Construction Details:

Patterns used: TV216 1875 Parisian Trained Skirt, TV101 Revised Petticoat with Wire Bustle, TV405 1872 Vest Basque, TV170 Victorian Petticoats

I’ve been wanting to make a proper Victorian dress for a while. I based my design on this April 1875 fashion plate (on the left). After I made the dress I discovered this painting, “Too Early” by Tissot, that looked a lot like my dress, even down to the colors, how kismet!

I made it to match a lovely pink top hat I’d bought at Costume College and the idea of the dress was basically Eiffel Tower/Tokyo Tower plus candy and layercakes. There’s white on white bow embroidery around the inner vest, all the lace has bows on it. The main body of the fabric is a pink and white striped cotton which matches the bow on the hat. Some of the trim is made up to look like wrapped candies. All the piping and most of the ruffles are done with the striped fabric cut diagonally to contrast with the main vertical stripes of the dress. The darker ribbons are velvet. I embroidered some Eiffel towers and made brooches, too.

I used Dicken’s Fair 2010 as my deadline, as I’ve never been and had always wanted to go with my girlfriends. The bustle, petticoats and dress took about two months of pretty intensive work to get done. (and this is while I was on hiatus from work.) It wasn’t that the gown was difficult, per-say, but simply the sheer magnitude of ruffles on it.

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