(piano music) - [Bernadette] Welcome back
to the final installment of my quest to construct
an 1890s ball gown. If you are new here, you didn't miss much, other than all the layers of undergarments that go into shaping this gown. But there's a playlist for all that below if you are so inclined. Or if not, herein proceeds the final gown. This project is once again very kindly sponsored by Skillshare. But more on that anon. Like any sensible dressmaker, I'm beginning the process with a pattern. Oh, by the way, the gown
I'm making is this one, which I actually designed
nearly a year ago for a ball that was supposed
to happen in May, but, you know, plagues, so actually
it doesn't have to be done until May of next year, I hope. But we're overachieving slightly as usual. Anyway, this drapey,
wrappy, black velvety design is based off of this gown
from the House of Worth. And since my good friends,
Constance MacKenzie and Cathy Hay also independently picked the exact same photo for reference, we've decided to embrace
our Wyrd Sister potential and we three meet at said ball
in variations on this gown. So here is my take on it. The base pattern for this gown is taken from the 1890s
evening gown found on page 43 of Janet Arnold's "Patterns
of Fashion", Volume 2. The skirt is actually
perfectly draped already and I've only drafted
out the underbodice layer for the bodice, since I'll
need a foundation layer to drape the velvet wrapping
on top of the pattern for that, which I will come up with myself. So editing Bernadette
coming to you real quick because I realized I never
actually showed you a full array of the skirt draft, and that's
kind of important to do. What we have here is basically, this is the center front of the skirt, this is the entire back piece. As you can see, they all
logistically like fit together as hypothetically one giant skirt piece, and this is how it's
drafted in Janet Arnold, but she's got lines here and here. This is because historically, silk fabrics were not woven as widely
as linens or wools or cottons, for example. So what they would have to do is they'd have to piece their
skirt pieces effectively because you could not fit
this entire skirt piece onto one piece of silk. This is actually a really
great bit of detective work, because you get to see how
wide the original fabric they used was, this would have
been the width of the fabric, this would have been the bolt edge and they would have
rolled it out that way, then they could go as long
as they want with the skirt. However, I have elected
to keep these seams in, because this is actually quite a significant structural bit of importance because due to the width of their fabrics, they had seams here and here on the skirt. So if you can imagine this on a skirt, if I'm looking at the back
of the skirt right now, you actually would see these
sort of chevron diagonal seams, going on the back train of the skirt. And you see this on all sorts of skirts, especially late 19th-century skirts, where they get really big and really long and really full in the back. You get all sorts of
weird seaming going on just to try and work around
the shorter fabric widths that they had available to them. I'm also not sure I explained
this properly, but basically, so the center back placket, which is just an extra little flange of like one inch of fabric
that goes on one side of the skirt just so
that when it closes over, you don't get a little
gap where the hooks are. But what's unusual about
this skirt that I found so super cool is that because
there is no side seam, this is just the center front seam, which hits probably around the hip bone. And then all of this is
just one giant skirt, there is no side seam, which would be approximately yay here. And that's hypothetically
where a pocket would go, but because there is no
side seam, obviously, the Victorians must have
pockets, because it is a sin to not put a pocket in your skirt, and the Victorians understood this and for some reason we don't nowadays. So whoever made this dress
very cleverly decided to put the pocket in between, in
the seam between the placket and the skirt. So you'll see me do this in a bit but so the placket goes on here, but the pocket opening is also right here. So the pocket just sort of sits inside and then the placket extends off the other side of the
pocket, it's really cool. It's so ingenious, just
behold friends and just watch. (upbeat music) Feeling confident with my skirt pattern, I'm going ahead and cutting
out a set of these pieces from the silk taffeta lining. Not the bodice foundation pieces yet, but that will require some mock-uping, which of course I procrastinated fiercely. (upbeat music) Well, friends, this is what
a Victorian skirt looks like. Not the most conducive thing
for Manhattan apartments. This is only the lining
that I have cut out tonight. Oh, I forgot the pocket
over there as well. Oh, but before I do the velvet
I think I'm going to go ahead and do the tarlatan facing layer before. A lot of 1890s and early
Edwardian skirts have a little facing at the hem
of stiffening material. This is often out of tarlatan, which is a stiffened loosely woven cotton, just you know, a couple
of inches at the bottom. The Janet Arnold Pattern says
there's a stiffening facing of 11 inches. So I think that's what I'm
going to go for for this. So I'm gonna cut that
