Tag: Dress

The New Yellow Sacque!

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It’s time to share photos of the finished c. 1770 yellow sacque I’ve been posting about for the last year or so! I’m not going to include too much introduction, as I’ve been hinting at and posting about this dress for ages. If you would like more background on this dress, check out the link to past posts at the end of next paragraph.

Without further ado, here is a full length photo of the dress, with all the accessories I’ve been slowly posting about: the panniers, engageants, stomacher, tucker, etc. If you want to know more about these elements or the construction of this dress itself, you will find lots of details and photos in this series of past posts.

This next wonderful view artistically shows off both the front and side view of the dress, including the dramatic back pleats that cascade down from the shoulders. This is a defining feature of this style of dress!

And here is a clearer view of the front of the dress, with the sparkly embroidered-looking stomacher more clearly visible. (Plus another fun view of the pleats in the back, too!)

I’m so pleased with how it turned out! The color is just as vibrant as I hoped, the gold pattern woven into the yellow adds excitement without needing additional trim just as I hoped, the accessories help complete the outfit in a wonderful way, I’m very happy with the shape and effect of the stomacher, and I’m very pleased with the pattern alterations and fitting tweaks I made so that this dress would fit just right. This was a fun and rewarding project!

The New Yellow Sacque: Construction Details

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Photos of the finished yellow sacque are on their way, but before I get to posting those I’d like to discuss the construction details of the dress. I’ve already posted about the accessories and other parts of the ensemble. You can view those blog posts at the links below.

c. 1770 Pink Panniers
18th Century Blue Foundation Petticoat
A White 1780s Petticoat
Yellow Sacque Petticoat
Engageants For The New Yellow Sacque
A Stomacher for the Yellow Sacque

Overall Goal

Whereas my goal for the Versailles Sacque was to hand sew everything and use historically accurate materials and methods, my overall goal for this new sacque was to machine sew as much as possible and use materials from the stash. This pair of goals influenced my choices for patterning and constructing the new dress. (If you’d like more information about the Versailles Sacque, you can read all of the posts about this project here.)

Patterning

The sacque itself is made from the JP Ryan Pet-en-l’air pattern. This is the same pattern I used for my Versailles Sacque. For the new Yellow Sacque, I used a larger size than I previously did. I also tweaked some of the dimensions to fit the measurements of the two friends I knew I wanted to be able to wear the new dress. This included things like increasing the back shoulder width and the bicep circumference.

I started with a mockup, which allowed me to check and see if the changes I made to the paper pattern worked on a real body. And they did! I only had minimal changes to make — some of which was taking out a little bit of the ease I’d added in. Oh well! That happens.

Early Construction, With The Dress In Pieces

After cutting out all of the pieces, there were some steps that were easier to do before attaching things together. For example, I added boning and ties at the back of the lining in order to add adjustability underneath the back pleats of the dress. Ties or lacing like this was common for sacque style dresses in the 18th century.

I was pleased to reuse bones and bone casing from an old deconstructed corset as well as ivory ribbon that was gifted to me. Using things from the stash!

I also assembled the sleeves, with their linings, before attaching them to the dress. Below are the sleeves with the sleeve inseams pinned and ready to sew. By folding the lining and exterior right sides together and stacking them, there is a neat trick by which you can sew once to get both lining and exterior inseams sewn with one go (and all of the raw edges hidden between the layers.

Here are the sleeves turned right sides out. The bottom edges are already pressed under in preparation for being hand sewn later in the process. The top edges are pinned and ready for basting, so that they can be set into the arm opening as one layer.

Back Pleats

Eventually the process moved on to the back pleats — the signature feature of a sacque! I carefully followed the pleating instructions and hand stitched the various stacked box pleats in place. Then I went to put the back neck piece on… Oops!

They widths didn’t match! This was not a pattern problem. This was my problem! When I adjusted the pieces (the backs and the back neck piece) for a body shape with wider shoulders I didn’t remember to adjust the spacing of the pleats across the back accordingly.

