Sweet Nothing

For the underneath portion of the tea gown of my last post, I waffled a bit. The classic tea gown (or at least, what those of us a century late to the party think of as a classic tea gown) looks as if it has an under dress and over gown (along the lines of a nightgown and a robe), but is actually a single cunning garment. But… 1) this is fundamentally a fantasy gown, 2) it might be fun to have different options for underneath, depending on the occasion, and 3) making an integrated half-garment actually seemed like as much or more work as doing a full separate garment.

So, eventually I decided to do an entirely separate nightdress, along the lines of a Victorian nightgown.

I could have gone with any number of patterns, not least among them the Folkwear Prairie Dress that I actually own (thanks to my mom having purchased it back in the 80s!!!). I also seriously considered the Sophie Dress from Ora Lin, but it doesn’t seem to come in A0 format and I’m not capable of that much cutting and gluing right now. But style wise it was exactly what I was looking for, with a pointed yoke front and back.

On the other hand, the pattern I used for my Edwardian blouse also had very much the right shape of back yoke, and it seemed like a pretty easy change to add a front yoke. I wasn’t terribly happy with my fitting the first time around, but surely that could serve as a bit of a wearable muslin, whereas a different pattern would be starting all over again.

In the end I don’t think I saved myself much (any?) labour, as it took me quite a bit of work to get the shoulder and collar fit right. I ended up making about two and a half muslins of the yoke and collar and tweaking them to fit. My shoulders are more square than standard and I was trying to hit that delicate balance of the collar between close fit and strangling myself.

I did however take a fair bit of inspiration from the Folkwear pattern as well, for the width of the final dress and the sleeves and armscye. I liked the cuffs from the Edwardian blouse, but was intrigued by the shaping and rear-thrown underarm seam of the Folkwear pattern.

The fabric I chose was also from stash, a gorgeous drapery lace again from my Fabricland days. It’s a fairly soft (polyester or nylon) mesh with scattered lace motifs and an intricate border. The sheerness isn’t historically accurate for any tea gown I’ve seen but is a lot of fun.

I spent some time playing with seam treatments, and also waffling about which portions to line. I was going to do a double layer for the yokes, for strength, but unpicking embroidered motifs from the net so as not to have them showing through was both incredibly time consuming and tricky to do without damaging the base net. So I only lined the collar and sleeves cuffs, smaller pieces where I could cut the inner piece to avoid or mostly avoid the scattered lace motifs.

For the seams, I determined I could topstitch right next to a seam and then trim off the remaining seam allowance. It looks fairly tidy.

The buttons I chose are these tiny mother-of-pearl ones that were some of my first online purchases back in 2007 or 2008. I think I bought a pack of 100 for decorating a dance costume, then discovered how much I don’t enjoy sewing on buttons. Anyway, it was exciting to finally use them as buttons. There was no way I was ever going to try putting this fabric through the machine for buttonholes, so I did them all by hand. They’re so tiny they didn’t take very long, especially compared to hand-tailoring the over robe. I didn’t fuss too much over them; the fabric doesn’t fray so they will do their job.

I left the front seam open, but will maybe stitch it up at some point.

And, since the lacy border means there’s no hemming, that’s about it!

I am enjoying the sheerness and whimsy. And it’s exactly right for the underneath portion of the tea gown. I might have made the sleeves a little more full, but on the other hand they’re mostly hidden in the sleeves of the over-gown anyway.