First step was research.  I went to the Goldstein Gallery and took pictures of these dresses:

This was draped on a dress form. First I put a petticoat, and corset on the dress form.  Then I pinned 1/4" twill tape to the form in the lines that I wanted for the shell.  I took muslin that I drew striped along the grain-line and draped the shell.  I marked my pieces with seam lines and notches.  When transfered to paper they looked a bit like this:

From the pattern for the shell I made a mock up shell:

When I draped the outer layers I marked where they hit on the shell mock up and then transfered those marks onto the shell pattern.

Off the form the outer pieces looked like this:

This is what the final pattern pieces looked like:

I pre-washed the silk to get a softer hand.

Then I pin tucked and top-stitched enough silk for the angular pieces, and attached the beaded fringe to the bias curved pieces. I gathered the sleeves down onto a strip of extra silk, and attached the cuffs.  Each piece had to be attached carefully in order as marked on the pattern pieces.  The last parts added were the sleeves. The original hem was stuffed and hemmed with french knots, but I decided to do a home sewing machine blind hem, which shows small amounts of the thread through, for an even distribution of stitches.  I plan on going back and adding french knots on top of the blind hem later.

This is the finished dress.