before I can go ahead and flatline all of this together. (upbeat music) These skirt-facing pieces are
just the bottom 11 inches, traced off of the full skirt pattern. (upbeat music) Um, excuse me, there have
been some tiny feets walking upon mine silk, what do you
have to say for yourself, sir? Guilty as charged. (upbeat music) Then with a moment's lament over my thoroughly
masochistic choice of fabric, I proceeded to cut the skirt
panels out of the velvet. Velvet, if you have
not had the displeasure of working with it, is perhaps
one of the most stuck up and uncooperative materials to work with, refusing to behave in an orderly manner and just generally
wanting to spluge around, so that no line ever is straight twice. So I did my best to line up
the selvedge of the material with the edge of the table before lining up my pieces to trace. So hopefully things will be as on grain as I can possibly manage. (upbeat music) I hate this, I hate this so much. Noooooo. (upbeat music) So the first step to prepping
the skirt pieces, because yes, there is a whole heckin ton of prep work that happens in Victorian skirt-making, is to get the tarlatan facings
attached to the linings. There are indefinite configurations to facing the hem of a skirt. For example, I showed another method in my "Walking Skirt" video
in which the facing was added to an unlined skirt. But basically the goal here
is to stiffen a portion of the hem so that the skirt
has a nice bit of weight and body at the hem. This will make it move
nicely, hold its flared shape and just generally make it
more durable against wear. In an overwhelming quantity
of surviving skirts, particularly walking
skirts and ball gown skirts that aren't worn regularly or
aren't worn around the house and thus don't need regular washing, this tarlatan material is used. Again, the methods for facing these pieces and to what layer they
are attached are infinite in extant examples, but in this particular case,
since my skirt is fully lined with the silk taffeta, unlike
some other skirt examples, I've decided to stitch just the top edge of my facing pieces to
the lining pieces directly with a fine running stitch in silk thread. (upbeat music) Once all my lining pieces
have the facing attached, I can then get them attached
to the velvet panels. I'm going to flatline
each piece individually or make up fully-lined panels before stitching them all together, as was the preferred method in history. The lining pieces are laid onto the corresponding velvet piece with the tarlatan layer
facing to the wrong side of the velvet, so that the
facing layer is not seen. Then starting from the
center of the panel, I'm pinning the two layers together, making sure that everything
lays nice and smoothly, so that I don't end up with weird bubbling where the two layers don't quite match up. I'm securing these layers
temporarily together with some basting; one line
down the vertical center, and across the middle, and
perhaps another vertical column or two for the wider panels that have a bit more
surface area to secure. The purpose of this is
to hold these layers into this smooth non-bubbly arrangement I've got them in whilst flat,
so that things don't shift and sag and start to gape before I can stitch the side seams. And once I've got those
middle basting rows in, I'm also just thread-marking
around the perimeter of each piece. Once again to hold the layers into place but also so that I can see
my delicate chalk marks a little bit easier. Whilst I'm in the land of facing things, I've also gone ahead and
cut out the top portion of my pocket shapes from the velvet and we'll face these as well. This is just in case a
bit of the pocket peeks through the opening, it'll just look like some more of the black velvet
and won't be super obvious in this bright gold taffeta. That bottom edge is just turned under and held down with a quick felling stitch. (upbeat music) Then I recall from my previous Victorian pocket skirt endeavors in the "Walking Skirt" video that Bertha Banner instructs
in her sewing guide to French seam the outer pocket seams. So this is what I'm proceeding to do. The pieces are pinned
together with the outsides of the pocket facing together,
then stitched around. These seam allowances
then trimmed closely, the pocket flipped right side out, and the edges stitched down again. I probably should have done
this the other way round so that the seam flange
thing goes inside the pocket but it also kind of doesn't matter because this literally is
not ever going to be seen, once it's put into the skirt anyway. Ok, so I have sufficiently
procrastinated enough by making this pocket and I
actually have to get started with actually putting
this skirt together now. I wasn't entirely sure
how I was going to proceed because I have this bias tape. I'm going to go ahead and bias-tape all of the seams on this entire gown even though oftentimes
in 19th century skirts, especially late 19th century skirts, the skirt seams just were not finished. However, between the silk
taffeta and the silk velvet, I think there's gonna be way
too much fraying going on for this to even hope to last a relatively decently amount of time. I think what I'm going to do is because it will be a nightmare to have to wrestle this bias
tape on an entire skirt, I think what I'm going
