1830s Wedding Dress

Good Sunday to you all!  I hope that your week is going wonderfully!  Mine has been great so far!

The last post I wrote was about the "Dressing The Historical Bride" fashion show and tea, highlighting 5 unique silhouettes from 5 different clothing eras.  Today I want to share with you the 1836 wedding dress that I made and the Augusta Auctions Dress that I used as inspiration!  I emailed Augusta Auctions and Karen Augusta gave me permission to use the photos of the phenomenal, incredible, over-the-top dress found on her website:  Augusta Auctions.  Thank you so much for allowing me to use this fantastic dress and the images in the making of my own 1830s dress!!

I have for quite some time wanted to make a crazy, ridiculous, huge sleeved 1830s dress.  I also knew that I wanted a fabric with a texture on it and not just a plain satin fabric.  While mom and I were visiting my brother and his family in Spokane Valley, I stopped by a JoAnn's and low and behold this incredibly beautiful brocade jumped off the shelves and wrestled me to the ground screaming for me to buy the bolt and take it home.  I agreed with the crazy, customer attacking fabric and purchased it...oh, and I could use my 60% off coupon!  Huzzaaaaaah!!!  It made my magpie heart happy.  Now all I needed was the perfect dress to copy!  After hours and hours of searching Pinterest, my eyes beheld the most gorgeous 1830s wedding dress I had ever seen!  First of all.....PLEATS!!!  Secondly, although I had never given oak tree leaves any thought other than thinking they were super cool, this dress had two huge oak leaves framing the pleating on the bodice.  The more I looked at the dress, the more my eyes dilated, the more I salivated, the more I got excited, the more I HAD to make it!!!  The fussiness of the whole thing just really captured my crazy fashion loving heart!

Here she is in all her 1830s glory!!!  Don't know when I'll get the chance to wear it myself, but I hope that day is soon!!!

Some construction images...

I foolishly thought that this dress would be a super quick make.  Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!

That was the most hilarious thing I had talked myself into believing for a very, very long time.  I don't know how long it took, but I can say that during the making of the three dresses that I needed to round out the program (1836, 1856, 1920's), I finished all 10 seasons of "CSI: Miami".  That would be 232 episodes that averaged 43 minutes a piece for a total 9,976 minutes or 166 hours.  Throw in the random "Cranford", some "Call the Midwife", "Manoa", and I started "CSI:Crime Scene Investigation".  All I know is that making the whole dress was a colossal consumer of time.

The pleating was particularly a pain in the rear.  The panel was too wide to use my perfect pleater, so I had so measure, mark and pleat each individual pleat, one at a time.  

I did have to cheat a little and serge the edges of the oak leaves because the fabric was wretchedly ravvely.  Ravelly....It unraveled a whole lot!!! 

This is why I haven't ever made a set of 1770s stays.  Hand sewing the binding around the edges and the inside curves was a pain!!!  Each long oak leaf and the bow took a day each to sew!  ACK!!!!!

Soooooooo many pins!!!!

I ended up cutting a whole bunch of the painstakingly pleated panel off on the sides....grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.........

 

I then had to hand sew along both sided of the piping that was down the center of the oak leaves to make sure they didn't shift.  That was fun....

 

Ready to sew onto the dress!!!

Well, I can now say that I have an 1830s wedding dress in my costuming collection and for some reason that makes me giddy with delight!

I hope you all have a wonderful last week of September!  I can't believe how fast time is flying by!

Blessings!

g