Hit the saque! ...beginning HSF #17: Robes and Robings

...ok, bad pun.  Remember when I said that the 1865 evening gown was going to be the most ambitious thing I did?  Well, as it turns out, this robe will probably take the cake for that - mostly due to the shape of the skirt.  It's gone well so far, only a couple snafus (granted they were big ones, but thankfully easily fixed), so the robe part is done (stomacher will be finished Tuesday, and hopefully lower sleeves, too).  Granted - it won't be trimmed, and it won't have a proper self-fabric petticoat (yet), but the basic dress will be there.

Here's the dress as it was this weekend: no sleeve flounces or engageants, no trim, a pinned-in piece of fabric temporarily used as the stomacher (actually the square 'sample' piece that the stores have for ordering in bulk, it was on sale for a dollar so I grabbed it one day), and the bodice waist pinned to the correct height...

I rather like it so far, especially the back, though the front needs finishing at the time of these photos.

... Without further ado, here's how it got to the above photos.

Inspiration (and historical reference/"proof" for the existence of printed/indienne cotton saques) came from this Pinterest page of cotton saques put together by Katherine of Koshka-the-Cat (thank you!!).  And MAJOR props also to Katherine for her tutorials on making a saque (this project really fits nicely under the "Gratitude" HSF, too, I realized); I used those as my "making-of" guide, though I did a few things differently (so far it's come out ok though).  The silhouette I'm going for is not a "court" silhouette, but narrower, more everyday one like that of the "block print francaise (c.1770)".  Wide isn't the most flattering for me, anyway, and right now I'm making do with a rather extended hip roll padding (with quilted petticoat on top) in place of panniers, so I doubt I'd've been able to get that trapezoid shape perfectly right (I know, I know, shame on me.  Pocket hoops are on my to-do-list).

And the construction...



To start - I used the lining of the indienne anglaise as the pattern for my lining for this.  Being lazy, I cut it all of one piece (minus some piecing for the straps, since that's harder to "trace" from a fully constructed dress).  Since the saque will have a stomacher, I cut the front straight down the same line as the neckline of the straps.  I then measured the armscye to that of the anglaise, and added a piece of linen the same width, pinned it, tried it on, and then cut off the excess.

I decided that I wanted to cut the saque with a separate front bodice/skirt, since I was more than a little intimidated by the full-length-front version.  If I make another, out of a fancier fabric, I'll do it the other way now that I've figured out how to fit in the side skirt.

I tried the lining on and determined where my side seam would go, then laid the lining on the good fabric and cut out each piece (making sure to leave a good 3/4" or more overlap so that there could be a 'lip' of fabric on the edge so the lining wouldn't be seen.  I then pinned it in place and put it on the dress dummy I'd made.

 Then, I took the larger pieces of fabric and measured the length I would need for the back and also the sides, cut them out (the sides were half the width of the fabric each), and sewed the sides (starting at the hem) to the sides of the back fabric so it was all one piece (I realized later that the sides were a full inch too short, and had to do some creative folding/sewing to make it work, oops).  I then pinned the back piece to the lining and matched it edge-to-edge with the front of the bodice at that "side seam" line.

 After that, I draped it on the dummy, pinning the center of the indienne back to the center of the lining (resulting in two droopy "wings" at the back, and a lot of fabric around the sides).

Now comes the fun part... the draping of the pleats.  It actually went pretty well, and this fabric was very pleat-friendly.  I used Katherine's method, and made moderate-width pleats.  I'm horrible at describing something like this, so I'll just show the pictures with a few lines saying what I did.

I started where I had pinned the center of the fabric to the center of the lining back.  Then, I made the center into a box pleat for both sides at once.

Then I did one side with another box pleat (slightly narrower) on top, and then the other side (pinning heavily to keep everything in place.  I ended up having to pin the lining and the dress onto the dress form because the weight of the fabric was starting to pull it over.

The finished (pinned) pleats...

 It looks so nice and neat here!

Then I smoothed and pinned the bodice front edge over a fold to the lining to make a little "hangover" fold (bottom two pictures), and smoothed the fabric and tightened it to the lining - trying to make the pattern mismatch a little less obvious from the side while I was at it.  It came out ok. 

Now for the side/front skirt... in which I make my second major mistake (the first being cutting these panels one inch too short): pleating the front/side of the skirt as if it were an anglaise, with a significantly longer/pointier bodice than it should have - definitely cringe-worthy, but in my own defense, I was doing that pleating at 1am and not quite paying attention.  I realized my mistake and fixed it later.  It still looked pretty with pleats and the bodice point, but was completely inaccurate (muttermuttermutter...).  Here's what the mistake looked like, for posterity's sake.  DO NOT sew a francaise this way!

 

I fixed it so it lay smooth, doing the "sandwich" gather/folds on the side/front panels and then sewing it raw edge to raw edge (pointed inwards) so that it made the skirt stick sideways a little.  (and the pattern for that one piece was actually perpendicular.

So, after I fixed/repinned it (a bit of a setback) and also repinned the front line/point of the bodice (it was too pointy/long for a francaise), I decided to work on the sleeves.  I used the same upper sleeve pattern as for my anglaise (if it works...), and then sewed the sleeves into tubes inside-out (and hemmed the lower ends) in one go.

Then I put on the sleeves, and put the sleeveless robe on over them, shifted things around a little, and pinned the sleeve seams and top at the shoulder onto the dress for placement.  I then removed everything (carefully, since there were at least one box of pins at that point at various places on the robe), and repinned the sleeves more securely to the inside of the robe.  There's too much fabric for me to do my customary rolled-under seam, so I'll just sew a ribbon over it later to keep the linen and cotton from fraying (the linen is the worst culprit).

Then I measured and pinned the strips of fabric over the tops of the shoulders (matching the pattern to the front as best I could so it looked like one continuous piece) and a piece over the top of the pleats at the back to make everything neat there.

Then I spent several hours sewing everything together (minus the bodice bottom edge and the stomacher, which are pinned) and hemming the skirt, and took a bunch of pictures (the ones at top, and a few more).

The (barely) slightly wider skirt silhouette was achieved through that padding roll I'd mentioned in a previous post, worn under a quilted cotton petticoat (seen under the gown).  It's not ideal, but does the job for now.

As of Monday night, will be finishing the stomacher (plain) and lower sleeves (with engageants) tomorrow night, and taking pictures ASAP.  Probably won't get fully posed (i.e., outdoors) ones until the long weekend, though, at this rate with my next class starting on Wednesday.