The Vastly Belated Bath Victorian Ball (2018)

So, more than a year ago now, I attended the Bath Victorian Ball with my fiancé, James, who you can follow over at Little Welsh Viking. I meant to do a full write-up for the gown I made, along with some shots of the suit of tails I made for him, but I never got around to it (PhD life). This is going to be slightly abridged, due to details I've probably forgotten, but here we go.

As always, a photo of the finished ensembles:

Photo by Lucas Pitcher, Timelight Photography

The theme for 2018's Bath Victorian Ball was natural form (1876-9, with some squidge on either side), but we were allowed to go slightly earlier. Even though I was making a new gown, I opted for the latter option because 1) I loathe natural form, with a couple of exceptions, 2) I didn't have enough fabric to do a natural form gown, which tend to be cut with shoulder-to-floor seams rather than bodice-and-skirt construction, and tend to use one or two fabrics rather than multiple fabrics and trims, and 3) early 1870s floofiness is one of the. best. things. ever. So I planned an 1875 gown, which was right on the edge between the ridiculous bustles of the early 1870s, and the deflated look that came in right after.

I should note that there were tons of ladies at the ball who made natural form look fantastic, and who made stunning, drool-worthy gowns. Just not for me, especially if I'm buying silk for it!

I started squirreling away fabric for this gown about three years ago. I had three yards of this and two yards of that, and so on - about 6 different types of silk taffeta and brocade, in the end, plus a few smaller scraps that I used for trim. The light pink bias-cut edging and cording that appears all over the gown is from three different pieces of fabric, that are mostly - but not quite - the same shade. Just had to be careful where I put them! All of these disparate pieces were not suitable for an elegant, long-line natural form gown, but they could definitely be cobbled into a ridiculous c.1875 confection!

Here are some of my references:

1870s Fashion Plate, provenance unknown

Ms Sophie Croizette, 1870s Victoria & Albert Museum

Fashion plate, Revue de la Mode, 1873

Striped silk dress, c.1870, Philadelphia Museum of Art

Based on all of these, and with reference to the bits of fabric in my possession, I came up with a design for my own gown:

I chose the one in the bottom left, due to fabric allowances. My main fabric was a gold/tan silk taffeta with some figured gold brocade stripes in it, of which there is a photo in the top corner of my design image. It's remarkably similar to the fabric in this 1880s dress, although my brocade repeats are narrower:

Gown, 1880s, Augusta Auctions

So that was the plan. I started with the bodice, using my basic Victorian bodice block and designing the skirts for it with an awkward combination of drafting and self-draping. I cut it in good fabric literally the day I left to fly to Canada for Christmas, so that I wouldn't have to take all 7 yards of it with me! Sorry for the horrendous quality of this photo; I was in a rush.

I did my best to pattern-match across the pieces, although obviously you can't do that completely on a curve. It worked pretty well. Un-matched stripes are totally period, though.

Here's the bodice after the first fitting in good fabric, and with some of the trim on the 'dagged' or 'vandyked' bottom edge, which was a fashionable style in the '70s (see the red and gold gown above).

At this point not all the boning was in, so the bodice was wrinkling over the hips and not quite sitting right in back. However, I was quite pleased with the trim - it took SO LONG, but it was exactly what I'd had in my head.

The inside took quite a bit of taming, especially along the hip-curves, but eventually both the seam allowances and the wrinkles on the hips decided to cooperate. I used the really thin zip-ties for most of the boning in this, by the way. There are narrow steels at the centre-back lacing, but that's it. Zip ties are cheap, and the ability of the plastic to take on a shape when you add some heat is much more reminiscent of whalebone than even spiral steels are. So there's a good argument for using plastic. They're not seen on the outside, so I care more about the properties of the material than the look of it, in this case. Steel or extra-strong plastic at the centre-backs is essential, though, to keep them from warping under the pressure of the lacing.

Next up was the bertha. My two main inspirations were these:

Gown, c.1865, Metropolitan Museum of Art

This one is a pinterest orphan :(

I really liked the 'windowpane' effect of the gauze through the ribbons, and I happened to have some very fine silk gauze laying around - I'd vowed never to use it because it was so impossible to cut on the grain, hem, or even touch without snagging, but it was perfect for this!