So, I carefully removed the stitching holding the pleats and re-organized them to make the back wider. I didn’t want to change the center due to the depths of the pleats, but I was able to move the side pleats over towards the arm holes. I don’t think the change is noticeable. And extant garments show a variety of pleating patterns and widths, so I feel perfectly justified from that perspective.

Sleeve Ruffles

Before I started this dress, I’d been looking through my new copy of Patterns of Fashion 6, from The School of Historical Dress (information and purchasing information about the book is available here, on The School of Historical Dress website). In the book (on pages 15 and 16, to be precise), there are diagrams of sacque patterns laid out in the most economical way possible. This includes various pieced seams for some parts of the garment as well as a way of cutting the sleeve ruffles that nestles them together to save fabric. I was intrigued! And I decided that for this yellow sacque I wanted to try out this method.

Essentially, a rectangle is cut on a diagonal with each diagonal portion making up a flounce. With the rectangle folded along a short side, this results in one triangle that can be cut on the fold while the other one ends up with a seam in the middle. Additionally, one of the flounces ends up being upside down in terms of the pattern on the fabric. I think this is a fun, historical quirk (as compared to what we would likely find on a modern garment) and I also don’t think it’s noticeable once the flounce with the upside down pattern and seam is placed underneath the other flounce.

So, I cut my flounces accordingly, with a wavy edge! Below is the result, with the two pieces separated slightly to show the geometry.

After the first diagonal separation, I also updated the scallops a little further to make each layer of flounces slightly different in shape than the other. The extra bits I cut off to do this are pictured below.

Hemming

Other steps were completed and eventually the dress looked like a dress! It was time to think about hemming it!

I wanted a narrow hem of about ½”. That’s easy to do, but I was worried about the metallic threads on the wrong side of the yellow fabric snagging on the train while being worn. I’ve seen this happen and know it can create pulls in the fabric that I wanted to avoid. But I didn’t want to put on a linen facing (as might have been used in the 18th century on what seem to be rare occasions), because I didn’t want an obvious line of stitching along the top or the weight and drape of that part of the lightweight silk dress to be different than the rest of the garment.

One trick I know of to help with this is to put a facing of tulle over the underside of the train. This makes a smooth surface to drag on the floor while not adding weight or making an obvious line along the top at whatever point the facing stops.

I looked in my stash and found a one yard piece of ivory tulle that would be just the right size for this purpose. A single layer of the ivory blends very well with the yellow silk!

The tulle facing tapers away to nothing around the side seams of the dress and extends up about 6″ above floor level at the center back.

Below is a photo showing part of the hem of the dress with the ivory tulle pinned in place. I pieced the tulle where needed, which was not in the same places as the seams of the yellow silk.

And here is a closeup of the wrong side of the fabric, where the metallic threads are clearly visible on the left and the tulle is just noticeable on the right. One it was all pinned in place I used a sort of running prick stitch to catch the tulle to the yellow silk. This resulted in very small stitches on the yellow silk (or where possible, I caught the metallic threads so that the stitches wouldn’t be visible at all). The stitches are not at all noticeable when the dress is being worn.

Materials & Time Spent

This dress (accounting for all of the individual parts of the ensemble) used:

  • 10.75 yards of the yellow figured silk
  • 3.25 yards of cream cotton (1.25 yards for for the sacque lining and 2 yards for the petticoat)
  • Scraps of ivory silk
  • Scraps of natural canvas
  • 1 yard ivory tulle
  • Embroidered/sequin bits from approximately ½ yard of gold lace

As well as small notions such as ivory ribbon, bones and bone casings, and thread.