to do is I'm going to pin and stitch together one seam. And then once that is secure, bias both of the edges, at
least get the piecings onto these pieces and then bias those edges and then put another piece on. Anyway, just so that I'm
working with smaller chunks of the skirt, and not
the entire, giant, heavy, late-19th-century velvet train skirt under the machine at one time. (upbeat music) I'm also pinning the two darts at the side skirt panels for stitching. There are two additional darts that span across the side panel seams, so the side seam is
enveloped inside the dart but I'm leaving those
for now since I have to, you know, stitch the side seam first. (upbeat music) Oh, and whilst I'm
stitching, I'm going ahead and getting the placket done up for the center back opening as well. This is just two strips of velvet. I think it's eight inches
long, maybe 10. I don't know. But I've backed this with
a strip of the taffeta to give it a little bit of stiffness, which in retrospect
still wasn't quite enough but the thought process was there. This is only stitched around
the bottom and one side edge since the other long side
will attach to the skirt seam and the top edge will
finish off at the waistband. (woodland fairy piano music) Ok, so now it is time to
experiment with some pressing. If you've ever had the
misfortune of working with velvet before, you'll be aware that you can't just smoosh an iron onto it or all the tiny standing
fuzzes of the velvet will get flattened and sad. To preserve the fuzz, "Authentic Victorian
Dressmaking Techniques" actually describes a 19th-century
method for ironing velvet, in which another human is
recruited to hold the piece taught in midair whilst you
iron the seam allowances. That way, the weight of the
iron doesn't crush the fuzz against the ironing board. But, since we are living
in times of plague and ye merry 2020 and
access to such novelties of other humans is not exactly an option, I went for the next best thing, setting another piece
of velvet fuzz-side-up under my fuzz-side-down sewing, so that ideally, the fuzzes
can support each other. This is not a perfect method, you can't put too much weight
on it or it will just smoosh. As you can see the fuzz on the iron side up of the seam allowance
has been pressed down flat and has gone all shiny here, but it's better than not pressing at all. (mystical otherworldly being music) On the left side of the skirt panel, just where I have that
circa 10-inch diagonal bit, I'm first pinning one
side of my pocket piece to the lower part of that edge to begin forming our weird placket pocket. Just ok, I need to take
a moment to apologize for the appalling light
quality in most of these shots. The camera compensating for the depth of the black velvet overexposes
Literally Everything Else including every tiniest bit of fiber ever. This one side is stitched
down and then pressed. (upbeat music) Then I can add the placket bit to the other side of the pocket. And this was just going
to be way too tedious to wrangle under the machine, so I stitched this down
by hand with a backstitch. (continued otherworldly being music) Ok, so here's where we are so far. I have managed to press
the placket a little bit as you can see, I have also managed to crush it just a little bit. Oh my god, velvet. Ok, so the actual stitching of it is a little bit difficult. But the pressing of it, the
actual getting it to look nice without smooshing it to death is probably the most difficult part. Fortunately, this placket is
obviously not going to be seen, and it's also this whole back section is going to be pleated up,
so even this bit up here, that I crushed a little bit, it's not gonna be seen because this all gets put into
gathers and I'm honestly... Thank goodness, there are only the two center front skirt seams that are really, really gonna be seen. But otherwise on the bodice, it's mostly just draped, I think. So thankfully there isn't going to be a whole lot of careful,
neat-tailoring pressing to be going on there. By the way, look at my pocket situation. I'm so thrilled with
how it's so complicated. I still haven't finished the edges here. But it's really sneaky, this
little pocket, but basically, this is all just a seam
with a placket here and it just splits down here, and here is the massive pocket! By the way, today's a very good day because I've rediscovered
the art of opening windows. Oh my goodness, I haven't
breathéd such fresh air, 'cause I haven't been getting
outside very much at all as you can probably imagine. And it's actually finally
nice enough outside right now that I can actually open
the window without dying of suffocation of humidity,
because it's been very hot and humid, as it tends to get in
merry summertime in New York. Ok, the window is still
open so the audio is garbage and I don't apologize. So basically, how I finished this thing is you've probably seen me do this before, i.e. in the "Petticoat" video
if you watched that part. I did not get this The Most
Even, but I did this by hand. I just turned this,
turned under the raw edge. Felled that down on this side, going all the way up
to the waistband here. Obviously the top of the
waistband is not finished, so all this is just garbage
that will get finished later. This top bit was finished
with the bias tape and then I trapped in this
