Archery gown 1820s ~ making the dress

In my last post, I finalised the toile and then created my pattern for my archery gown from that.

Today I started making the gown in my fashion fabric. The original gown was made in a Lincoln green plain weave mohair and worsted mixture, trimmed with salmon pink mohair / worsted mix and black velvet. An expensive fabric mix today, so I went for a Lincoln green cotton quilting fabric and trims of salmon pink and dark brown cotton velvet and dark brown silk for the ribbon bias trim.

So here are the images with comments from my day of sewing, my dress dummy is smaller than me sadly and therefore the bodice looks too big, but its not.

Front bodice

Back bodice

Back bodice with skirt attached, a nice nest of pleats

Back, full length view with skirt pinned, liking the drape

Planning the skirt trim with a paper pattern laid out to get the right dimensions, skirt is longer than I need

Checking the paper trim works, yep, the skirt is way longer than I need it to be, so trim looks too high, its not though

Side view

Back view

Marking the line for the real salmon pink trim

Cutting the trim, bonus is that if you do this right you'll get your sleeve van dykes in the same cut

Trim tacked down

The join of the trim, had to adapt it a bit to fit, but it will be hidden in the back folds

Stitching the trim down

The brown trim at the bottom, pinned only

So, getting there, next is to add the bias brown silk trim around the van dyke points and sort out the bottom trim. After that, bodice trims and make sleeves. Beginning to feel I might get this finished for the Jane Austen Festival Australia, only two weeks to go ....

Toile for Regency Archery dress for Jane Austen Australia festival

Its been a while since my last post on this gown. I've been really busy in the 1940s finishing the last stitches for my Miss Page 1940s collection pattern photo shoot in two weeks time. I launch in May and while that may seem a long way away, it certainly isn't if you look at my project plan, argh!

But this Sunday I have some free time so I have made the toile to test my pattern. Here are the earlier posts for your reading pleasure Post 1, Post 2

So, I've been adapting this pattern from Tidens Toj for the skirt and puff sleeves as they are very similar.

I played with the bodice, my original shoulder placement was too high, I've moved it to the back of the shoulder. I also need more pleats on the front shoulder I think.

The new shoulder placement back view. More pleats required here as well.

 Puffed sleeve with vandyke detail, this needs to be gathered into the sleeve head.

 Detachable long sleeve added, it needs more length as these sleeves scrunch up on your arms. I've lost the top sleeve puff with the weight of the longer sleeve, it might need a light 'puff' support to keep the shape. Plus I'll add more gathers to it.

As you can see, the skirt pattern gives the right A-line front and gathers at the back.I need to add more gathers to the side and the back for the fashion fabric iteration.


So, toile almost to my satisfaction, it really only needs some design tweaks. Hopefully I'll sort those today and be able to move onto the fashion fabric next week. Less than a month to the Jane Austen Festival Australia, argh! Will I make it readers .... watch, read and see!