Why Does Nobody Costume THIS Historical Era?

It's time to dive into another mysterious costuming era. One so historically underrepresented that we can categorize it into the black hole of costuming. Therefore, it is our noble duty to reveal its beautiful secrets. The 1690s. 1790s. Nah, that's gonna be a typo. Everybody does the 1790s. Nobody does the 1790s. But I can name at least three different resources for this era. That doesn't mean it's equally represented. Look at your production schedule. Clearly states 1790s round gown and open robe. Not mantuas and lacy chicken headgear. Well, I got dressed in all this for nothing. Why does nobody costume in this era? I can't figure it out. It's smack dab in the middle of two of the most popular historical eras. The 1780s and the Regency era. It's fun and flexible because you can make one white gown and a bunch of accessories and have a gazillion different wardrobe options. Plus, we've got thorough information about it. In both the American Duchess Guides, fig leaf is rampant with patterns. And we even have a Big Four pattern, which makes this extremely accessible. And yet, when you search for information, there's plenty of get ready with me, but very few people have taken the time to break down the construction. So buckle up and let's see if we can figure out why. We're gonna use the simplicity pattern for this. Wouldn't have been my top choice, but I'm doing it for a very specific reason for another video you'll see later. But first, we need to do some major surgery on this pattern because it has a notorious reputation. A reputation for what, precisely? Let me demonstrate. Here's the bodice front piece, which has a 5 eighths inch seam allowance all the way around. Here it is against my body. Here it is with the seam allowances gone. That, my friends, will get me arrested in seven states. So we're going to need to do a major FBA on this baby. Doing this on gridded wrapping paper makes things a lot easier. So if you need to do an FBA, something to keep in mind. I'm still not very good at FBAs, so I did it off camera. Mock-up number one. It will come as no surprise to anyone that I had to pinch out two darts on each side instead of one to account for the fullness of my bust. Other than that, it's fitting pretty well in the front. I cannot say the same for the back. This girl is a mess. The straps are awkwardly long, awkwardly wide. We're gonna have some work that we need to do. First, the easy bit. Let's shorten the straps a little and see how it goes. Good. That's a lot better. I drew where I wanted the strap to land while the mock-up was on my body. Note that for mock-ups, I always cut the seam allowances off of the neckline and armscye when fitting. So I know precisely where they're going to hit in the final make. Yeah, there we go. Looks so much better. Chef's effing kiss, y'all. Now let's transfer the darts onto our pattern. In a perfect world, they'd be correct from my FBA, but uh... I wasn't kidding about still sucking at them, so we're gonna do this extra step. Cutting and then tracing is the easiest way to get an accurate take of the dart. Okay, now to mark the rest of your changes. Don't forget to transfer your markings to the new lines and add back those seam allowances on your neckline. Both the earlier 1780s and the later 1800s gowns had adjustability in the center front in the lining portion. In the earlier 18th century, the gowns were just pinned at the center front and you could adjust the excess fabric to fit you however you were needing to fit that day. Or you could add a lacing strip to the lining and have the gown fabric float over top. Similarly, my bib front later regency gown does the exact same thing, only it has ties instead of lacing strips. I refuse to believe that for the 10 years in between, they just didn't have any kind of adjustable lining piece. So let's add some lacing strips to the center front lining. All right, let's do some fitting. I had to take the darts in quite a bit on each side. I adjusted the darts on my body individually. Sisters, not twins. There is another problem that I've run into and that is now that the armscye is way down, dropped on my shoulder and it shouldn't be like that. To be expected, I have very narrow shoulders. Even though I took it in at the neckline, it's still looking like that and it's constricting my movement. So I went ahead and just folded it up to where it's comfortable. I'm going to go ahead and mark that and then measure it against the seam allowance and make our adjustments from there. Also, here's my lacing strip. Here's the front of the lining. We're going to fold this back but not cut it off because then we have extra fabric in case we change sizes again. Okay, let's make that armscye adjustment. There we go. All right, all right, all right. We have the outer pinned over the under and apart from the change that we just made to the under, I think we're good to get this cut out. It's nice to have things go easy for a change. Okay, so we can rule out it's a hard era to fit as a reason why people aren't costuming this more. Let's see how cutting goes. Well, there aren't that