The twenties are here! Yay!
The kids and I desided to have our own little new years eve party at home and since the twenties started again I took advantage of the situation and made a robe de style dress that I’ve been obsessing about for some time now. I really would have wanted to make either a velvet one (I’ve been obsessed with everything velvet lately) or a fancy lacy one but I didn’t have the right kind of fabric for either of those and I desided to make this entirely out of things I already had I went with a semi sheer stripy black wool rayon blend vintage fabric I had. The fabric choice did lead to me having to buy one thing though, black zip ties, I only had white and they would have shown through.
I thought I’d use a pattern I’ve used before for this era as the basis for the bodice to make it quicker and save me from bothering to measure things. That turned out to be totally the wrong choice since I forgot I’ve lost weight since then and a robe de style is a slightly tighter fit really than 20s dresses usually. Ofcourse I din’t notice this untill it was all sewed up skirts and french seams and all! Well luckily I had a black vintage velvet and organza striped scarf I could use as a belt to draw it in enough to look good on my body. The second mistake I made was make the bodice bit too long so there is a growth pleat on the inside and the dropped waist, Oh well it works!
The bodice pieces are basically just straight that should have slight ease maybe like a an inch bigger that your bust measurent would be good. Mine is with my hip +ease and it’s too much and should end at about your hip bones or very slightly below depending on your body type. For me my high hip at my hip bones is pretty much the same width as my bust so I don’t want to go any lower than that. If too tight at the hip and give a muffin top belly, if too loose the hoops won’t be supported by your hips and it’ll be sad and droopy.
Side seams are french seamed and all edges narrowly turned and hand hemmed. Shoulder seams are flat felled after turning the necklines and armpits.
I made side hoops much like 18th century ones but smaller and those are pleated and then sewn on to the dropped waist. My hoops are about 16″ by 9.5″ and the casings for the zip ties are at the bottom edge and 4.5″ inches up from it. The bottom is held in the correct semi circle shape by a 8″ tape.
The bottom is just the full width of my fabric (38 inches) times 2 with a 4″ dip at center front and back to keep hem level over the hoops. The bottom edge is then turned up and hand hemmed.
This was a fairly quick project though the fact that the fabric required everything to be either hemmed or french seamed did make it less of a straight forward easy project than I thought it would be and ofcourse my own silly little mistakes. All in all it turned out lovely and we had a good time trying to learn the charleston and making our own mocktails and staing up way too late.
Now on to new things and finishing up some older ones…
xxx
Sew through time 