Project Post-Mortem: An English Gown

When last I wrote, I mentioned the possibility of constructing some Italian-style sleeves to give an appropriate silhouette to my clothing for an upcoming event.  That did not happen.

No.  Instead, a mere three days before said event, I decided to construct an entirely new, entirely non-Italian dress.  (Glutton for punishment, perhaps?)

The Wednesday before the event, I could not decided what to wear.  The event would be outdoors, so the gown made for the court event would not work.  While I have a couple of linen kirtles, I’ve lost weight since they were made and they are a touch big.  But even if I wore one, without an overdress, I would appear half-dressed.  Obviously, I needed to make a new over-dress, right?

photo from The Tudor Tailor

Since I did not want an over-dress with large, turn-back sleeves, I chose to make an early Tudor-era gown as seen in The Queen’s Servants, by Caroline Johnson.  The gown featured trim sleeves, a fitted but not supported bodice with a long, full skirt very similar to a gothic fitted gown.  When reading over the pattern details, I saw that the fabric recommended was either wool or silk.  I opted for silk and decided to use a beautiful dupioni in gold that I purchased initially for another gown but did not use.  For trim, I had a few scraps left of black wool I could make bias strips from.  (I used this tutorial from Colette Patterns to make continuous bias tape.)

The book showed several variation in both neckline and back for the gown.  Because I am still losing weight, I chose a back-lacing style that does not meet in the back anyway.  For the neckline, I chose a classic, squared style.  I scaled up the pattern from the book, but decided to do few alterations.  The last gown fit pretty well with minor alterations and with an open back to the gown I figured it would be forgiving if it was a touch small.

completed English gown

The gown itself was uncomplicated to construct: shoulder seams, front, back, and side seams.  The sleeves would prove to be the most complicated, and they were.  

I know several sewers/sewists that loathe setting sleeves.  I’ve had my share of troubles with sleeves, too.  But the sleeves from my court gown went in so easily, that I assumed this gown would be the same.  It wasn’t, but it certainly was not anything too arduous.  With a small alteration to the armseye, and a fair amount of easing, I got both sleeves installed.  All that was left was to finish the details: lacing holes (I machined them*), hem, trim, which all came together quickly and easily.

The one thing that I should have done but did not was to try on the completed gown.  I repeated checked the fit of the gown during construction.  To do so meant slipping on a kirtle, lacing the kirtle, slipping on the gown, pinning/marking as needed.  So I skipped a final fitting.  Had I done a final fitting, I would have learned that my sleeve cap was a touch too small (less than an inch, probably).  Ah, well...

Overall, I was very pleased with the end result of the gown.  While the ill-fitting sleeves did result in a small blown seam at the event, I have plenty of silk left to redraft a larger sleeve.


*Yes, yes.  Hand-sewing the eyelets would produce a more accurate look.  But I've made no secret of my lack of patience to do them.

Lessons learned from this project:

• Making continuous bias tape is a bit tricky to learn, but once figured out making bias tape was a breeze.
• When I ran out of gridded pattern paper, I used my gridded cutting mat and semi-transparent butcher paper to draft my patterns.  It worked like a charm.  I think that I may like it better than using gridded paper.
• I machine basted my sleeves in prior to stitching (I have a new-to-me machine with an awesome basting stitch setting!), but I think that I should switch to hand-basting on trickier sleeves.
• Obviously, I need to plan for a full fitting once a project is completed so as to avoid small problems like what I experienced at the event.