To make the pattern, I laced my corset around two pillows and then put the bodice on over that - not ideal, but it worked. Also, sorry in advance that a lot of these are instagram shots - I switched hard drives and transferred loads of stuff between computers, and I can't currently figure out where the original photos of these ended up. :(

That's the two-pillows-and-a-corset dress form in the bottom right

The taming of the gauze

Despite using a ton of gauze, mine ended up somehow...flatter...than the original. But it was hell to work with, so I'm leaving it as-is, forever.

Here it is at the final fitting, with sleeves. Obviously the hip-bits need some oomph under them to stop them from wrinkling and drooping. I'm not in love with the sleeves. I'd hoped to mess with them before the ball, but I didn't have time. They fit the slightly neo-medieval dagged-and-windowpane aesthetic, but they're a little...fake Rapunzel?...I'm not sure. 

Adding the eyelets using an original mother-of-pearl awl that I found for £3 at a thrift shop.

At this point we were only about a month from the ball, and I was panicking slightly as I moved on to the skirt.

I used a Janet Arnold pattern for the skirt, but it was for a day-dress, so I added a train. But why not use the handy 1870s floofy ball gown skirt with a train that she includes, you ask? Well. Mini side-rant.

Fun fact: that famous 1870s gown pattern, with the button-up front of the bodice and the nice trained skirt? The original dressmaker cut it wrong, with the bias at the front edge of the skirt panels, rather than the back edge. Janet Arnold does acknowledge this in the fine print on the pattern, but it's not immediately obvious as a problem if you don't already know about the bias-towards-the-back rule. Weirdly, although bias grain is notoriously (and usefully) stretchy and loses its shape, when it's worked into a seam, it's actually much more 'aggressive' than a straight-of-grain edge, because all the fibres in the weave are hitting the seam at an angle, whereas on the straight-of-grain side of the seam, half the fibres are hitting the seam dead-on, but the other half are perpendicular and not hitting it at all. This means that a bias edge will always push a straight edge away from itself. Thus, if the bias edges on your skirt panels are on the back-facing edge of each panel, they will naturally push the volume of the skirt around the body towards the back. This creates more pleasing folds and flutes in the drape of the skirt, and is a principle you can see clearly in dressmaking throughout the nineteenth century. When it is cut as-is, with the bias towards the front, the skirt will never quite fall the way most skirts of the period are meant to. 

I've still seen some really beautiful renditions of that dress, both with and without changing the direction of the skirt panels. However, where the bias is not switched, many of the successful gowns I've seen are, like the original gown itself, made in lightweight fabrics - silk-cottons, thin satin, gauze, and so on. These fabrics move and drape naturally, so the fluting looks elegant and intentional. However, my gown was to be made in stiff silk taffeta, flat-lined with even stiffer cotton organdy, and weighed down with multiple layers of taffeta ruffles. When faced with this much heavier and stiffer set of materials, the problems with the grain would have become much more visible, and there would have been clear folds and droops in the skirt that fell towards the front - that is, in towards my legs - rather than being held out towards the back as desired. I personally didn't feel like fighting with the pattern, so I chose a day gown with simpler panels and just added a train.

This is the culprit. You can see from the stripes that the bias is on the wrong side of the skirt panels.

Anyways.

I made the skirt in a plain tan 'taffetioni' in the front (who coined that term? Was it Lauren? It's great. I use it for any dupioni/shantung - that is, a slubby plain weave - that has few enough slubs that it can mostly pass for taffeta), and just a cotton sateen in the back, since that was all going to be covered with silk panels anyways. The whole thing was flatlined in cotton organdy for stiffness and body, bound with twill tape rather than being hemmed (another common period practice), and finished on the inside with a cotton organdy ruffle at the bottom edge, which is also something you see on lots of originals. It helps to keep the bottom of the skirt from folding in on itself, and serves as both a dust ruffle and a bit of protection between the floor and your nice fabrics.

