I had the opportunity to visit Historic New England’s Barrett House in Regency dress not that long ago. What a lovely house! The tour guides are excellent, the wallpapers and paintings of the family are beautiful, and there are so many interesting historical details to learn! If you’re ever in southern New Hampshire I would highly recommend a visit.
I decided to wear my old 1812 white dress (made in 2012). I knew it would be hot on the day of my visit and this dress is incredibly lightweight and easy to wear in hot environments! But… I wasn’t entirely satisfied with the idea of plain white… I wanted some colorful accessories and couldn’t think of good options in my stash that would coordinate with each other. Until I hit on the idea of wearing purple accessories!
In 2016, I made shoe poms in purple silk (you can read all about them in this past post) to spruce up a different 1819 dress (the details about that dress are in this past post). I also had a purple hair flower arrangement to match. I thought I might wear those again with the white dress, but I wanted another something to emphasize the purple even more. After a bit of thinking, I settled on adding something purple at the waist.
I knew that a ribbon simply tied around wouldn’t stay very well (they have a tendency to move around, or stay in place while the dress moves around — in either case not staying lined up with the waistband of the dress) so I decided to revisit making a ribbon waist sash that would stay in place.
I tried this idea in 2014 with a belt style ribbon sash (which you can read about here). At the time, I was pleased with the results of having a ribbon that stayed in place, but I wasn’t fully sold on the color of ribbon I chose or the buckle I made. In the intervening years I’d disassembled the old belt.
This time around I wanted to try a different type of interest on the belt. I went back to a post I’d written (also in 2014) about the variety of styles that can be seen in paintings, fashion plates, etc. for ribbon belts. More than ten years on now, it’s fun to recall my notes-to-self and see the options I presented in that post.
I settled on a bow at the front for my new belt idea!
The ribbon I chose to use is a beautiful purple-pink silk ribbon that is quite thin in terms of weight. It wrinkles as soon as you look at it! So I didn’t want to tie it in a real bow… Instead, I decided that the bow would be decorative and sit on top of a plain ribbon band that would hook to close.
But the ribbon needed to be attached to the dress to stay in place. However, it is so lightweight that it pulls into holes very easily and therefore stitching it can be problematic. This would be a problem for attaching a closure as well as attaching the belt to the dress! To help stabilize the thin silk, I very carefully tacked it to a length of white grosgrain ribbon. By stitching only at the very edges of the silk, and only intermittently, I was able to minimize unsightly holes in the ribbon. This allowed me to more easily sew a closure on my belt. It also gave me something more substantial to use when attaching the front bow. To attach the belt to the dress, I used safety pins. But the safety pins also couldn’t go through the silk. I had to very carefully catch only the grosgrain ribbon! A bit tedious, but successful!
In the above photo, you can see some of my careful tacking stitches that attach the silk ribbon to the grosgrain as well as the safety pins on the inside waistband of the dress that catch only the grosgrain to secure the belt in place. This makes it fully removable so it can be changed out with other accessories!
This set of purple accessories is so much fun! I love the pop it adds to my old white dress. New accessories breathing new life into a closet staple! I love that — having a well-worn and well-loved dress morph into a fresh-feeling ensemble!
