My Victorian Sewing Circle group put on a “Victorian chores” day back in July, so I needed some Victorian work clothes.
I could’ve gone with the Folkwear Prairie Dress of course, or even the pattern I worked out for the tea gown’s undergown, but instead I decided I needed a “Ladies gored wrapper”… something along the lines of #733 in this Butterick pattern catalogue page.
Ok, a kind of pared down version, anyway. I have a few scraps left that I could maybe turn into ruffles if I get ambitious.
So, a work dress but not a complete sack. I’m inspired by this image, though again I can’t find a very good source:
(But what is a wrapper, you ask? Well, aside from the things labeled “wrappers” in the advertisement above, this article has a quick section on them. Basically, it’s a one-piece dress, front fastening, looser than a going out dress and often adjustable. Key for my purposes, they are intended for wearing during breakfast and morning chores. They could also, probably not coincidentally, be worn easily while pregnant, although not so much the style I went with.)
For my pattern I used my same Truly Victorian bodice, but extended into a skirt like I did for the Elven tea gown. I used the diagram above (both pictures are off Pinterest with no particularly helpful source) as inspiration, except looking back I only used it for the front piece, for the back I basically used the tails of my pattern but extended into a full skirt length. (Like #678 in the page above).
The outer fabric is a cotton Tyo found me a couple of years ago (I think at a thrift store). It came in the form of two panels (bedsheets? Table cloths?) someone had made from regular, probably quilting, cotton, by seaming two widths of narrower cloth together. There was some pretty marked wear on portions of the panels, and while it’s a pretty print and colour and old-fashioned-looking enough to be plausible (at least to me) I wasn’t sure how I would be able to use it for a “real” dress. But for a costume of a work dress it’s pretty much perfect, even if the worn patches don’t really line up with the kind of wear you’d get from being a work garment.
I realized 0.5 seconds after I cut it all out that I could’ve just as easily had the back pleat come all the way up on the outside and had a wateau back like several other dresses on the Butterick page… but anyway. I didn’t. Which probably makes it a better work dress, but a little less fun.
For my lining I used some old (and very, very worn) bedsheets that were really fit only for making muslins and then rags. There was a lot of piecing involved there due to tears and holes in the sheets, and I imagine this will be an ongoing issue in the life of the dress, or would be if it were an actual work dress instead of an impression of a work dress.
I was under a real time crunch making this dress so a lot of things I would normally finish by hand I did by machine, including the blind hem and the front facings, which I topstitched down. It isn’t noticeable on the busy print, fortunately.
I even attached the buttons by machine, something I almost never do. I spaced the buttons pretty closely, which is period but I feel like I could’ve gotten away with just slightly further apart. I put on 24 buttons just between neck and hips (and then decided I would just wear my apron so the skirt could stay buttonless for now. Apparently leaving your wrapper skirt unbuttoned to show a bit of fancy petticoat was also a Look, although maybe not a work dress look.)
Unlike my other Victorian dresses, there is no boning in the seams, as this kind of dress needed to be washable. I did add a waist stay, as much to cover the raw insides of the skirt pleats as anything.
The dress as a whole does fit (snugly) without a corset, but I vastly prefer the look with corset. I also hemmed it to go over the bustle, since I mostly favour 1880s looks. Or I thought I hemmed it for a bustle, it looks like it curves up a bit in the back in these pics. While wearing a wrapper over all the undergarments you would need later in the day was apparently correct, I do rather wonder if a woman on laundry day would’ve bothered.
It does work well with my apron, though.
Other casualties of the hurry: I need to readjust the gathers at the tops of the sleeves. They are concentrated a little too far back which is creating some pulling. Also I didn’t have time to put in a pocket (unforgivable in a work dress), and the sleeves aren’t even hemmed, just rolled up. There is a moderate-sized rectangle of fabric left that I would like to turn into a little ruffle, for the bottom of the skirt if possible but the sleeves if not. (And yes, you’re reading this no earlier than September, so obviously some time has passed since I finished the dress. And have I gone back and fixed these niggles? Of course not!)
Laundry day itself was fairly successful, at least in that most of the stuff came out cleaner than it went in. It was the first laundry day done at the Marr Residence in ten or more years, I think, and there was a lot of cleaning of the washtubs and other equipment before it could be used to clean clothing. The mangle has a bit of rust in the mechanism that kept dripping reddish water across the rollers, so we had to be sure that was wiped away before running clothes through.
The twins had the most fun, running a couple of rags through the mangle endlessly, as well as grating soap and scrubbing on the wash board. Several years of dirt got washed out of my petticoats, particularly the flannel one that I’ve been wearing in real life the last couple of winters. I also did a bit of starching, including testing out a “coffee starch” on my black petticoat, although I didn’t get as far as ironing any of it.
So all in all a successful day, and a nice addition to my 1880s wardrobe. Now I just need a work bonnet.
Tanit-Isis Sews 