I wish to thank the orcs of Mordor for their assistance with this stage of the gown sewing process.

Here it is over a bustle to check the train length. I actually went a little overboard on the width of the train at the sides - it doesn't need to come so far out until the centre-back panel and the back edges of the panels on either side. But it's easier to cut some away than to have to add it! I already had to piece the very back curve of the train.

Here is the skirt with some of the silk added. The gold and pink silk ruffle around the bottom was actually one of the very first things I did as prep for this dress, and it took probably as long as making the base bodice and skirt combined. Seriously, it took SO LONG, you guys. I did it all by hand with vinegar and an iron, trying to knife-pleat as evenly as possible. The pink sections are accordion-pleated and then stitched together at the top, so that they fan out when I walk. The whole bottom edge of the ruffle is bound in a strip of pink silk, which in itself took forever because I stupidly sewed it by hand! Why? Why did I do that? They had machines in the 1870s! 

For the rest of the trim, though, I got smart. That is, I got a fluting iron.

I saw this fluting iron at the huge antiques market where I eventually bought it waaaay back when I still lived in Ontario full time. That is, before undergrad. I had no immediate use for it, and I was about to move to Nova Scotia, so I left it. Fast forward seven years, to when I was planning this ballgown. I went home to Toronto for Christmas and took a trip up to St Jacobs specifically to see if I could find the iron - I hoped that no one else would have found, recognised, and purchased it in the very long interim. Quite the opposite - there were now two of them! The other was beautiful, but 1890s and fiddly, and would have had to be completely taken apart and cleaned before it would even function, so I got the 1860s one I’d originally seen. I’m pretty sure it, on its own, took up more than the allowable weight in my carry-on on the way to Scotland, and the security personnel were so alarmed by it that they made me completely unwrap and explain it. But I’m so glad I got it here! If you ever come across one of these, go for it.

Using it is really simple. You stick the base in the oven for a bit - I did 20 min to start, I think, and then 3 or 4 minutes to reheat whenever it started to cool down. I stuck mine on an oven mitt on the ironing board. Then you wet your fabric strip with a vinegar-water mixture, place it on the base, and roll the top piece over top to 'corrugate' the fabric. I recommend as much vinegar as you can stomach smelling (I did mine when I was sick and had a stuffed-up nose, which was, for once, ideal timing) and a trim width no wider than the fluting iron’s base. I tried to go over mine twice to get a double width, but it just ended up crunching the fabric weirdly and making the flutes wonky and uneven.

Here are the finished pieces of trim after being fluted and drying out. They remind me of those crepe streamers you used to see at grade-school birthday parties. I don't *think* I smelled like vinegar on the dance floor. :)

Next I made the apron bit and the various floopy bits and attached them all to the skirt.

That's literally the only in-progress shot I have of that. It was less than a week before the ball and there was so much still to do, so I was not really pausing for photos!

This is me, in Jimmy's old flat in Glasgow, on very little sleep, doing the final fitting before the ball. The super long floopy thing I'm holding in the top photo is one of the two pieces of trim that had yet to be gathered. I ended up doing that by hand on the drive down to Bath.

I found some square-toed shoes at a charity shop. They were a little small, so I opened up the back seam and used some more of that trusty light pink silk to extend them by about a 1/4". I also added some gold silk rosettes, also from my gown fabric. This was in the flat in Bath, the day before the ball!

In the end, unfortunately, I felt quite sick the day of the ball. I had aching shoulders and neck before I even put the ballgown on (a common problem for me), and I ended up with a headache by half way through the evening. I also had a nasty stomach ache, probably from anxiety and not sleeping. This is why you finish your dresses earlier, folks! But we did get some good photos.

There are the back tiers I didn't show you earlier. :) I need to make another petticoat to fluff it up more; I've two organdy petticoats and a lobster-tail bustle under there, but it's still not enough. MORE PETTICOATS ALWAYS.

