1840s Reproduction Green Plaid Daydress

Bodice

Green plaid cotton homespun bodice with cotton velvet trim is boned, has self piping, center front button closure. Purchased white color trimmed in lace.

Pattern: Laughing Moon #114 View A with adjustments to move arms/sleeves slightly forward. Historically accurate has arms/shoulders roll in a back and down position so that they hang slightly behind torso midline. Modern shoulders tend to roll forward which pull on this dress.
Arms/shoulders are very restricted and binding.

Skirt

[20151207] xposted blog notes:
Laughing Moon 114 View A 1840s round gown.
Here are a couple photos from Dickens Fair. The dress is over a quilted petticoat and ruffled petticoat.


I decided to use the size 14 and shortened the sleeves by 2" because I always shorten long sleeves. The sleeves ended up 2" too short. So if you shorten sleeves, don't. If you are regular sized, add to the sleeve length.

The front neckline was too high and slightly choked me especially if I stood up straight. Probably View A front neck could be cut down 1/2". On the dress form it ends up above the dress form's neckline.

The waist was still about 3/4"-1" too wide on the bodice. This caused it to ride up a little and bunch on the top of the dart bones. On dress form, you can see the wavy, rather than smooth, side.

The pattern is supposed to have the drop shoulders, but that and the armscye is cut weird. The only position my arms felt okay was if I had my hands on my hips or if I rolled my shoulders waay back so my arms hung slightly back of center side. Driving with my arms straight out did some weird binding thing on my arm that felt like it was digging in. The armhole itself is not too tight so I think how the sleeve is set in is not quite right.

Also, on my red plaid bodice, the drop shoulder requires the bust pads because it makes that weird hollow space, but the arms feel fine. The Laughing Moon pattern comes with bust pads, but there was no place to put them, no hollow. Laughing Moon 114 versus McCall's 3855. The McCall's is more of an 1860s pagoda sleeve. So, not sure if that is the difference and/or if the McCall's has some adjustments for modern fit. Not sure I would be able to fix this unless I added a big gusset under the arm.  I didn't check out how the back armscye works, but it is probably different, too.



This quicky petticoat is more bunchy than I thought it would be:


Slightly fixed with the flounced petticoat:

[20150906] xposted from blog Gold Rush Days - Saturday
I finished the skirt barely, but did not finish the bodice so scandalously went about Gold Rush Days with just a white blouse. It is interesting that there really is no way to tell colors from a black and white photo. I also made the two tiered/flounced skirt by adding the tiers to a muslin cotton skirt for a built in petticoat. Unfortunately, that means the white part shows if the top flounce doesn't stay down. I may need to tack it down in a few places.


Georgia took a few of me:

In the color photos, the cotton velveteen trim shows better and the splotches where the homespun bled is a little more obvious.