A Black Silk Sheer 1860s Dress

The Specs:

Patterns: Truly Victorian Darted bodice and Truly Victorian sheer bodice, altered

Fabric: Black cotton (about 5.5 yards) and silk[?] chiffon (5.5 yard)

Notions: Glass buttons from The Button Baron

Cost: about $7/yard for the fabric, or about $77 for 11 yards; $5 for the buttons.

It's been quite a while since I've blogged. It's been an up-and-down few months, and sewing has really helped give me something productive to do. I think I'm starting to get the knack of fit and style, and I'm generally pleased with the outcome of my projects. I definitely meant to get this out closer to Halloween, but here we are six months or so later [update: it's been another three months; oops]!

This project wasn't intended specifically as a Halloween dress. In fact, it's been somewhere on my To Be Sewn list for quite a while. Because it was on sale, I bought a bunch of polyester chiffon from www.fabricmartfabrics.com and cruised Pinterest for a dress I could use it with. I found this:

I had a bunch of black cotton that I'd bought with the idea that, hey, I could probably use solid black cotton for a lot of things. [Bit of a spoiler alert: I used several yards of it to line a mantel that isn't finished yet and had enough left over for this dress.]

I set to work several weeks back. I began with my trusty Truly Victorian darted bodice pattern, which I had altered and ready to go (or, you know, so I thought). I would use the bell sleeves from the paletot pattern from last autumn (i.e. autumn 2020), and I would just cut down the neckline to make it wider and lower. For the sheer layer, I would used my Truly Victorian sheer bodice pattern. I checked to be sure that, for instance, the armsyces of the two patterns matched, and they did. There are short undersleeves for the inspiration dress, so I started with the short undersleeves from the sheer bodice pattern. Basically, I mixed and matched the two Truly Victorian patterns.

So I cut out the lining from my black cotton. I had to adjust the fit. For reasons that aren't clear to me, it was little too big in the back and front at the waist. At the back, I took it in at the back seams, and in the front I took in the darts. That did the trick. I cut down the neckline, marked where the waistline needed to be, and bound the neckline. Cool. Basic structure done!

That was the easy part. Next, I tackled the undersleeves. They were a bit tricky, but boy was it satisfying! Basically, the undersleeve is three pieces, the uppermost one and the two ruffles attached to it. I laid out my fabric on top of the pattern, then marked how long I wanted each layer to be and cut away the excess. I folded each strip in quarters and sketched out the scallop shape I wanted (they're 1" deep). Because the sleeve gets smaller as it goes down the arm (and the circumference gets smaller), the scallops of each respective layer are different lengths because they're each 1/4 of the full circumference of the sleeve at that point. I used pinking sheers to cut them out so that I wouldn't need to finish those edges.

Next came the sheer layer, which I planned to make out of the poly chiffon. I prefer to use natural fibers, but I already had this fabric and had based the entire project around it. I was confident in my fabric and my pattern, so I cut out the front bodice pieces, pinned them together with the lining, and held it up to myself and . . . well, yeah, the sheer layer wasn't sheer enough. It all just looked . . . black. There was no differentiation between the sheer and non-sheer layers.

Well, crap.

I tried to find some appropriate poly or silk chiffon online. But 1) all the options were quite expensive, particularly the silk, and I really wanted silk over poly for a lot of reasons; 2) it was surprisingly difficult to find a plain black silk chiffon; 3) I couldn't be sure the new fabric would be sheer enough if I bought it online; and 4) it would take a while to be shipped to me. I had a few not-great-but-maybe-okay options picked out online when I decided instead to go to my favorite fabric store in Alexandria. I think I spent 45 minutes wandering around there. There were options, but none seemed perfect. There was a dark gray, or a polyester, or a silk that was okay but $20/yard (and I knew I needed 5.5 or 6 yards!). My intention was to make this a fairly inexpensive project using stuff I already had. I didn't want to drop $120 on it. At last, I came across an amazing black chiffon that wasn't marked as silk and was only $7/yard but sure didn't seem to be polyester.

I took it to the cutting counter. "This, please!" I said. "All of it."

"All of it" was about 5.5 yards. That was cutting it a bit close, as I intended to make a silk chiffon over-skirt, and that would require about 4.5 yards. I would have to get a whole bodice with bell sleeves out of 1 yard. Luckily for me, I'm 4' 11", and 1 yard of fabric goes a long way. Not to ruin the ending, but I managed it just fine and even had some left over.

I came running (well, driving) home joyfully with my new fabric and got to work. I did a burn test, and lo and behold, it burnt into ash and smelled like burnt hair. Definitely not poly. Very possibly it's rayon or a blend, but I'm pretty darn sure it's silk. I got the perfect black silk chiffon for $7/yard. Not too shabby.

The cool thing about this [silk?] chiffon it that it looked great (it was the perfect amount of sheer). The not-so-cool thing about this [silk?] chiffon was that it was hard to work with, and it pretty much all had to be sewn by hand. Or at least, I didn't trust my machine with it. So I spent a lot of time hand-sewing seams and then hand-finishing them. Oh, and cutting it out was a pain, too. It worked out pretty smoothly in the end, though. All that mixing and matching of patterns did the trick
.