I didn’t keep track of how much time I spent on this project, which was a relief in some ways. It was nice to just make it and not count. My photos show that I started patterning and mocking up the pattern in fall of 2023. I know I cut the pieces out in the winter of 2024 while my notes were still fresh. And then I was busy and didn’t start sewing until summer of 2024. I finished the dress on September 28, 2024. So it took me about a year of not-at-all consistent work — a Saturday here, a day or two of vacation there, and some hand sewing in the evenings. For this project, I’m not going to try and estimate the hours, but just bask in the knowledge of not keeping time.

And that’s it! This dress is made of pretty wonderful fabric that steals the show without additional trimmings, so I didn’t add any aside from accessories (such as the stomacher). Photos of the finished garment will be coming soon!

1794 Windowpane Ruffle Dress (HSM #10)

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At this point, I’ve posted about most of the garments and accessories needed for the 1790s ensemble I’ve been slowly creating (you can read past posts here: stays, cap, sash, as well as petticoat and bum pad). The final piece (and perhaps one of the most essential pieces) is the dress!

I started this in 2023, along with most of the accessories, and finally finished in May 2024. My goal for this post is to document the inspiration and construction details of the dress (photos of the dress being worn will come later!).

Basic Information

To start, the information for the Historical Sew Monthly 2024 Challenge #10 UFO Spotter:

We all have an UnFinished Object or two (or ten!) Now’s the time to complete one of your unfinished historical costuming projects.

This dress was definitely a UFO! It’s been hanging in my sewing room for many months in a state of partial completion.

Just the facts:

Fabric/Materials: 3 ½ yards of 120″ wide ivory windowpane woven curtain sheer (probably polyester) and 1 yard of 58″ wide lightweight white linen for the lining.

Pattern: Adapted from the 1790s Round Gown pattern in The American Duchess Guide To 18th Century Dressmaking by Lauren Stowell and Abby Cox. I changed the front bodice to suit my goals and style as well as adding ruffles to the sleeves and hem.

Year: c. 1794.

Notions: 2 ½ yards of ¼” white cotton twill tape, 4 hooks and loops, and thread.

How historically accurate is it?: 95%. The pattern and construction methods are well researched and documented. The only points off, I’d say, are for the fiber content of the main dress fabric.

Hours to complete: 13.5 for the main dress construction + 11.5 for the ruffles = 26 hours of hand sewing.

First worn: Not yet!

Total cost: I paid approximately $10/yard for the main fabric and $6/yard for the linen. So, with the addition of the notions I would say this dress cost about $50 for materials.

A Few Observations

As with the 1790s petticoat I made (linked above in the introduction to this post) this dress is entirely hand sewn.

I had to go back through my records to figure out what I spent on the fabric for the dress. It’s been in my stash for years, so while I remember what store I purchased it from I had no memory of how much I paid. It turns out that I bought both the windowpane exterior fabric and the linen lining in 2012! At the time, I had no particular plan in mind for them, so they sat and waited… for over ten years! I’m excited to have finally put them to good use!

Inspiration

I’ve been interested in trying various garments and accessories in the American Duchess book since I first purchased it, and this 1790s idea felt like a good opportunity, especially since I could work from the undergarments out with the patterns and instructions all in one place.

The basic elements of the 1790s dress in the book worked for me, but I decided I wanted a different front bodice look, more like the gown on the right in the image below (rather than like the one on the left, which is more like what the sample in the book is shaped like). The painting below, La duquesa de Osuna como Dama de la Orden de Damas Nobles de la Reina María Luisa, by Augustín Esteve is dated between 1796 and 1797 (it is available on Wikimedia Commons). That’s a few years later than my date of 1794, but the gathered front and round neck shape is seen earlier, even in the 1780s in Chemise a la Reine styles (you can read more about this style, popularized by Marie Antoinette, here on the Fashion Institute of Technology: Fashion History Timeline page). There is another example of the front shape I was intrigued by in the Cora Ginsburg auction catalog from Spring 2023 on page 12.

In addition to the bodice shape, I was particularly inspired by the fashion plate below for the ruffles at the hem and wrists. Other fashion plates from this year show the same detail. The plate below, and more from 1794, can be seen on the Dames a la Mode website here.