little bit of twill tape that will once again just get trapped in with the waistband when
that happens later. And the purpose of this which I did not do in my "Walking Skirt" video of last year for "Lady Sherlock" which
I came to deeply regret. But this tape here, because
the pocket is hanging from a sort of diagonal well, bias seam in the center back of the skirt. If there's anything even
remotely heavy in this pocket, it will just weigh down the
entire back of the skirt, which because this is actually
in the back of the skirt, not even in the side seam, it will weigh down the entire
back train of the skirt, which is already heavy enough, but that will end up pulling
on the front of the dress, and will make that very uncomfortable. So this tape here just
takes the weight off of the seam of the skirt, sort of suspends the weight of the pocket from the waistband, which
is a bit more secure. So looking forward to implementing that. The other side here, usually,
when you put in a placket, this raw edge just sort of folds neatly over all of the raw edges
and encompasses everything and everything is nice and clean. That didn't happen obviously
because I have a pocket in the way here, so I just
took some of the bias tape and felled this on both sides by hand, which I will not be doing
for the actual seams. I will be doing those by machine but because the pockets are a bit finicky, especially around this bit
here, which you can see, it's not the neatest thing, even by hand. Bertha Banner advises that
pockets just in general should be done by hand
because they are so finicky. This literally took all day by the way, getting this pocket in,
which is a lot longer than I thought it would,
but now I'm going to resume getting our skirt shapes together
now that this is all done. I am so glad that I did this, whilst this piece is just by itself and not attached to the skirt, because this would have been
even more of a nightmare to do. So I'm going to get
this back into the skirt and we shall proceed. The seaming and binding of
seemingly infinite skirt panels took approximately forever. So to pass the time I
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know, severely lacking. So this was a simultaneously insightful and extremely terrifying course to take. Kind of unrelated, but I
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the description box below to help you explore your creativity. After that, it's only around $10 a month. (peaceful harp music) So one of the particular
challenges of working with velvet is because velvet has a pile. Basically that means that
these little micro fibers- my zoom isn't going to go this
close- but tiny little fibers that actually stand straight up, so that when you put them together and you put a heavy
sewing machine foot on it, the layers can shift a bit, which means whilst I'm
following the line nicely on this side, it doesn't
always end up to be the case on the other side, and I'm
having this perpetually happen, no matter how much I tried
to compensate for this on all of these seams, I
mean it won't do anything, because this is a skirt, it's
not like a super fitted part of the dress, it can
afford an extra, what, eighth of an inch in all
of the seams, it's fine. Thankfully the foundation,
the fitted foundation layer is of the silk, and
then it just has a bunch of velvet draped nicely over it. So thankfully I don't think
this should be a huge problem. (music that sounds like it
would accompany spellcasting) I have at long last gotten my act together and done the mock-up
fitting, I don't film these, because I literally hate
this process so much. So I have made my pattern alterations. This will probably require more fitting once it's in the silk taffeta, because that is just
how my upper body works. Nothing fits the same
if you put it on twice. Thankfully this is the
underbodice, so it won't be seen. And I don't have to worry about getting an absolutely perfect fit. There are two big darts in the
front of this front bodice, which every time, every
of the like four times I retried on this mock-up,
I had to take out the darts and put them back in a different place, because that's just how
things work on me apparently. So I have not marked the
darts onto my pattern because I think I'm just
going to go ahead and make up the entire bodice out of the
silk, and then put in the darts on me whilst I'm fitting because this is roughly symmetrical. I only really fit one side of it, which is probably my problem. But when I put the darts in, that will accommodate for the asymmetry. Whilst I'm cutting out these
pieces, I think I'm also going to go ahead and
cut out a dust ruffle. So if you don't what
know a dust ruffle is, it's just a little extra
little bit of ruffle that sits in the lining underneath the
skirt for about 11 inches. (Voiceover) False, the
stiffening layer was 11 inches but "Authentic Victorian
Dressmaking Techniques" instructs that the dust ruffle should
be about four inches wide. By no means the single
only permissible width for dust ruffleage, but since
this was the data at hand, I decided to just go with this. (Live) It's just a little
ruffle that sits on the inside of the hem here just so that
when the train especially is on the floor, that of
course, drags on the floor and gets disgusting and damaged and dusty, and a dust ruffle's really easy