The photos above are by Raven Stern. I guarded her camera during one of the dances I sat out, resulting in this strange shot:

Also, this was the first Victorian ball that I went to with James, which meant it was finally time for the suit of tails to shine! That's the suit of tails that I made back in my third year of undergrad, but never finalised because I didn't have someone who would actually want to wear it. Well, it was worth the wait. It fit James perfectly, so I just needed to sew the back seam on the trousers, hem the legs, finish some of the linings, finish the insides of the sleeves and armholes, add buttons, and take out all the basting.

And here we are at the ball:

gross

I'll also include some photos of the tailcoat in progress, below. These are now quite a number of years old, and unfortunately I don't have any better ones, as I did most of the tailcoat sewing during the late evenings and all-nighters pulled between paper deadlines for history courses. Amazing it came out this well, really. It's all hand-stitched, and the photos show how many layers and components go into this type of tailoring.

The inside, with the horsehair canvas and a layer of wool felt visible. There is a second layer of canvas and a layer of soft buckram underneath the visible horsehair canvas.

A close-up of the front padding. The pad-stitching has been begun along the lapel. It has already been completed on the underside of the felt - this step must be completed before the felt is attached, via catch-stitch, to the canvas.

What all of this looks like from the right side. The fabric is wool barathea.

Once all the layers of stiffening are added to the fronts, the wool facing on the lapel and the first panel of lining go in. The tails are also interlined at this point; pockets will be added to the tails before the lining goes in.

Again, from the right side, showing all the basting stitches and guiding marks.

This is a cross-section of the shoulder, with the sleeve and body sandwiched together before being sewn. The body is on the left in this photo, and the sleeve on the right. In order, the layers are: sleeve lining (far right striped fabric, before being set in), sleeve roll padding, wool barathea sleeve, wool barathea body, horsehair canvas layers x2 (chest and body padding), soft buckram (ditto), wool felt (ditto), shoulder pad, body lining. The sleeve lining gets pulled up over all of it and tacked down to cleanly finish the inside, and then you barely know there’s so much bulk hidden in there!

I'm so pleased that the tailcoat finally saw its day in the sun (or rather, the chandeliers), and James will be able to wear it to any other late-Victorian events we may go to.

Traditional last photo of the night

~~~

The next morning we went to the Pump Rooms for breakfast, and wandered around Bath. I went as a suffragette, c.1907, but I think I'll save that for a separate post - this one is fairly image-heavy as it is.

I'm hoping to make an extra petticoat or two for the ballgown and then do a photoshoot with James in one of the historical houses near Edinburgh, so stay tuned!

Some Updates

Sorry for the incredibly long gap between this post and the last! I'm doing a PhD, y'all. I have time for sewing, but not for writing about it! (Unless it was sewing someone did in Scotland before 1543. Then I have time for it.)

Anyways, wanted to share some photos from a couple of events that took place ages ago and I'm honestly never going to get around to doing a full write-up for. Sorry.

First up is the Bath Victorian Ball 2017 - yep, two whole years ago - where I wore my beetlewing gown for the second time (but not the last!). I made some additions to the skirt embroidery, and some adjustments to the fit overall that I think helped it to sit a little better. The back is still wrinkly. Oh well - I am comforted by photos of horrifically-fit gowns on ladies of the 1850s, who dressed up in their best clothes for the photoshoot and still couldn't manage a smooth-fitting bodice. Still, though, I am way happier with the front of this bodice than the back. The nice little sweep of the skirt against the carpet there is because I forgot to bring my bum-pad to Bath! Whoops. Turned out nice in the photos, though.

Photos by Timelight Photography, and hair by Emma Forrest.

The main additions for the second year of wearing the gown were all the little flying beetles, and they make me very happy. I'm going to be making a new bodice for this dress and wearing it to an 1830s event this coming fall, so you'll be seeing it again soon! I'm excited to make some mad sleeves. Haven't quite decided on the bodice design yet, but it will be silly. And have more dead bugs on it.

~

The next event that I never shared was the Edinburgh Regency Ball 2018. This is a very cool event that re-creates an historical ball exactly: same day/date - just 200 years on - same original venue, same dances. It's happened three times now - 2017, 2018, and 2019.

I wore the same gown I always wear to Regency balls, because I can't be bothered making a new one (I also wore it to the 2017 Regency Ball, which is why I'm not including that here). However, I did add a new panel to the back of the gown, which vastly improved the silhouette and general floofiness (appropriate for a ball set in 1817); my fiancé, James, finished his velvet suit in time for the ball, and looked incredibly dashing; and I made our friend Chelsea a gown, as well, so that she could come along. We had a wonderful time, and you can see some posts about the suit over on James's facebook page and blog, Little Welsh Viking.

Chelsea's gown is blue silk chiffon over a blue cotton undergown, all hand-stitched by me. She helped to make her stays and made her petticoat on her own, so we're slowly reeling her in to historical costuming! Her coral necklace is by Janet Reutcke. My gown is white/translucent silk gauze with gold figured silk trim, also over a cotton undergown. Someday I'll make sleeves for the undergown, and a spencer, so that I can go to Regency picnics and so on...but not today.

Someday I'll also do a write-up for the Bath Victorian Ball 2018, but probably also not today.

The Versailles Ball, and HSF Travel

So, as anyone who follows my facebook has known for quite some time, on May 30th I was privileged to attend the Fêtes Galantes at the Palace of Versailles. This post has taken a very long time in coming, which I'm very sorry for, but I've been very busy with my masters and I just haven't had time to do a proper post!

As always, an image to start:

Photo arranged by Raven of Plaid Petticoats

I love this shot! Raven wanted to evoke Annie Leibowitz's Vogue shoot for Marie Antoinette, and I think she did a fabulous job. Our instructions were "look bored," haha. I am in the sage green gown in the centre. To my right are Emma, in dark blue, and Alana, in pink satin brocade. I draped both of their gowns, and did much of the stitching on both.