I gathered my favorite inspiration, including those shown above, together on a Pinterest board, which you can see here if you are interested.

Construction

I mostly followed the directions in the American Duchess book, though I did have to adapt a few order of operations things in the bodice to accommodate my change in front style, as well as to accommodate adding the ruffles to the sleeve openings.

I started by assembling the bodice lining. Below is my bodice lining, ready for the exterior pieces to be added.

I didn’t take any further in-process photos, but I did document the completed garment. First, an image of what the front looks like when the front closure is done up. The exterior of the dress adjusts at the high waistline and the neckline with drawstrings.

Then, below, is the dress with the front exterior opened up. Historically speaking, the lining would likely have been pinned in place, but I decided hooks would be simpler for me (and still adjustable with a little bit of sewing) and so my lining closes with 4 hooks and loops. The front skirt slit opening is lost in the gathers once the exterior of the dress is closed.

The next photo shows the back of the bodice, which curves up a little at center back in a very 1790s way, as well as the very full skirt that is attached across the back using cartridge pleats, creating a lovely series of folds.

And here is a view of the entire back of the dress.

The final touch was to hem and then add all of the ruffles! I brought the basic rectangle shapes with me on trips and quietly introverted while hemming miles of edges. Eventually, they were all hemmed and connected. Then… I went back along one long edge on each ruffle section and ran whip gathers. Then, finally, I butted the edges to the sleeve hems and bottom edge of the skirt and whipped the ruffles into place.

Below is a closeup of the hem ruffle, where the narrow hem of the ruffle and the butted edges are both clearly visible.

And here is a closeup of the sleeve opening, which again shows the narrow hems on the ruffle and butted edges of the ruffle and sleeve.

I did have one strange decision to make regarding the depth of them hem on the dress itself. It might not have struck you as odd that the hem is so deep (about 6″), but it does look slightly strange to me when I look at photos of the dress laid out, or when I see it without the petticoat underneath.

The reason for the unusually (for this period) deep hem is that my petticoat somehow ended up being a bit short, even with a narrow hem. I didn’t want to have the nice, smooth white expanse of this skirt broken by a section at the hem that wasn’t backed by a petticoat before the dense white of the ruffle. And I had lots of length in my dress exterior to play with.

I considered tucks to take up the length and provide opacity, but it looked ridiculous in this fabric and for this particular decade. Instead, I settled on this wide hem which is set at a height that makes the ruffle just brush the tops of my feet. The top edge of the deep hem just blends in when the petticoat is under the dress. Here is a view of the hem. Each of the squares is about ½”.

And that’s it! The dress is finally done! I’m super pleased that this UFO garment and the accessories to complete an ensemble are finished and that I have a whole new decade of clothing ready to wear.

Now, I’ve moved on to other sewing projects and trying to figure out how to use (mostly) my real hair to create a 1790s look so that I can get photos of the whole 1790s ensemble. More on that once I figure it out and get photos. In the meantime, thanks for reading this far and sticking with me through all of these minute details!

Croquet At Roseland Cottage

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The outing for which I planned to wear my updated 1815 Tree Gown was an afternoon of croquet and house tours at Roseland Cottage: a joint event hosted by The Footwork & Frolick Society and Historic New England (the organization that runs Roseland Cottage).

Roseland Cottage is a lovely pink house in Woodstock, CT that was built in 1846 by the Bowen family (you can read more about thr history of the house here on the Historic New England website). I’ve been to the house before and posted about it on the blog — in a different post about playing croquet! That outing, which you can read about in this past post, was in 1860s clothes.

A rather moody looking Roseland Cottage on the day of this year’s outing is pictured below. It was overcast, which was nice because it wasn’t super hot, but we did have a fantastic rain and thunder storm roll through halfway through the event. Lightening struck the lawn outside of the house! Luckily, we knew it was coming and were able to transition indoors to play tabletop croquet and have tea. No one was rained on!

And I was pleased, because Roseland is lovely, the company was delightful, and my updated Tree Gown was freshly revived and very comfortable!

It felt important to show off the updated back of my gown for documentation here on the blog!

Roseland has a beautiful and well maintained garden, and in addition to that, I also appreciated the cute cart (detail photo below) full of additional flowers that was situated on the lawn. It made for a wonderful photo accessory, as you can see in the photo above!

As I mentioned in my post about altering the gown (linked at the top of this post), I’m so pleased to be able to give this dress extended life!

When The Dress No Longer Fits (1815 Tree Gown)

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I’ve loved my 1815 Tree Gown ever since I made it in 2013 (here is the link to the original post about making the dress) and have worn it many times, most recently last summer for a Regency picnic which I posted about here. It was clear at that point that this dress needed to be updated to fit my current shape!

Making a plan

I finally had the brain space to deal with it this summer (and the added encouragement of wanting to be able to wear it in June). So, accordingly, I dug out the small bit of fabric I had leftover from originally making the dress.

Then, I took stock of what was needed. In a fitting, I realized that not only were the sleeves now a bit too tight, but the shoulders were also not quite wide enough for my now-broader shoulder width, which was also contributing to the dress wanting to fall off of my shoulders. Ugh!

There was no easy way to deal with that second problem except to make the back wider… So, I took a deep breath and decided to replace the back panels.

Making it happen: taking the dress apart

I had seam ripped the arm seams last year after realizing they needed to be let out, so the sleeves were already in that taken-apart state.

As I was taking apart the back, I remembered that I had taken a tuck in the finished dress to make the armsceye a little smaller. Alas, letting this out was not nearly enough to prevent me from needing to replace the back panels.

Making it happen: forming a new plan

Fast forward through a bit of seam ripping (French seams make for a lovely finish, but also mean double the seam ripping!), and I had a bunch of loose panels flopping around. I used the original back pieces and my desired new measurements to cut mockup pieces of what I thought the back should become. I safety pinned those in and tried the dress on to make sure I was on the right track.

Here is the old back piece laid over the mockup. It’s not a huge difference, but that 1″ or so on most edges made a huge difference in terms of fit.

I also made a pattern piece for the arm gusset I needed based on the measurements I wanted the new sleeve size to be. In the end, I decided to extend the gusset all the way down to the cuff opening, as I figured a little extra room for my hand to get through was a reasonable idea (it was a tight squeeze otherwise!).

Then, I used my minimal scraps to cut out the new pieces. I’m super pleased that even with small scraps I was able to match up the block printed areas!

For the back pieces, the image below shows what I had to work with. Not much! I could fit both pieces if I didn’t maintain symmetry in the block print, but… I did such a nice job matching it up when the dress was made! I just couldn’t bring myself not to make the re-do match, too! But I couldn’t get two pieces with matched patterns out of what was left.

It was too much to think about late at night and I knew I only had one chance at cutting to get it right…

So I took a break and came back to it another day. And I had a brainstorm! The way to make my goal happen was to piece one of the pieces somewhere. I could have placed an extra seam in a shoulder area, but that seemed more obvious than my second option given the sheer fabric of the dress. The second option that I decided on is a vertical seam in the white space near the center back opening. There was just enough fabric to make it happen!

Making it happen: putting the dress back together

With my new back pieces cut, it was just a matter of putting them back into all of the seams (including the armsceyes, shoulders, side back, and waist). I was able to reset the sleeves without any of the original gathers, which allowed for the extra circumference my new back pattern had created. Then, I created a new drawstring channel along the neckline and re-applied my closures… and the update was complete!

Here is the new back view of this dress, with the pieced seam on right (but with symmetrical block printing!).

I used a French seam to attach the pieced bit, so that it would match all of the other seams in the dress and stay nice and tidy with no fraying edges.