to just rip out or replace, rather than ripping out and
replacing the entire lining of the skirt, which means
ripping out the entire skirt. I'm going to cut out in
11-inch long strip times. Well, I have to do the measurement
to figure out how this, what the circumference of the hem is, and then two and a half times that. (happy woodland fairy music) Ok. So all of my bodice
pieces are now cut out. I'm ready to go ahead and start
stitching things together. I wanted to introduce
you to my Spool of Ugly, or I don't know, the Unicorn spool, if you prefer to call it that. I'm not usually the biggest
aesthetic fan of bright colors, which is why I call it Spool of Ugly but you may call it what you will. But if you're doing a lot of basting and you have a lot of long basting threads that don't necessarily get
cut out when you remove them, I like to save them and use them again, because why throw away a nice
good long strand of thread? So these are some of the longer
threads that I pulled out of the seam allowance thread
tracing of the skirt pieces as I stitched those together. I still haven't pulled
out the pad stitching, the center zigzaggy basting lines yet, because I'm going to do the hem for that. 10 out of 10, I highly recommend. This is an old polyester thread, which I've had laying around for a while, which is what I like to use for basting because I don't wanna
throw it away obviously, but I also can't use it
for my historical projects. So I use it for basting and I
use it until it gets clipped and shredded and not usable anymore, so. (continued happy woodland fairy music) So once my foundation bodice pieces are all stitched together, I can then press the seam
allowances nice and flat. I don't think I explained this, but the right-hand side of
the center front opening has an additional one-inch modesty panel, just to fill in any gap
that might be visible through the center front lacing. (piano music) Then as per extant, Victorian bodices, the seam allowances are finished. In this case, I'm pinking the edges, which will prevent them from fraying, making sure to clip
into the seam allowances in that scallopy pattern at
the waistline above and below. This will just help the
seams to sit a bit smoother. Bodice seams could
alternatively be finished with bias binding or
simply with overcasting. "Victorian Dressmaking
Techniques" advises binding, but this is also I believe,
a home dressmaking book. And it specifically notes that quote, "Some dressmakers prefer
to overcast the seams and most of the imported French dresses are finished in this way." So as I'm theoretically attempting to make a Worth-style gown here,
it stands to reason that I should be attempting
this French method, despite the fact that
this gown is turning out to be the furthest thing from
Victorian Couture dressmaking, but shhhhhush, unfortunately,
my modern silk taffeta is a bit too loosely-woven
to just be overcast, which is my extraordinarily
long-winded explanation as to why I decided to
pink the edges instead. Ok, so here is where we are so far. I have finished pinking the edges of all the seam allowance here. I have yet to put boning in this. So I had the realization
for like two seconds and I didn't film any of this
because it happened quickly. But I realized that these front edges are going to lace together
with eyelet holes. Ignore this, it hasn't been pressed. One should not simply try
to work an eyelet hole through one single layer of
silk, because they will rip out. So I had to go ahead
and put a facing piece, also to finish off the center front edge, which I probably should
have done to begin with. But I just cut a little facing piece and stitched this on
here, folded this over, and pressed it, pinked this edge 'cause I'm not going to
fold it under and fell it to this layer because then the
stitches will show through. But this will just live like that. So that way when I work the
eyelet holes through this, it will go through two layers of silk and it will be much more stable. On this side however, I
have this modesty panel. So I have sort of tried to like rig this second facing layer inside here. Basically what I have to
do now before I proceed with anything is just fold this under. I will finish the edge
of this panel by just, you know, folding under
the seam allowance, and just felling it down like so. And then this center front edge where the eyelet holes will go here is reinforced with some silk in the back, so that the actual bodice when this is all pressed
and actually looks nice, will just get laced together
like this spiral lacing, because these nice ball gowns
tended to be spiral-laced, although most frequently laced
in the back, I should note. Ok, so I only have this much boning. When I say that I have
literally exactly enough boning, I literally to the millimeter, I think I have just exactly enough boning. So I'm only putting bones on either side of center front here, just because it's nice to
have just something solid for the eyelets to pull against. I'm going to put one here at the bust line and then two at the side seams. (suspenseful music) I am now proceeding to
cut and place the bones for the front and side seams. And I'm making sure to
pre-bend to these bones where they should curve in at the waist, so that the bodice automatically takes on a more natural shape. I've just used a bit of the bias tape as channel casing here. I'm not actually 1000% sure that this would have been the case. I'm fairly certain that
