Druid Gown

This dress is made in 3 pieces:

Base dress
Strap overdress
Corset

The project began at the fabric store. I stumbled upon the green, brown, and orange fabrics in the clearance section and had a sudden vision of a dress. I bought meters and meters of fabric, and went home and sketched my idea.

Sketch

Draped visual

To make sure the fabrics were going to work the way I wanted, I draped them over a dress form and pinned them in place to get a more concrete visual. It worked.

Base Dress

The base dress is a princess seam dress with similar bodice and skirt lines to my peasant dress, but it has set-in sleeves, and laces at the back. I had to adjust the pattern several times to allow for enough room to pull the dress on overhead, and each adjustment required a muslin dress (a test dress out of cheap fabric). I didn't want to cut into the real fabric until I knew I had a pattern that worked and I loved.

Important Rule of Thumb: A dress that pulls on overhead has to be as wide as the shoulders the whole way down. Laces and cinches/corsets are ways to help achieve shaping at the waist.

Base dress in progress

Back Lacing

Lacing is made from the same fabric (selvage edges were clear of the couched yarn, so I cut from there). The lace eyelets are also made of the same fabric.

Side gussets

I used green for most of the dress, but I inserted brown triangular gusset panels into the sides of the dress for interest. The brown fabric is identical to the green except in colour.

Upper Sleeves

The sleeves presented a few challenges. I knew I wanted wide trim around the cuff, and I wanted the sleeves full enough to allow for ease of movement. But I also wanted the cuff relatively close fitting.

This meant that I had to somehow gather the fullness of the sleeve into the cuff, while keeping the cuff perfectly cylindrical so I wouldn't have to fuss with trying to shape a wide ribbon on a curve. I made a wide box pleat in the centre of the sleeve instead of gathering it, and managed to shape the sleeve so the hem edge was mostly straight, with only a gentle curve. I cut a piece of brown to set the ribbon onto, cut exactly to the shape of the sleeve edge.

Next I ran a long gathering stitch along the top edge of the ribbon, and carefully pinned it in place to the brown fabric, using the gathered thread to ease it along the gentle curve. I stitched it down, and pulled out the gathering stitch.

Lower Sleeves

Before stitching the now-finished cuff to the sleeve, I prepared the long draping section of the sleeves. This fabric is sheer, gIittery, and stretchy - a near-nightmare to work with. After managing to lay out the fabric on the floor in what I felt was a straight line, I cut the sleeves without a pattern, aiming for rectangles 2x wider than the circumference of the sleeve edge, and rounding the bottom hem into a parabolic shape. I made them long enough to almost hit the floor, but clear it by a couple of inches to avoid being stepped on.

Rolled hem

These parts of the sleeves needed to be flashy. I researched a serger technique I'd never used before - rolled hems. I learned how to dial the settings and remove the second needle to make a narrow rolled hem. It was lovely, but I went a step further and learned how to use the differential feed to make the hem ruffled. Using a complimentary thread colour, I serged the hems of the sleeves.

Using a gathering stitch to gather the top of the sheer sleeves to fit the upper sleeve opening, and with pins in place to mark quarter sections (to maintain even gathering), I pinned it to the inside of the top sleeve (which was also marked into quarter sections). I overlapped the opening of the drapey sleeves slightly, and positioned the opening to the front so it would fall open in a natural way when I raised my arm. Pressing the green sleeve edge inward to make a wide hem, I stitched both sections of sleeves in place, catching the gathered sheer fabric and the green hem together, and deliberately making the stitch line higher than where I intended to place the cuff.

Now I was ready to add the cuff. I tucked the brown cuff edges under, and pinned everything into place and top stitched it on. Care was taken not to catch the drapey sleeves. The cuff easily and completely covered the hem stitch line in the previous step.

Lining

Finally, I lined the entire dress. I used a blind-hem foot and blind-hem stitch to attach the lining to the dress at the hem, without the stitch line showing. The hem is also stitched so that the inside hem edge is stitched to the lining, but NOT to the visible side of the dress. This allows the dress to hang without puckering at the hem line.

Sleeve lining

The lining of the sleeves is hand-stitched on the inside.

Strap Overdress

The overdress was made using similar techniques as the sleeves (making use of the differential feed serger settings to make matching rolled, ruffled hems, and then also adjusting the settings to make smooth, flat side seams).

Straps and neckline

The shoulders are wide elastic, encased in a narrow matching casing. On top of that, I made a wide, loosely gathered sleeve that I twisted and hand-stitched all the way around the neckline and straps, like a garland.

Corset

The corset is basically a custom-fit wide belt, made out of the same brown fabric as the base dress except using the reverse side. It's reinforced with interfacing for stiffness. I used the same technique as on the sleeve cuffs to stitch the trim around the top (the belt has a gentle curve when laid flat). Metal grommets run down the sides of the front for lacing.

See also my page on later updates to the Druid Gown!

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