Late Victorian Winter Outfit
1870sI was originally inspired to try and make a Victorian Ice Skating outfit, however it just turned into a regular winter outfit from the late Victorian era. The outfit is made of wool and cotton with a hand sewn soutache braid for the embellishment. The hat and jacket are trimmed with fur. It is super warm and fun to wear, and given how much inner structure the jacket has, I was able to pull off wearing without a corset (shock! scandal!).
Year:
2019
Materials:
Wool, kasha satin lining, cotton organdy, fur, soutache braid,
Patterns:
Truly Victorian: TV125, TV261, TV462, TV551
Construction details
The original Inspiration for the dress was this fashion plate from 1876, however I wanted the bustle to be smaller and of course for there to be no train.
The first step, as always, was to create a mockup and fine tune the pattern. The next step was to design the piping on the back and sleeves of the jacket. This was definitely the most time consuming part! After the braid was attached, I flatlined each piece of wool with kasha satin lining. The fabric is definitely not period-accurate, but it's super warm and lightweight. After the flatlining was done, and everything was sewn together, I whip stitched the seam allowance down since I knew I wasn't going to be adding a lining. The sleeves were assembled in a similar fashion. Next step was to hand sew on the fur trim, and finally, add a boning channel to each seam and dart. I used German plastic boning everywhere except the side back seams, where I used spiral steel boning due to the horizontal curve of the channels. The skirt is made from black wool suiting fabric, and flatlined in cotton organdy. The hat was made with buckram covered in scraps of wool and trim.