boning in this period would have been sold
pre-encased in channels, but I'm not aware of
any decent reproductions of that nowadays. The boning I'm using, by the way is actually synthetic baleen. It's plastic but basically
made to mimic the weight and flexibility of actual whalebone. So I decided to encase
said synthetic baleen into these strips and cross-stitch them into the foundation layer. A method that, from what I
understand, was only used to attach pre-encased boning into bodices. Fun fact, I actually just learned this from Victorian dress
specialist, Luca Costigliolo on a recent Foundations Revealed call, but he mentioned that in
all the extant Victorian and earlier clothing he studied, this late Victorian practice
of cross-stitching in boning is the earliest instance of the
cross-stitch that he's seen. And it was reserved pretty much solely for these boning channels. Not really for anything else until well into the 20th century. I just found that interesting. The cross-stitch is something quite common in modern dressmaking, particularly in theatrical costume-making, so I was really surprised to hear that it kind of wasn't a thing at all before the later Victorian period. Anyway, once my boning
channels are all set in, I then went ahead and
marked out the placement for the eyelet holes. Since these will be spiral-laced, I'm marking them one inch
apart, offsetting the sides. I'm also putting additional eyelet holes, one a shorter half inch
above the upper hole on the left-hand side, and one a half inch below the bottom most hole
on the right-hand side. This will allow the
single spiral-laced cord to start and finish neatly. (suspenseful music) So this is roughly what
the bodice is going to be, but out of velvet, obviously,
I just draped half of it, because the other half is going
to be the exact same shape, mirrored and then just
coming across this way, and then the bit that's not
covered here, will just get that little bit of white
chiffon stuff going on. The draping is a little bit complicated to be doing on the form in this situation because usually what I will do is I will drape it on the form and then do fittings and fit it to me, because this form is
differently shaped than I am, because I have the whole
scoliosis situation going on. So what I usually do is I will
drape the thing, fit it on me and then once it's been fitted to me, it is no longer like
workable on the dress form. Because I have made the underbodice and fitted the structural layer to me, this no longer fits the dress form. I've got my bust bodice on
underneath this too, so. I can't really do precise
draping on this situation. I will be cutting out four of this shape, whatever this is unpleated, undraped. This bit's on the biases. It's one of the rectangles that I used for the skirt mock-up actually. So it's kind of roughly like yay wide and like knee-length long,
if that helps at all, but then it's just one bit's folded over so that I get a nice bias edge and that will allow the fabric to stretch sort of around
this drapery-ness here, instead of being on the straight grain and just being more rigid. I'm going to have to
put on the underbodice and then somehow I guess
drape this on myself, which this bit should work out fine. The front bit at least, it's just the back that I'm worried about. I don't know, we'll see, we'll
work out this problem anon. Wow, it's like really dark
outside- can you see?- it is a ye old summertime
in merry New York, so we got lots of merry thunderstorms. I hate bodice fitting so much, and I procrastinate this so
hard as you can probably tell. (suspenseful music) So I decided to go ahead with
my draping schemes thusly. I fully draped the two back
halves onto the dress form, since these would be
pretty much impossible to do neatly on myself. (suspenseful music) I secured the edges of these
to the foundation layer by turning in the raw edges of
both the silk and the velvet, then felling this down in
the preferred lining method for this period, that
is not doing the thing where you stitch them inside
out and then flip them. I also gathered up the
shoulder strap connection of both front halves and
stitched these together. But the front halves of this
are otherwise left undraped so that I can attempt the drape on myself, which I indeed... attempted. Ok, so I haven't really been filming, because this has been the
most frustrating process. And I just haven't felt
like documenting it on top of actually trying to wrestle this. But basically what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to obviously
stitch down lightly this draped layer overtop of the bodice foundation layer. But because it's got this
crossover situation in the front, I can't stitch the whole thing down, because this bit will have
to be able to be removed and then of course it
comes off the fitting, the me, looking like this, which makes significantly
less sense than it did when it was on a body which confuses me and then I get confused. And then I have to put the thing back on to find out what sense I was
making anyway, it's just been- this has been a journey. I'm going to need to come up with a different dress form situation, and I think I have a cunning plan. But for right now because I actually need to make some progress and the
skirt isn't quite finished, I'm just going to go ahead and proceed with finishing the skirt. Just as I did at the
beginning of this project. It's like the skirt is my like
grounding for this project. I know what I'm doing with the skirt, I understand the skirt, it
makes sense, this doesn't. So the skirt still has
a little bit more work that needs to get done. It's mostly together but what
I have started doing yesterday is just putting the gathering
thread into the center back. I have done again that most wise thing where I have the center
back opening in the skirt, with a center front opening on the bodice. So this is going to be a nightmare
that I will address anon, but for now I think I'm going to go ahead and finish the bodice
and the skirt separately, and then just find a way to
like lightly rig them together, so that they stay together
and I don't end up with a gap between the bodice and
skirt, which I don't like. And then we shall test
out our cunning plan for bodice proceedings anon. Whilst I'm in the process
of pinning the waistband on, I'm making sure that I trap that end of the pocket suspension tape in so that that gets stitched in
when I sew it all together. (suspenseful music) So I proceeded to stitch the first side of the waistband down by machine. But, as we know velvet and its propensity to not do what you want it to, I found it extremely difficult to actually meet my lines on the skirt. In this instance, precision is
actually a bit more important than it was on the skirt seams and this much deviation
would actually alter the way that the skirt sits, so I
noped out of this situation and decided to just hand sew it on. (suspenseful music) Ok, pardon the momentary
shift in lighting. It's momentarily gone pitch-black outside. So we're gonna sit like this
for our situation. Carry on. (suspenseful music with
gentle thunder sounds) (scissors snipping) (rolling thunder) Once my waistband is stitched and felled, I'm then going across one more time with a larger tight running stitch. This extra stitch is
something that's often seen on extant Victorian skirt waistbands. The purpose of it is
to really flatten down the bulk of the waistband
so that it lays smoothly and as flat as possible. Ok, some success, at least this looks mildly more promising. I have seen some people
online do this thing, where when they want to like
model corsets on dress forms that aren't built for
Victorian corset shapes, stuff a pillow inside of it,
and that just takes the shape. And I think this is going
to work out well enough for my purposes, at least I'm hopeful. This is obviously puffier and
this is puffier than I am. So I'm going to try and not
take any of this into account, which means the shoulder structure, probably isn't going to
be really valid on this, but I'm going to at least use this to get this drape correct. And whilst I'm doing this,
this little chiffon bit that goes right here. Anyway, I'm gonna have to do some rigging, because this is also going
to have to have a fastener, because if this goes across
then I can't undo the laces. Oh my god. This is so much like
logic and it's mind-bending. Let's see what can be done. By the way, I realized I
didn't have a plaited cord or lace slim enough to fit
through my eyelet holes and the Garment District is closed. But fortunately, I do
have a ton of cotton floss which I just plaited
normal three-strand style into a two-yard long lace to
use for this foundation bodice. (sewing machine clicking) I also realized that
before I can start draping the velvet bits, I should
probably prep this chiffon drape that'll be sitting underneath the velvet. So I've just got a long rectangle of this, which I'm stitching
together at the long sides and then turning inside out
to hide those raw edges, which will be covered over with the velvet but leaving the other side
free to fasten with a hook, so that the center front
is free to open and close. (upbeat music) Ok, so here is where we are so far. I apologize that I haven't
been filming more of this, but honestly, I'm kind of just
making this up as I go along. Essentially this bodice
has got four pieces. I did, yesterday afternoon, I draped this front part and
then the half of the back. Then it just got to be too many
pins and too much confusion. So I took it off the pillow dress form, did a little bit of stitching, just tacking down the
edges here at the armscye, and then down under here. It still has got a bunch of pins in it because I had just started
pinning down these drapes, just to keep them in position. I'm not sure if I will need to tack these, or if I can now just unpin them and they'll hold now that
they've got some tension on the bottom half over here. I think after I do all
of this initial tacking, I'm going to do a fitting on
me and try unpinning the pins and if it works, tension's
right, then I will take them out and I will just leave the bodice as it is. Or if I take the pins out
and the pleats start to sag, then I will put the pins back in and go in and do some little tacking
stitches, just to hold them. Today, I went through and
just draped the other half of the back bodice as
well as this front piece. Now this is a bit confusing
because these are the bits that have to cross over
the center front opening, so these can't be stitched down, and I've just turned the