many pieces so that can't be it. Though I do need to point out how honking that center front piece is after the extensive FBA. I've opted to cut the strap separate to save fabric. The attached strap is giving modern big four pattern that doesn't care about cutting economically and we're not here for that BS. Well, that's not the reason. Maybe it's the assembly? So I finished the neck edge of the center front of the lining. I also put in my little lacing strips. We turned this up and prep for the front like that. The back and side back pieces will be flat lined. You'll want to turn in your seam allowances on all seams. I didn't think about this while I was making the gown, but in retrospect, I hate how thick the seam allowances are. They show through the sheerness of the gown. It'd be a great project for French seams if you're so inclined or if like me, you're not. Maybe using half inch seam allowances might be advisable. With all the seam allowances tucked in, now you can pin your backs to your side backs for seaming. We'll be doing the sandwich stitch, so make sure your meat, aka the fashion fabric, is in the center and the bread, aka your lining, is on the outside. 1780s, 1790s. Oh, how far we have fallen in a decade. Okay, back is fitting pretty well. We've got a little wrinkles on the side, but those will go away once we have the skirt attached. However, I don't have a big enough gap in the center, so we're going to have to fix that. But otherwise, I think the straps are at the right spot, which means we can go ahead and get those babies on. But first, all that talk about the sandwich stitch has made me hungry. Okay, let's get those straps attached. Note that I'm not following the modern instructions that came with the pattern. Instead, I'm using the American Duchess book as a guide and leaning on my own knowledge of 18th century construction to do the rest. Now is also a good time to fold up the bottom edges of your bodice if you haven't already. Tuck them in and give them a quick baste. Okay, my friends. Here we have the center back skirt and the side back skirts attached. Hand stitched, fell down. One thing about this particular Burnley and Trowbridge fabric is that the selvage is really wide on one side and they've got their name in script. So this side has a much wider seam allowance than this side. Kind of annoyed by that because I've lost like a whole inch of width on that one side. But I didn't measure it, so maybe that is not counted in the total width that they list. I don't know. You'll hear more about this in a different video, but I ran into an issue cutting the skirt back out. For some reason, piece number seven, which is the side back skirt, is extremely wide and it kind of messed with my yardage. And in the end, I decided to just cut a 60 inch panel for the back as I was supposed to and then cut another 60 inch panel for the side back and then rip it in half so there was 30 inches on each side. I felt kind of weird about doing this because I want to have that fullness in the back, but I looked at the American Duchess Guide and the dress that they made there has the exact same thing as I do with a 60 inch and a 30 and a 30 on either side. So I don't feel bad anymore. This pattern is a little sketch, but I think it's just because it's made from a modern pattern company and they're approaching things in the modern mindset instead of the historical mindset and it's kind of messing things up a little. Now you'll want to fold over and press the top edge of your sewn back slash side back panel. Here's the bottom of the bodice basted. Make sure you have your dots marked for placement. Pin your centers, then place the side back seam at the dot. You'll want to run two sets of gathering stitches along the tops of the skirts. I stopped and started at the seams to make it easier to gather evenly. It's a lot of fabric to gather into such a small space. Note that if you're using something thicker than a delicate cotton muslin, you may want to consider reducing the width of your back skirt panel a little bit. Now you want to whip the bodice to the skirt back, making sure you sew into every teensy tiny little bump. Sorry about the dye on my fingers. We're learning advanced dye techniques backstage. Welcome to a 1790s open robe, 1890s style. Why am I wearing my Edwardian S-Bend? Because I'm working on two projects at once. If you'd like to watch me make a pair of Edwardian combinations or fit an S-Bend corset or make an S-Bend corset, all those videos are already out. I will link them down below. You can watch them after you're done this. In any case, the next step on the instructions is to cut a slit on the center front of the front skirt. Presumably this is to get it on and off, but in my head, the front of this bodice and the skirt are all drawstring and they're quite a lot of drawstring. So in theory, I should be able to put this on no problem without having to compromise the integrity of the fabric by cutting a hole in it. I'm gonna baste it together in the center front, baste it onto the already assembled back and try it on with the right undergarments and see where we're at and see