I had to do a little hard thinking about how to make the two layers come together at the front. The sheer layer actually wraps around the cotton underlayer at the placket and continues up past where the cotton layer ends. I had to add strips of cotton inside that folded sheer fabric so that I had a stable placket for the buttons. Once I figured all that out, I hand-sewed the button holes and buttons. I bought the buttons a while back from The Button Baron in Gettysburg without any plans for them yet. They're off-white glass buttons with some tan decoration, and the look great with the black fabric. I was going to go with some flat plastic buttons, but those buttons were shiny and just looked cheap (because they were cheap).

The next big hurdle was the sleeves. My original plan was to just stitch together the sheer bell-shaped sleeve to the shorter, scalloped sleeve at the top and then stitch them into the bodice as one. When I did that, though, you could barely see my pretty scalloped sleeves underneath. All that careful detailing just disappeared into a muddle of black fabric. I thought that this was because my black chiffon still wasn't quite sheer enough. I thought, RIP, scalloped undersleeves. At least I'll know you're there. Then I looked more closely at the photos of the extent dress, and it appeared that the sheer sleeve didn't just glide over the scallops: either the sheer chiffon was tucked into the scallops, or the two layers had been cut together and then flatlined until the point where the sheer sleeves were free of the undersleeves. Well, I didn't have the fabric or patience to re-cut the sleeves and redo the undersleeves. So I decided I could tuck about a quarter-inch of the sheer fabric under each scallop. It made the sheer sleeves a little shorter, but I had enough fabric. And it was fiddly work, but I did it and it was worth it.

(Also, in the process, I decided the undersleeves were a little too big, and I decided to hack into one of them, which was a BIG mistake. I spent a whole day piecing that undersleeve back together.)

Anyway, the sleeves turned out GREAT, and I'm extremely pleased with them.

Next came the skirt, which was pretty straightforward: about 4.5 yards of the cotton fabric, cut to the length of the finished skirt plus seam allowance and hem, and the same amount of the silk chiffon, but just a little longer because it would lay on top of the cotton. For the record, I cut the cotton 36" long, with about 1/2" seam allowance at top and 1.5" hem at the bottom; I used the selvage for the bottom of the chiffon layer so that I wouldn't have to hem it and cut that layer 35" long, with 1/2" seam allowance at the top. I gathered these big rectangles down to a waistband (I gathered the chiffon by hand). I added a placket and closure to the cotton layer and finished off the single seam on the chiffon layer by hand.

I had decided to make the skirt and bodice separate for a few reasons. I wanted the skirt to be center-back so the seam in the chiffon wasn't visible from the front--I probably shouldn't have worried about that, since the seam disappears into the blackness of the fabric. I also am thinking I could make a more practical day bodice out of black cotton to go with the skirt [update: I have plans to make an evening bodice and a Garidbaldi blouse and another day bodice to go with this skirt]. 

My last step was to finish the bodice with a waistband, add a closure to that waistband, and sew in the second sleeve (which hadn't been sewn in yet). I got it all done the day before Halloween, which was good because I wanted to be sure it was done before then. See, along the way, it had occurred to me that it was October and I was working on a black Victorian dress. How much more Halloween-y could you get?

On the day, I decided to use some of the offcuts from my chiffon as a veil. I just cut off a length and pinned it to my black bonnet, which is what I wore with it to take some photos.

A note: this wouldn't really be a mourning look. It is black and matte, but there are white buttons and the ribbon on my bonnet is red. The chiffon is also very light for mourning. Black was, in fact, a perfectly valid fashion color in the Victorian age. It wasn't only for mourning. However, it being Halloween, I just kind of pretended, you know?

Another note: I mentioned the bodice is a little short. It might be that, or the fact that the skirt is just a bit too loose, but the darn pieces kept gapping open. This is essentially inevitable if you're moving around. The real problem is that my underthings are, of course, white, which is pretty obvious when you're wearing black! I had to keep pulling the bodice down. The solution is simple enough: some form of hook or strap to hold the bodice and skirt together. I definitely didn't have time for that before taking the pictures, but it's now on the very, very long list of Things I Should Really Do but Probably Won't [update: I did it! I added the hooks and eyes.].

Final note: the inspiration has tassel trim around the sleeves, and I bought some trim for that purpose, but I like it with no trim. The inspiration also shows a collar, but I'm not sure it really goes with the dress, and I like it with no collar.

Update: I recently got another chance to wear this dress, to a costumed picnic and walk in a botanical garden. As mentioned, I added hooks and eyes to keep it from gapping. I also had, in the interim, covered a parasol with black silk, bought myself a white collar, and sewn lacy undersleeves based on some original undersleeves I purchased on Ebay (I plan to post about this later). I also got some belting ribbon, but I decided against wearing a belt this time. I love the result: