1895-inspired dress for Dear Super Dollfie
One of the things I was most looking forward to about owning Ivy, my new DearSD (Dear Super Dollfie) is sewing lots of cute little-girl dresses, because I think they really suit the scale and proportions of the doll.
I particularly like very late Victorian era dresses - I think this is what a lot of people imagine when they think of antique dolls, because a lot of surviving examples are from this era. I decided to look for inspiration in the 1890s, because I love the silhouettes of the era.
Finding sources for 1890s patterns
Recently I've been going through old copies of a magazine called Der Bazar, which ran from 1854-1933. Interestingly, it is very closely related to a few other magazines - you might have heard of Harper's Bazaar? but also La Mode Illustrée and De Gracieuse - and I've cross-referenced a few copies and found they sometimes share the illustrations and patterns across all these publications.
The first great thing about Der Bazar is that there is a free online archive available and the scans are extremely high quality, unlike some of the other publications. You can buy scans of La Mode Illustrée, but it gets very expensive. De Gracieuse also has a free online archive, but the images aren't very large.
The second great thing is that Der Bazar includes patterns. Sometimes the archived copies are missing pages (including the patterns) but I've been fairly lucky so far.
The not-so-great thing about Der Bazar is that it's in German, and I've nothing against German, but trying to decipher older German fonts is a bit of a pain! I think the font style is called Fraktur. While the pattern instructions in Der Bazar are very basic, it's still useful to be able to read them.
Luckily, there are plenty of guides online to help decipher the font (I used this one), and then I use Google Translate for the actual German.
Anyway, back to the dress!
Choosing a dress
Not all the illustrations in the magazine have corresponding patterns, but I found one which did (source image here). I love big puffy sleeves that are then snug on the lower arm, and the square collar is super cute.
You have to trace out the patterns yourself (I recommend a contrasting colour if you print it out, or using photo-editing software), but in this case the pattern was simple enough that I decided to just use the diagram as a base (source image for the pattern page):
Figures 63, 64 and 65 are the bodice lining, figure 66 is the bodice overlay, figures 67-69 are the collar, figure 70 is the inner sleeve and figure 71 is the top part of the sleeve. There's no diagram for the skirt piece, as you just draw out a big rectangle.
Making the dress
I started by making a very basic bodice and sleeve block for my DearSD. There isn't really a need for darts on this body type because it's very toddler-shaped, with not much difference between bust and waist measurement.
After that, I started drawing out pattern pieces with the right shapes, using the pattern diagram as a guide.
I chose a tightly woven white cotton for the lining and a very loosely woven, light blue cotton lawn for the outer fabric. This fabric was really tough to handle... it was so delicate and frayed a lot. In retrospect, not the easiest choice.
I will skip over actual construction here because I didn't do it very well, but I chose to make the collar separately (thinking I could maybe make different collars and swap them out when I felt like it), and constructed the bodice waist by gathering both the skirt and the bodice, then sewing them together.
I edged the collar with pleated lace, and trimmed the skirt with two different kinds of lace (one of which I'd used on the collar).
Results and lessons learned
First, some pictures.
It's pretty cute (mostly because of my doll) and I don't hate it. But... there are a lot of things I would do differently next time!
On this full-length photo I've numbered some of the problem areas.
1. The collar
Problems:
- I caught some of the lace in the collar while sewing the sides together, so the pleating looks messy
- The white cotton didn't press very well and still looks creased
- I should have made the collar neckline slightly smaller, because it just sits on top of the dress, and with both necklines the same size, the dress neckline is sometimes visible
- It's maybe too wide?
Good things:
- I like the idea of interchangeable collars.
2. The waistband
Problems:
- Gathering two pieces of very delicate, loose-woven fabric at different levels of gather was... challenging. The length of the outer waistline ended up larger than the length of the lining fabric. Next time I would gather both pieces to a firmer fabric for stability.
- I think this really could do with a belt and a big bow. I could still add this.
Good things:
- I basted this seam by hand and really took care with it, and the gathering.
3. The skirt
Problems:
- It needs a petticoat or three. There's a lot of volume in the skirt but that isn't obvious at all. Also, the blue fabric is completely see-through (you can see her patterned stocking fairly clearly).
- I should finish this with water to get a better effect (this is a process where you wet a skirt and let it dry in place to get more realistically scaled pleating).
Good things:
- Not much to say here. I like the French seam I did at the back?
4. The hem
Problems:
- I think it looks unbalanced to have the thickly pleated lace on the collar, and the plain application of lace at the bottom. Maybe the collar lace should have just been very lightly gathered?
Good things:
- I think the lace is applied fairly neatly. I went veeeery slowly on the sewing machine here and basted the lace in by hand first.
In general
I'm not sure the silhouette is the best for Ivy, my DearSD. It's cute but it could be cuter. I could have done a better job of translating the look and feel of the original dress. I also think the balance of the outfit is off.
And I definitely wouldn't use such a delicate fabric next time, even at this scale, for a dress that's meant to have so much body. It made a lot of the sewing quite challenging.
But it was a very good learning experience and Ivy does look sweet.
Thank you for reading if you got this far, and drop me a line on Instagram or Twitter if you want to say hi!