I need a new dress!

Ok, so I don't ACTUALLY need a new dress, but our living history group got invited to a fundraising event for the Manitoba Museum this Friday and it will be a bit fancier we are dressing 1800-1850. I don't want to wear my print ensemble again, because I don't think it's very fancy. My striped chemise dress comes to the rescue. Even though I made it for 1795, I figure I can put it on over my Regency stays and it will look fine. However, I sort of tried it on and I seriously have very little range of motion in the long tight sleeves. It also had some stains on the skirt where I accidentally closed a car door on it the one and only time I ever wore it. I spot cleaned the skirt and now the stains are barely there! I realized that the sleeves really held me back from wanting to wear this gown to other things. So, my solution is to re-make the sleeves, then I will have a sort of new dress for Friday. (I also need to add slits in the skirts so I can reach pockets.) I still have a good chunk of the striped cotton left if I can't cut the new sleeves from the old sleeves.

I was always unhappy with the sleeves. I think that when I made it two years ago, I just didn't have enough knowledge or experience to draft such a difficult sleeve. The new sleeve will be a shorter, elbow-length one. The sleevehead really needs to be much flatter, with more fabric at the back of the shoulder/arm. Lots of this style of gown sleeves tend to have a big crease at the back of the arm when the arm is down; this is the excess fabric that allows movement. Getting inspiration/information from the Past Patterns Lewis & Clark era gown and this gown from Colonial Williamsburg that was patterned by the 19th US Regiment of Infantry living history group.

Pros:

• new-ish, somewhat fancier dress to wear


• the white cotton dress is a Regency wardrobe staple, I will be able to make all kinds of fun things like spencers to go with it


• it will get worn more frequently if it is comfortable, instead of languishing in my closet

Cons:

• this style of dress really is 1795-1810 (max) because of the drawstring-front closure, so not quite in the range of what our living history group reenacts


• it's a bit short in the skirt considering most early 1800s gowns of this sort had trains (but I don't want to worry about a train really anyways because of dirt and people stepping on it)


• I have to do the work to re-do it ;p