Adventures in Sewing: Victorian Elegance Dress

As you can see from the illustration, this is a bit less authentic Victorian and a bit more Gothic Lolita. You can buy it here. I decided to sew it in black for Aurelia. I had a lot of black silk that I'd been holding onto for several years, and this dress seemed like a good opportunity to use some of it up.

The pattern relies heavily on marking the fabric, which means that black silk is Hard Mode. It also has no seam allowance; the maker is expected to add seam allowance to every piece. I'm okay with this, but the lack of an included seam allowance, coupled with the complexity of the pattern, mean that this is not a pattern for beginning sewists.

My first decision was to abandon the pintucks. They're darling, yes, but they're also mostly hidden and a major pain to get right when you can't draw water-soluble marks on your fabric. (Silk georgette, it turns out, does NOT take a mark with fabric pencil.)

I also ended up tossing the bottom ruffle from the petticoat. Is it lovely? Yes. But it's also 240 cm (about 8 feet) of fabric that I need to gather to half that, and I simply cannot. It is Too Much Fabric.

I would also like to emphasize that this is a big project. The shirt alone took me about 6 hours. Don't expect to have it all done in a single day. But if you can put in the time, the results are definitely worthwhile.