raw edges along the edge of the bodice, so it's
going to be sort of a false edge here I'm going to stitch this down. I think when I take this off the form, I think I'm gonna put
some hooks in this piece, and hook it to the front,
this will unflap this way, and then this bit will hook on to the foundation bodice over here. So there will be a hook, hook. So this will have a hook up here as well. (music to accompany sneaking
into a castle late at night) And now for my closure-hating
self's worst nightmare, facing the detrimental quantity
of hooks and eyes required to fasten this gown. Without reliving this agony too intensely, basically, there were pairs
of hooks and bars required to fasten the center back of the skirt, a pair of hooks on
either side of the skirt at the side seams to attach
to bars on the side seams of the inside bodice to hold the skirt up without impeding on the nonsensical front versus back closures, a bar
on the foundation bodice for the chiffon drape to hook across to, and a series of hooks across
each edge of the velvet drape that hold each half to
the foundation bodice. And having begrudgingly done my closures, I'm returning to some nice
peaceful, mindless hemming. And indeed there is a lot of that. This is done so initially
by machine, stitching a long bit of that tape to the
hem, then folding this back and felling down the inside by hand, catching only the lining layer
so that the hem isn't visible from the right side. (lullaby-esque piano music) But wait, there's more! Well, just one more thing
and that is the dust ruffle. Taking the long four-inch
strips I cut out earlier, and by earlier, I mean
weeks ago at this point. I'm seaming these together end to end to form a complete circle. No need to finish the seam allowances, since the silk was cut
selvedge to selvedge, so the ends won't disintegrate. I've just by the way, cut
off the fluffy fringe, so that it looks a little bit more like a Victorian silk selvedge. I'm then just pinking
the top and bottom edges to prevent fraying. (continued lullaby-esque piano music) Then I'm running a gathering thread, approximately one inch
down from the top edge of these strips, gathering them down, and tacking them loosely to the skirt with long running stitches. As this dust ruffle isn't meant to be a long-lasting permanent
feature of this dress, but is actually meant to be
changed out when necessary, it doesn't have to be
super painstakingly done. (tinkly mystical piano music) And now for the final touches
for the literal one person who has probably kept up
with the videos religiously and remembers this one throwaway line in my "Workroom Tour" video, I've had this little quarter yard strip of antique velvet ribbon
that was given to me ages ago and has been far too pretty to get rid of. So I'm going to make
this up into a little bow to decorate one of the shoulder straps. This is theoretically
supposed to be nested amongst the silk roses which
I unfortunately can't add yet since the silk flower
maker I've commissioned to do the roses for my,
Cathy's, and Constance's gowns is still shut due to lockdown things. But never fear, there are
still months and months before the ball for which this
gown was supposed to be worn if indeed the world is a
thing again by next May. (continued tinkly mystical piano music) In the meanwhile, I wouldn't
dream of leaving you without the satisfaction
of the completed design. So I have obtained some real
roses to stand in for now. This was definitely a challenging project. The gown itself took about a
month and a half to complete with the necessary
under-structure garments, adding an additional,
well, this project series has been going on for six months now if you've been keeping up. So this was a very
time-consuming endeavor. I'm thrilled it's finished now though, and finished well in time for whenever that 1890s ball
does go ahead in future. What is this world of
being ready for events ages before they happen
and not panic sewing the week before? Novel! Anyway, thank you for joining me on these late Victorian adventures. But we've been up to
a lot of 1890s lately. I think it's time we venture off to explore some other territory for a bit. No? Anon, friends. (energetic piano music) (jazz music)
Bernadette Banner and Karolina Zebrowska are two of my most favorite people on YouTube. If you had asked me 2 years ago what a "stay" was or what was fashionable during Edwardian times, I'd look at you like a crazy person. I don't sew, nor do I consider myself fashionable but I love content like this. I've learned so much.
I will always upvote Bernadette.
If you like Bernadette, check out:
Morgan Donner - very knowledgeable, low key and relaxing
Rachel Makesy - 1940s Hobbit energy, mostly fashion humor and nerd shit
Palindrome Projects - very new, videos are all about the same big 1860s dress project, tries to mix humor and history
Abby Cox - 1700s expert, but also does Victorian, very fun
Micarah Tewers - pure chaotic princess Barbie energy with pet chickens
karolina zebrowska - polish, meme queen, hilarious
Edit:formatting
I clicked on this thinking I would watch a nice quick video. 45 minutes later I’m still watching. So mesmerizing. So much patience.
ALSO RELEVANT AND ONLY 10 MINS:
making a met gala gown... with toilet paper
I see Madame X (by John Singer Sargent) on the right.
I like this lady.