how that looks. If I can get it on no problem, then we should be good to go to finish assembling this thing. What a nice, easy project, which is why I'm doing it while I'm working on my S-Bend. Back's looking good. I think it's gonna work and I think we're good to get everything installed. Woohoo! Last night, I got so far as to sew the center front of the bodice, put in tiny little eyelets, get the tape in and pin the tape channel, and then I realized it's not gonna work because if I do it this way, I'm not gonna be able to tuck the drawstring invisibly into the inside of the bodice. The drawstring is gonna have to be front and center and I don't want that. So I'm gonna take out all my work, carefully undo those eyelids, and try and make it look like I didn't poke a giant hole in the middle of my bodice. Fine surgery indeed. Luckily, it's small and I used ML. If you're enjoying this video or finding it helpful, please do me a huge favor and like the video and say hello in the comments. The more people engaged, the more likely it'll pop up in searches when people are looking for more information on this era. And as always, I want to give a huge shout out to my Ko-fi supporters. Donations are never expected, but always appreciated, and they go straight back into making more content for you to enjoy. For the skirt, I'm going to opt for a much smaller slit than the pattern calls for. There, not noticeable at all. We're finally hemmed and the drawstring is intact. Also, this is all hemmed down and reinforced. The original bodice is even with the skirt, but I have extra width from the FBA, so I pre-gathered that bit before pinning the bodice front to the skirt front. Okay, so we've ruled out that it's hard to make. It's got to be the sleeves. Like, they must be the epitome of all sleeveless. It's the only explanation. This is where the elbow is supposed to be. There's my elbow. There's where the pattern thinks my elbow should be. Clearly drafted for a monkey and not a human. Unlike indie patterns, this pattern was drafted for someone who is five foot four. I'm almost five foot four. I didn't have to adjust the hem at all. And your arms are directly proportional to your height. I haven't said this very much if I've mentioned it at all, but it's relevant for what I'm about to say. I'm not a self-taught sewist. I am a professional costumer. I've worked in theater. I have worked in film. I learned to construct garments in a professional environment, and I've been doing so for more than 20 years. Yesterday, I pinned this sleeve into this armscye seven times. And not a single time did I manage to make the marks match up or get the elbow seam to fit at the elbow. And I got so frustrated, I had to go do something else, and I was grumpy the rest of the day. Only to realize at like 5am this morning when I woke up out of a dead sleep that it was because I had put the sleeve on inside out. So I want you to remember this. Next time you're frustrated, can't get something to work, your fitting isn't going well, remember, even the people that have been doing this more than half their lives make dumb mistakes. Let's talk about this sleeve. It's bad. Part of it is probably the fabric. I'm probably not perfectly on grain, but it is too big, it is too long, and it is wrinkly AF. Let's fix it. I'm assuming this is the length and shorten line. Better, but not great. At least this time, I managed to pin it in right the first time. Let's do some measuring. Forearm and bicep. Here they are on the sleeve. That's an insane amount of ease, folks. So much better. So I think that's good. However, I've made a decision. I want this above my elbow. So I think I'm just gonna cut it off at the elbow and not deal with the elbow dart, which is kind of awkward. Let's get the rest of this gown assembled so we can set the sleeves in. There will be a second drawstring channel where the bodice front meets the skirt made inside the pressed up seam allowance. All right, now we're ready to attach the bodice front and front skirt to the rest of the dress. Guess who decided to leave the top of the skirt open at the side seam for pocket slits? Now you'll simply pin it together at the side seams as well as at the shoulder. Yeah, not bad. We almost have a whole dress. The sleeves look much better. I don't need to make any changes for this, so we can go ahead and finally cut out the muslin for the sleeves. There are many different ways to set in your sleeves in the 18th century. Typically for this particular era, we would do the flippy, flappy, inside-out-y version where you put one inside the other and then you sew the seam and then you flip it all out and then there's like no seams on the inside. However, I find the most alterations I have to make on my gowns are at the armscye and the sleeves. And when you do the flippy-out-y, flippy-flappy version, it's really hard to take anything in or let anything out if it's all encased in that. You have to take everything off the entire sleeve and then undo everything. So I'm just going to do a basic flat line. If you want to see how to do the flippy-flappy, turny-out-y version, I believe I did it on both