I also made the right side of the drawstring come out before the center back edge, so that the overlap with the hook can still function properly while the drawstring pulls up the excess width across my shoulders that I included. (There was extra in the original version, too… but I maxed that out years ago!)

Here’s another view of the lovely, tidy interior of the dress with the updated back.

And finally, here is a photo of the finished sleeves with the added gussets. Where the block printing is located the seams blend so well you can’t even see them! It makes my heart pitter-patter with glee!

The final step after putting in the gussets was to re-hem the cuff openings.

And then… this dress was updated! Now it’s a story of ‘when the dress fits again!’

1817 Duchess Gown in Bridgerton Style

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The Footwork and Frolick Society hosted a Bridgerton themed ball in May! Here are a few atmospheric shots.

For this event, I chose to wear my 1817 Duchess Gown (you can read about the inspiration and making of the dress, here). I love this dress and haven’t had a reason to wear it in years. Plus, I figured the neutral color would pair well with a few nods to the colorful style of Bridgerton costumes.

In the past, I’ve had fun pairing this gown with other colors and accessories, as well! You can read another past post where I show multiple wearings together here.

The dress is a sheer striped organza, which is fun because I can show off fancy historical underwear with it! I usually wear my 1814 Vernet petticoat so that the fancy trim around the bottom can be shown off (in addition to a second petticoat to make the ensemble fully opaque.) The second petticoat is functional more than decorative, and is the one I recently posted about that needed a size update to fit properly again!. Wearing it with this sheer dress for the ball was the push I needed to make the petticoat fit really well–I didn’t want odd lines showing under the sheer Duchess Gown!

In addition to the decorative Vernet petticoat, other accessories for this wearing included clocked silk stockings from American Duchess, white flats purchased from a consignment store about ten years ago, a gold bead necklace that ties with a ribbon that I don’t wear often (I usually gravitate towards other more sparkly jewelry), and three nods to the colorful style of Bridgerton.

My nods to color included a green organza sash (that I’ve worn with this dress before–see images in this past post from 2019), green and gold earrings (from the Downton Abbey collection a number of years ago), and flowers in my hair, including some vivid pink ones. I’ve had these flowers for about 25 years and rarely wear them. They’re pretty bright! But for the Bridgerton theme they made perfect sense!

The company at the ball was charming and the dancing was enthusiastic! My Duchess Gown even had an old friend visit in the form of my 1811 Elusive Blue Gown worn by a friend! I love that these garments are getting to be worn again!

Photo credit for this last photo: Lucas Clauser

Sophie In Springtime

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The lilacs were blooming in May, joyfully spreading their scent to all who passed by.

Photo credit for this photo: Steve Lieman

I was grateful to be able admire their beauty and celebrate spring with an outing in Sophie, my trusty 1861 twisted stripe cotton print dress. I made this dress in 2016 and posted about the construction in this past post.

The overcast sky didn’t dampen my spirits!

The diffused light was actually quite lovely and I enjoyed whirling around in the fresh air.

I hope your springtime held unexpected joy, as well!

The Happy Clover Dress Gets A New Zipper

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As I was getting dressed in my Happy Clover Dress one day last summer, I was pulling up the zipper… and it broke! I don’t remember exactly how it broke, now that I stop and think about it months later… I think that the pull came off of the teeth, or the pulling part came off of the part that grips the teeth… I don’t remember precisely, but needless to say, it was broken.

Below: the Happy Clover dress with its original zipper.

The original zipper was repurposed from a 1980s dress I took apart to make a 1920s beaded dress back in 2013 (a post about making that 1920s dress, including photos of the 1980s dress before I took it apart, can be seen here).

With the broken zipper, the dress wasn’t wearable! So on the day that is broke, I changed my outfit and put the Happy Clover Dress in the to-be-mended pile. Not long after that I bought a new YKK zipper in matching shade of teal. And then… the dress and zipper sat there for about 9 months…

Fast forward to May of this year and I was really tired of looking at my large mending-and-alterations-to-do pile (is that sounding familiar yet?)! I want to get back to sewing some of my larger projects and am craving both the physical space and mental release of completing the mends and alterations in order to do that.

