus for this year of sewing is on fit and learning how to improve this aspect of each garment. I want to extend a massive thank you to Lauren of Virtuous Courtesan who answered my questions and helped me get this garment to fit better. Her work is absolutely brilliant and I've placed a link to her Instagram in the description box if you'd like to see some stunning handmade garments. Once I was fairly pleased with the fit, I went ahead and cut out the lining from this brown Celestia cotton fabric. With Victorian extants, you very often see this typical brown polished cotton lining fabric, so I thought it would be a little funny to make this bodice with the exact same type of lining and luckily the UK historical fashion supplier Darcy Clothing sells this exact type of fabric. I cut out each of the pieces and basted them all together for one last fitting as sort of a second mock-up. I finally gathered up the courage to cut into the actual outer fabric which is a Sartreuse silk taffeta, and so I carefully traced each piece. This garment consists of one back panel cut on the fold at the center back, two side panels joined by princess seams, and two front panels joined by side seams and at the center front opening with closures. I also made sure to tailor's tack the darts so that way they would be evenly marked on both layers. I'll be making a tutorial regarding this technique in the near future. I decided to line this garment in a method I like to call the Victorian way because it's very much the go-to standard for construction that you see throughout the Victorian period. This involves flatlining each outer fabric piece to a lining piece with basting stitches and then treating them as one. I used a round pillow while I was basting the two pieces together to help give them a little bit of a curve which mimics the natural shape of a body. Then I used basting stitches to sew all of the pieces together so that way I could at least do a fitting with the layers all combined and once again check the fit. I noticed right away there were some issues where certain areas needed to be a little tighter along with the fabric around the neck and the shoulders bunching and being overall too tight. This though eventually can be mitigated by notching the seam allowances, adding in boning channels, and also notching the edges of the neckline which hadn't been done yet to let out that extra tension. You'll see as the video progresses how much each of those steps greatly impacts the quality of the fit. I went ahead and used small back stitches to join all of the pieces together with something more secure than a basting stitch and I also secured the darts with back stitches in order to fit the bodice once again. Upon wearing I could tell the darts needed to be taken in a little bit more and so that's what I did. You can see how it already makes such a big difference. At this point it was time to finish the raw edges of the bodice and though I have constructed a Victorian bodice in the past and used these same methods, I wanted to show you all the inspiration for my decisions throughout this process. One of these inspirations is this extant in my collection that is either late Victorian or early Edwardian. While it is a far ways away from the 1860s time-wise, many of the construction practices remain similar, including the way the seam allowances are notched. In this case they are finished using whip stitches, but I personally don't like this method much and prefer instead to use silk ribbon binding. I notched all of the internal seam allowances, cutting these waveforms into them, and then proceeded to carefully bind each edge with silk ribbon using backstitches. Many Victorian bodices are also fully or at least partially boned and I prefer this for my own creations too as it offers up so much structure and support to the garment and overall it just helps the bodice sit better. This garment has 9 bones in total, 2 for the side seams and 2 for the curved back seams, 1 for the center front and 1 for each of the 4 darts. I began by measuring each seam and subtracting a few inches from that measurement to leave additional space. Then I used nail clippers to trim down synthetic whalebone and an old nail file to blunt out the edges so that they don't pop through the future case. To cover the actual bones I took pre-made bias tape and placed the bone between the 1 4th fold, then folding the tape in half to cover the whole bone and closing it completely. The edges were then whip stitched shut and any of the raw edges were tucked in for a lightweight and less bulky handmade encased bone option. You can also buy boning channels like these pre-made but I haven't been able to find an option yet in the UK where it combines synthetic whalebone and cotton tape, hence why I make my own. For the bones added to the darts, these get placed without a casing directly into the fold of the stitched down dart and then stay stitches are sewn to keep the bone from moving around. Once all these seams were finished and the bones were made, I could now bind the neckline which I notched heavily to help ease as much tension as possible at the neckline. I sewed down a silk grass grain ribbon with small whip stitches and this is a technique you see on extants as well, like on this mid-Victorian bodice from my collection. The same process was completed for the binding of the raw edges at the waist, this time with a slightly larger ribbon, much like on the same extant. Once again, this silk grass grain tape was attached with small whip stitches. Since all the raw edges were now covered, I could sew in the boning channels. To do so, I stitched small X's curving the bones slightly to match with the seam line as much as possible. By this point, sleeves were kind of unavoidable, so I cut out pieces first from the lining. This bodice has quite a wide two-piece sleeve that is extremely spacious and therefore very comfortable and true to the era, it is set quite low at the arms eye, giving the bodice that slightly drooping look which is classic with mid-Victorian fashion. The