~~~

Now, before I talk about the process of getting ready for the ball, I wanted to share a little bit of context on this gown, because taking it to France was actually quite special to me. The gown was created to tell the story of one Nova Scotian woman who was forced from her home in Acadia in the 1740s, and took refuge in France. Wearing the gown there felt like an important part of its story. In addition, I posted this gown on the Historical Sew-Fortnightly for the Travel challenge - I didn't actually enter it in the challenge, as it was mostly made some time ago, but I did want to share the travel-laden story that goes with it.

The gown is my c. 1740s Robe a la Francaise and embroidered stomacher, modelled on one in the collection of the LACMA, and chosen because of its similarity to the gowns listed in the death inventory of Dame Marie-Josephe Le Borgne de Belle Isle, of Louisbourg. It was made and initially worn in Marie's birthplace of Nova Scotia, Canada.

Marie was the highest-ranking woman at the Fortress of Lousibourg (in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia) in the 1740s, with close ties both within the town and to surrounding communities. She had an impressive lineage: she was descended from French noble houses on both sides of her family, claiming a number of seigneurial lords of New France, as well as two Governors of Acadia, among her recent ancestors, and her mother was the daughter of Chief Madokawando of the Penobscot of Pentagoët. She married twice in Louisbourg; once to a respected civil administrator of the town and afterwards to Lord Joseph Du Pont Duvivier. Between these two marriages, she had nine children, at least four of whom survived to adulthood.

Given her strong ancestral and communal ties to Louisbourg and Acadia, the Siege of Louisbourg and the resulting expulsion of the Acadians in 1745 must have been devastating. Marie packed up her children and her belongings, and undertook the voyage to France along with many other members of her once-thriving community. The voyage would have been dangerous, and the outlook bleak - especially when she lost her first husband, soon after the tumult began. Yet in 1749, when Louisbourg was returned to French hands, Marie found the strength to once again pack up her children and her life and sail back to the New World. She remarried in 1750 and immersed herself as a pillar of the Acadian community at Louisbourg until her death from illness in 1754. In some ways her death at this time is a blessing, as she did not live to see the second siege of Louisbourg in 1758, which ended when the residents were once again expelled and the town was purposefully burnt to the ground. This event effectively ended French occupancy of the Maritimes, although the Acadian culture remains to this day.