So… that led me to finally put the new zipper into the dress!

Yes, the zipper is in! Just as before, it is centered and topstitched. This is due mostly to the fact that the zipper nestles under pleats in the back skirt, which means that it has to be sewn in two sections–the bodice section and the skirt section–to keep the pleats form being sewn down with the zipper.

You can see that in the photo above and you can also barely make out my extra backstitching where those two sections of stitching meet in the photo below.

Here’s a closer photo of the fun teal color of the new zipper!

And that’s it! Just in time for warm weather, the Happy Clover Dress is back in action! Yay!

Eleanor At The Boutwell House

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My 1860s evening gowns have had far fewer outings in the last few years than they used to, which it made having a reason to wear one a few months ago particularly exciting!

The question was which to choose??? I wore Genevieve (my 1863 apricot-colored covered in lace and pleats silk gown) sort of recently, in April 2022. Other dresses in my historical closet that might still fit (Georginia from 1859, Annabelle from 1859, and Evie from 1864) haven’t been worn recently, but for some reason, plaid was sounding like fun… So I chose to wear Eleanor (my 1862 purple and green silk plaid dress)!

I’m still very pleased with the fabric of this dress and the way I cut the pieces to create interest in an otherwise pretty basic dress. The little details like tiny piping on the bodice, matching hair flowers, and a well matched set of jewelry (earrings and necklace from In The Long Run Designs, as well as a mix of modern and vintage brooches) also bring me joy.

I also had a lovely setting in which to wear the dress. The Boutwell House in Groton, MA was built in 1851 and is now home to the Groton History Center. The Footwork & Frolick Society partnered with them for the town of Groton’s annual WinterFest activities, which included inhabiting the house for an afternoon to give visitors a small view into activities from the period.

I enjoyed being able to wear an 1860s dress again. I’ve always loved the magic of a cupcake shaped hoop skirt–and this was no exception!

1940 Schiaparelli Inspired Dress: Finished Ensemble

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I’m very pleased with my finished 1940 Schiaparelli Inspired Dress! The relatively simple style is set off by the pink and green sequined appliqué on the front of the dress.

This post is going to be all about wearing the finished dress. There is a separate detailed post telling all about how I made it that you can read here.

This dress is dramatic, yet simple, and completely different from anything else I have. And, it lends itself to elaborate and large hair which always amuses me.

I chose to do victory rolls, which I’ve posted about doing with my curly hair type in the past. (Not all rolls are technically victory rolls, but if they make a V there is a good argument for calling them by this name. In this case, I’m arguing that the dip between my two rolls makes a V and that’s why I’m calling them victory rolls. You can read lots more about the history of this hairstyle here, on the Bobby Pin Blog.)

The particular roll pattern and shape I chose to do was mainly inspired by this. My hair has enough volume to sustain the rolls on its own, but I cheated a bit on the teasing and stuffed the larger roll with small hair rat to help maintain the height and shape.

I’m very pleased with how the rolls turned out. They were dramatic, just like the dress and they made me super tall looking in combination with my trusty American Duchess black Seabury shoes and the columnar dress.

The V shaped rolls of hair complemented the V shaped sequins on the front of the dress AND the V shape of the back bodice with its V shaped pleats. There are all sorts of V’s in this outfit!

And, not only did I get to wear a fabulous, formal dress with large and fun hair, I was able to have a great time at Club Drosselmeyer with friends while wearing both!

(If you’re in the New England area and you haven’t heard of Club Drosselmeyer before, I suggest you check it out! I’ve been performing at and/or attending for years. It’s really special and fantastic for all sorts of people and interests. Personally, I really enjoy the live Christmas swing music, puzzles, and fabulous clothes, but there are also interactive actors, special performances, an open dance floor, and more!)