Victorian Dress

I stumbled across these pictures from one of my last costume construction projects at UCLA. The assignment was to create a period dress. At the time I was inspired by fashion from the Victorian Era. After conducting some research from this time period, I began creating my pattern from scratch. I  designed a dress similar to the one in this illustration (on the left). The waist is very narrow and the bodice is very pointy at the center front. To create this illusion my darts have a curved shape to them. I used a black marking tape to create these lines as a point of reference.

With my guide lines in place, I began draping my muslin fabric on the body form. After all of the darts were pinned and smoothed out, I began shaping my design and cutting off all the excess fabric.

Once I finished marking my darts and seam lines on the bodice, I then laid it out on a drafting table and began connecting of all my pencil marks and notches together. From this point on my pattern was begining to take form. After completing this step, I added the seam allowance to to my sample and proceeded by transferring all this information to a paper pattern. Although I didn't take a picture, I cut and sewed my first sample out of muslin fabric. After fitting the sample on myself and making some adjustments, I drafted my final pattern.

One of the most exciting parts of this process was the final fitting. Here is where I finalized all last adjustments before sewing, hand stitching and hemming the final dress. At last all my hard work came together, now I can say that I designed and constructed my very first Victorian dress from start to finish.