Marie's travels are unlikely to have taken her to Versailles, despite her aristocratic connections and the time she spent in France, but when I had the opportunity to wear my "Louisbourg" gown to the ball in May it felt a bit like I was completing a part of the story the gown was created to tell. The gown is not a travelling suit - a riding habit or a redingote or anything particularly practical - but in many ways travel has defined it: my own travels, but more importantly the travel forced on Marie and her family, and on the entire Acadian community.

~~~

The Ball

~~~

It looks like a painting! I'm so happy with how these came out.

Getting ready for our own travels was a pretty hectic business. It started back in the fall, with drafting and making stays for Alana. Alana has never sewn before, and she was an enthusiastic learner but given the time-crunch Emma and I made the stays for her, and much of the gown. She sewed her hoops all on her own, with some guidance from Emma, and did a great job! We're getting her hooked on reenacting so I'm sure she'll have lots to practice on in the future. =)

Here's Alana's draping process - first a photo of her wearing her stays with her hoops and Emma's candy-cane/circus petticoat (100% linen! 100% amazing!), over which I have draped her bodice lining. The second photo shows the process of draping the gown itself. This was Alana's first gown and she wasn't sure if she'd like it, so we've used a poly satin. I WOULD NOT recommend this, ever. Even for a beginner gown - or rather, especially for a beginner gown. Silk taffeta goes together like a dream. Poly satin is a fraying, drooping, wrinkling, hell-spawned mess. *Ahem*

But she looks lovely, no?

Emma used a gorgeous steel blue taffeta, and had her own stays and petticoats already, so her process was a lot faster and smoother. She's also a very experienced costumer, so we just spent a lot of evenings watching TV and handing bits of the gown back and forth to drape or stitch. This meant she had to spend a lot of time in her 18th century underwear, ready to have bits of gown draped on her, which resulted in this gem:

#Cinderella

Here's her draping process:

Then front

Back first

Pleats!

Finally, sleeves.

I, unlike most people, apparently, don't actually mind draping or setting sleeves. I find them really satisfying, actually. Emma's took some fiddling, but they sat really nicely in the end.

Oh, and I made some shoes. Well, took apart and re-covered some 1940s shoes.

Trying out the look of the AD buckle

I used all stash silk! Also, I wore stockings to the ball. =P

Unfortunately, it rained almost the whole time we were in Paris. We got to wander around the first day, but as we'd taken the 22-hour overnight bus from Glasgow and arrived at about 6 a.m., we mostly just wanted to sleep. We did get to see the Louvre and a few other monuments first, though. Paris is beautiful - I can't wait to go back!

On the second day we wandered around Paris for one day in the 18th c. daywear we'd brought along, joined by our friend Adam, a sailor and sometime-Revolutionary of generally lower repute than we should probably be associating with. He dressed Alana up in some sailing clothes and we went out on the town.

From the left: Adam, Emma, myself, and Alana 

We had fun stealing swings from children and taking the metro.

Also: ice cream

The metro is fun in 18th century clothing

And then it rained. This is a period umbrella method!

Met Museum 53.600.588(60), 1746 - "Espéce de Parapluye" 

The following day was the ball, and we spent all day getting ready. We got down to the wire at the end, but we made it!

Emma working her hair magic while I sew a Revolutionary cockade to Adam's hat. Also yes, I put on my petticoat and bedgown for getting ready. That's what they're for!

Here's the result of Emma's efforts (all the powder!):

Dancing in the Hall of Mirrors

The grand staircase - one of my favourite photos

The three ladies

Revolutionaries don't smile

I *love* the back of this gown!

The custard plates are hiding behind us on the window sill.

We were joined by a big group of Emma's friends, who are historical dancers from Massachusetts.

And finally, fireworks!

It was pouring rain the whole time, so here's how some of Emma's friends kept dry - genius, but hilarious!

T-rex dancers!

Anyways, it was an amazing experience. I feel so lucky to have seen the Hall of Mirrors come alive as it was meant to - with people in incredible gowns, instead of just people in sweaty t-shirts and shorts and ballcaps. =P But really, I think it just feels a different way entirely. It's what it was built for.

Thanks to my amazing travel-adventure-sewing buddies, who made this such a fun trip. Can't wait for more shenanigans!