thing about the sleeve however, it is set quite tight into the armpit and so because of that you still have full range of movement with your arms. I went ahead and cut the same pieces out from the outer silk, then each of the sleeves got backstitched shut, four in total, two of the lining and two of the outer fabric, and the seam allowances were all pressed open. Victorian sleeves are often flat lined with the raw edges inside of the bodice, but I really don't like the way seam allowances feel on my arms, so I opted to instead line my sleeves in a more 18th century way, wrong sides to wrong sides. I went ahead and notched all the seam allowances of the sleeves at any curves and pinned the outer layer into the arms eye, basting and then later backstitching this into place. Then wearing the lining on my arm inside out, I placed my arm into the outer sleeve and left the sleeve lining there. I matched up the wrist seams and the corresponding notches and whip stitched the lining of the sleeve to the bodice lining at the arms eye, covering the raw edges. I then hemmed the wrist area by whip stitching the lining and outer fabric together there as well. The bodice was now quite close to being complete, and seeing the sleeves in place really transformed how I felt about the progress of this bodice. For the center front opening, I referred to a bodice I showed just a bit earlier from my collection. It's most likely from the late 1860s to early 1870s, at that transitional period between the crinoline and the first bustle era, so not too far off from when this darted bodice would have actually been popular. When I first received this extant, I noticed it was quite intriguing because it had all these beautiful buttons, but upon closer examination I realized they were actually false. I loved this idea of having a hook and eye closure and then attaching buttons to make it look as if the garment actually buttons up. False buttons have been common all throughout history, especially in the Georgian period actually, so it was really nice to see an example of this in the Victorian period as well. I chose to close my own bodice in this manner too, following antiques as guidance for the placement of the hooks and eyes. For hooks, I purchased these antique heavy duty ones. They're literally larger than my fingernail. The sturdiness of modern hooks and eyes generally doesn't compare to that of the antique ones, which is why I always try to use them whenever possible. I marked where I wanted each of the hooks and eyes to go. I only ordered eight buttons, but decided on nine hook and eye closures as I plan to not have a button for the lowest one since the Swiss waist is going to be probably covering it anyways. Then I sewed the eyes, placing a row at the very edge at the wrong side of the left center front, so that the eye opening can just be accessed by the hook. I covered all the raw edges and stitching from the eyes with a silk grosgrain ribbon facing. Then a row of hooks was sewn onto the wrong side of the right center front, slightly further back from the edge, so that the closures are discreetly hidden. These go over top a wider silk grosgrain ribbon facing, which also has a bone sewn into the center front to help stabilize the closure. You can see the little stay stitches where it's holding the bone in place. Unfortunately, due to the holidays, my buttons did not arrive in time, even though I ordered them a while ago. So while I'm not able to add them into this video, I will sew them on later and post some pictures over at Instagram. The final step was padding. It was extremely common during the Victorian period to wear padding with a garment, and sometimes a lot of it. Some extants show examples of padding being sewn directly into a garment, and other times padding is also worn as an undergarment within itself. I wear bust padding day-to-day normally, and I believe it's a practice that should be normalized, as it's a completely temporary way to alter a silhouette. I felt that the bodice fabric at the region of my upper chest and underarms was collapsing a lot. For this reason, additional sewn-in bust padding was an ideal option to get that classically 1860s silhouette. Using a lightweight cotton batting, I cut various layers stacked together, ranging anywhere from five to six to just a single layer. This increase and decrease helps to create a varied surface, which creates realism. Once happy with the shape, I basted the layers together and then used the same brown Celestia fabric to cut out a cover pattern on a fold. I turned under all seam allowances of the cover, notched the edges where needed, and used little whip stitches to secure the padding within the case. I felt this was a better solution than just sewing the padding directly into the bodice, because now I can easily tack it in using quick stitches, or I can remove the padding when need be, and even potentially use it for other bodices, making it extremely versatile. Adding in this padding really helps to reduce wrinkling and pulling, and it produces an overall smoother and more striking silhouette. For accessories, I decided to pair the gown up with this gorgeous antique lace collar from my collection, and a vintage coral brooch, which reminded me so much of a berry. It fits the theme excellently, and I had to choose between two berry style brooches, which was a little bit difficult in all honesty. I either had to pick this antique Victorian one or this vintage one, but I ultimately opted for the vintage one, even though it isn't exactly in the same time period, because I liked the additional accent of the gold and white, which are colours present throughout this ensemble, so it creates a nice feeling of continuity. I can't believe that this bodice is now complete honestly, and so is the entire berry dress ensemble. Thank you for following this sewing journey, and for going through this experience alongside me. I hope you all enjoy this long awaited reveal, and I'll see you all for another video next Thursday in the new year. Wow, that is incredibly terrifying to say.