of my Angelica gowns, so you can check out those videos later. Best practice, mark your left and right sleeve before you start pinning. Run a gathering stitch between the dots. The sleeve isn't puffy per se, but it does have a little bit of ease in it. Then the side seam. Make sure all your marks are marked and start matching them up, gathering at the top of the sleeve to fit. Last thing to do is hem the gown. Okay, friends. With the gown almost completely together, I can change out my serger thread, which I have been dreading, and we can start cutting out the open robe. Now, I've run into a slight problem with this, something that I didn't foresee, in that this linen that I bought, it has stripes. Annoyingly, they are striped from selvedge to selvedge, not along the whole length of the fabric. I didn't anticipate this when I bought the fabric, and so I'm going to have to be a little creative with my cutting. They want one panel, number eight, cut on the fold, which equals about 50 inches, and then two 30-inch panels, which are the side seven panels. A typical 18th century gown has somewhere between 110 and 130 inches all the way around in the petticoat, but this is stopping right here. It's not covering the front at all. So I think what I'm going to do is make it a 90-inch wide. That will get me a 60-inch panel in the back, and then two 30-inch panels on the side. Okay, so the full length of the back piece sides is 61 inches. I have 60-inch fabric. I think I can make that work, especially if I do 18th century seam allowances instead of modern seam allowances. The nice thing about this stripe, I don't need to pull a thread to cut on the striped grain. Here's a handy hack. If your skirt is just a giant rectangle with a train on the bottom, just cut out the train piece. Measure the total length of your skirt and put the bottom of the train at that length. To finish the line of the train, I'll start with the top of piece seven, which is the side of the skirt. Follow the hemline, and then adjust the curve slightly to meet the bottom train. Check this out. This is the round gown bodice piece. It fits fully in the excess made by the train, which means the smaller open robe bodice will fit. Oh yeah, good thinking. Okay, here we go. While the back and side back are the same for the open robe, the bodice front isn't. So here you can see me taking my later Regency open robe, which I know fits me, and trying to true it up to this earlier style's measurements. I thought this would make my life a little bit easier. First attempt at the open robe was a complete disaster. 100% it did not film. This is the piece I cut out. If I set it on my robe here, my dress, it would look cute if I was doing some kind of cross bodice and wasn't wanting to show off the front of my robe at all, but not exactly what I wanted. And the reason it didn't work was because of the FBA. It has all of that extra space for my bust, but this is going under my bust, so you don't necessarily need all of that space. However, second attempt looks pretty dang good. Pretty happy with it. I ended up just using the OG bodice lining piece, which is also the piece that is meant to be the bodice front of the open robe. I just laid my existing pink open robe over top of it to get a better idea of how long and how low it needed to be. I did make a couple of adjustments. Mostly I've tucked this under. I've tucked this under just to get more of the shape that I'm looking for. I will have to put a dart in this. I don't feel like futzing with it. The only weird thing that's happening now is the armscye, and that is, again, because of the bust size. So I'm just gonna go ahead and cut it out. Hopefully the weight of the robe will pull it down, and it should be fine since it's not actually going up over the mass of my bust, which is really where the FBI, FBI, yeah, the FBI going over my bust. That's really where the FBI does its job. Also, the one benefit for cutting the skirt the way I did, no extra seams, which meant I hemmed this up in a night and a half, and we are ready to get the bodice cut. For comparison, here's my final adjusted pattern versus the original simplicity pattern. All righty, let's cut her out. I am going to add a little extra space here, though, because I know the bust dart will be in a different place. Those are just pinched out on my body, nice and easy. The rest of the open robe construction is literally the same as we just did, except one thing. The front of the skirt stops here on the bodice piece instead of it being squished further into the back like the dress. I can't figure it out, seriously. It's fast, it's easy. It does maybe take a little bit more fabric than other eras, but there are certainly ways that you could piece it to make it more economical. And it's cute. I don't know, but hopefully this inspires you to go out and try it if you haven't already. I'm already making a second one in a witchier vibe to make a perfect little 1790s capsule wardrobe, and if you'd like to check that out, I'll be posting it over on Instagram. That's about it for me. Thanks for watching. I love y'all, and I'll catch you in my next video.