Dress one

The Design i followed.
The first dress I am making is a Regency period dress. This is perhaps the simplest of all the costumes, i am making,in my opinion. The dress needed to be made out of a light weight cotton fabric as a calico would be too weighty and a cotton would be more appropriate for the period. After looking at the image of the dress i had I made a line drawing both a back and front view looking imparticular at the seam lines and  where there were gatherers, darts and pleats.

Next I needed to hire out under ware that was appropriate for my period. I researched the under ware of the period

I wanted the underware like the above image. A short Stay (or corset) over a smock. Unfortunetly i found a smock but i had to opt for a longer corset as the store didn't have any short stays.

The above is the underware i am using. The corset is the smallest i could find that is in a colour appropriate for my fabric.
I chose a poly cotton cream fabric with a flower motif.
Below is the line drawing i created based on the original design.

And these are the final images of the dress.

I really thought i would find this dress relativly easy to construct but although the skirt and sleeves i constructed quickly i really struggeled with the top. It was mainly the back dimond pannel that caused the problems. I didnt think it through well enough and instead of making a complete back then cutting out the dimond pannel i created the back leaving a space for the pannel. This was so i could neatly bias bind the edges to show where the piped seams would go. However this method became more trouble then it was worth. Trying to get the dimond to look equal was really hard and i'm still not happy with it now. I also put the pannel in a different fabric to show the pannel clearly but i don't feel it fitted with the costume i think the silk dubion fabric i used cheepened the dress and made it look too modern.

The empire line on the waist dropped down on the sides and back up on the back (according to the design). I did this but emphasised the drop too much at the sides and didn't raise it enough at the back so the waist line looks far too modern for the regency eri. 

The other proplem i had was the opening. Again i should have thought it through more before i started constructing it. There is no front seam or back seam on the design and a side opening was complicated with the diaonal seamlines, though this is what i did. I think the origal garment may have used a gathered tecnique so the dress was big enough to pull over the body and was pulled in at the waist cuffs and neck to create a more fitted look. 

Over all the dress looks pretty yes but i don't think i thought about the design well enough i was so preocupied with making it look nice that the function of the garment escaped me. Depending on time, i might give this one another go sometime to correct the fuction and generaly tidy up the neatness of the garment.