Hello lovelies,

I am almost done with my Victorian day dress, I just need to sew the seam. Hooray. It just took me about a month and a lot of hours sewing by hand.

I found a nice cotton fabric at my local fabric store which reminded me of these dresses:

It's also beige and has a small flower print on it.
After I washed it in the washing machine I ironed it. And that was a loooot of ironing because I almost took 8 meters.

Top is the ironed version, bottom is the un-ironed version. What a difference!

I made the pattern from "Patterns of Fashion" by Janet Arnold book. It gave me a few headaches at the beginning but I could decipher out the instruction in the end.

I flatlined the thin cotton material with another layer of white cotton. With a big zig-zag stitch I went over the sides to prevent it from fraying. After that I sewed everything together.

For the back I made red piping and I used it for the back side seams.
It's a really dark red colour and looks brown most of the time.

The seams are stitched to the white cotton lining. The front seam has a casing with boning in it.

Sadly the bertha is a bit too big so I added a small half-round shaped something, no idea what it is called, to the sleeve. I got the idea from this dress. Look at the sleeves:


I have no pictures of how I did the sleeves, no idea why.
But I have a picture of the pattern when I made the mock-up.
In my opinion it looks like a gigantic atomic-mushroom.
What I did with the sleeves was cut the top cotton part and the cotton lining and work separately with them at first. First the outer cotton sleeves got a piping at the sleeve end. After that I sewed together the sides, first of the outer cotton, then of the lining. With the left side together I attached both of them on the sleeve part, then turned it around and went over both parts at the top.

Both sleeves are then attached to the bodice.

I tried out my sleeve poofs with the bodice and boy it looks so ridiculous. I love it.

I finally added the bertha to it. I was so happy when the folds aligned almost perfectly. Hooray.


Here again the bodice but this time without the sleeve supporters.

 And this is the end of part one.

All the best,

Auris Lothol