Holy hell I actually finished the Victorian project.

Alright! So, earlier this year I was hired to do some art for a card game, Moriarty's Machinations. Part of my involvement with the game was dressing up in character as Irene Adler to advertise at a couple conventions, including the Boston Festival of Indie Games. (We won the award for best indie tabletop game by the way, which was super exciting!)

It has been a long time since I posted about my Victorian costume. Check out the project's tag for all the related posts. I started it back in 2011, as an independent study course in college, and then didn't finish it after the class was done. There was only a couple things left to do by the time I got this job that required me to have a period costume, so it finally motivated me to finish.

Here's my original rendering. I think I got pretty close.

The fabric isn't authentic at all. I used a striped velveteen synthetic (it feels luxurious at least) and a heavy plum sateen (probably poly). I also didn't stick very closely to one part of the Victorian Era. The anachronisms aren't so strong that a casual observer would notice them.

I don't think these kitties are qualified to bake muffins

A couple weeks ago I saw this awesome fabric of kitties baking muffins and promptly bought five yards of it. Did I have any idea what I would do with it? Of course not. But kitties! Baking!

(I'm really bad at only buying fabric I need. I'm fully out of storage space at this point. I have to stop. I keep telling myself I won't buy any more but then things like this show up and I can't help myself).

I knew I wanted to make a dress, but wasn't sure what style. Since I had a lot of the fabric, I decided on the retro whirl-away dress, as seen in a bunch of reprint patterns. Here are two current ones:

Butterick B4790
Vogue V8788

I have the Butterick pattern. This was one of the first serious sewing projects I ever did (back in 2009) and of course it came out pretty horrible. The pattern is very ill-fitting in the bodice portion and fixing it was far beyond my skill set at the time. Even now, I wasn't willing to take on the job. Sometimes things just aren't worth figuring out.

Instead, I pulled out my sloper and altered that into the wrap-around style of these dresses. It went way better than I expected. Of course there could be some improvements, but hey, it worked! There's more info about using a sloper later in the post, but first the finished dress:

I'm wearing it with the pink organza petticoat I made a couple weeks ago. It's exactly the amount of poof I like. In the one photo below, you can see it without any petticoat. It's a bit more casual.

What's black and white, and spotted all over?

This new dress I'm working on of course!

A little while ago I saw the Victorian Noble Mermaid Dress from Victorian Maiden, and thought it looked pretty similar to the pencil skirt version of Simplicity 3673. I have this pattern, so I thought, "I can totally make that!"
I'm not sure why I like this dress as much as I do - maybe it's the gentle curve of the bottom and the shape of the neckline. Usually I'm not a big fan of wearing pencil skirts, but what the heck, I can't be poofy all the time, right?

As you may have gathered from my post title, this isn't exactly a replica of the VM dress. The first difference is that I'm using this awesome black and white polka dot fabric from "That $1.99 Fabric Store" (yes, that's really the name of the store). It has a nice weight to it, and slight stretch - great for a fitted dress so I can still move freely. When I got it, it was covered in tiny red arrow stickers, pointing out print errors, but none of these are significant enough to be visible in a finished garment. (Photo further down)

The Victorian Project - in progress

I've always admired Victorian clothing and enjoy seeing people still make such things. Back in 2010, I decided I would make my own Victorian gown. To help motivate me, I turned the project into an independent study for college. Well, I graduated school and the outfit is still in way more pieces than it should be...
When finished, it should look something like this. The outfit is based on images from the 1870s and 80s, so it's not totally accurate for any specific year, but I doubt too many people now will pick out the anachronistic details.