Another Stop on LaFayette's Triumphant Tour - 1824 silk daygown

It seems that I've really gotten into the 1820s so why not do a couple of silk gowns for the cooler months? I need a nice day gown to wear to a tea in December.  I had found a silk day gown on an auction site that really appealed to me.  It has the same lines and sleeves as the cotton gown I made in September.   Let's look at the details:

Dated to the mid 1820s.  The lines are fairly straightforward on this frock.

The fullness of the skirt is concentrated in the back of the gown which is typical for this period.

The back skirt fullness really shows from the side.  This view also allows us to see the size of the top shoulder point on the trim.

The neckline is piped.  The straight edges of the trim are also piped.

There are no apparent back closures which means it either had ties that are missing or was pinned.

Close up of trim.  The trim appears to be bound and trimmed with some sort of twisted cord which is probably couched.

It appeared that the trim on this gown would be the most challenging feature.   I decided to make the bodice up with no piping in the seams.  I did choose to add it to the neckline.  I didn't have enough of the checked silk I was using but I had several yards of coordinating blue silk that I had bought for a bonnet that went well with this.  I made the bodice and a plain long sleeve that I had drafted for my my summer gown.  

The next task was to draft the trim.  I measured the bodice from front waist to back waist over the shoulder to determine the length of the trim, also marking the top of the shoulder.  I started to draw the trim but wasn't happy with the proportions so I ended up using the photo immediately above.  I traced the trim onto plain paper then put it in photoshop.  I resized the image to the measurement of the actual size.

I printed the pattern out actual size (it was tiled), cut it on the fold out of pattern tracing cloth then pinned it on my bodice.

I like the proportions of this trim.  I cut out one piece and tried to bind it but was unhappy with the results.  It was just way too fiddly with all of those points.  I decided to cut it double, stitch the pointed edge right sides together and turn it.  It still needed some sort of cording but I just couldn't find anything that came close to that of the original.  Raiding my silk floss stash, I found the perfect color!  Next, I decided to look at a variety of knotted embroidery stitches and play around with that.  I ended up really liking the Portughese knotted stem stitch and found that 4 strands of the Soie d'Alger floss was perfect for that. 

One skein of floss wasn't enough for me to finish both shoulder trims but I went ahead and piped the straight edges and stitched them to the gown since it would be a few days before I could get more floss. 

Next up--the waist band.  I determined the width I wanted, cut a crosswise strip of the fabric and piped it then added it to the bodice.

One thing I hadn't banked on was the fact that silk garments often end up smaller.  I'm guessing that it just has less give.  This happened to me here.  I made the gown to be buttoned in the back like the 2 previous 1820s frocks I had done.  The bodice met at the top but gapped at the waist so I adjusted the back turn in to add more width.  Had I realized this earlier I would've let out the side seam since I always use a 1 inch side seam for fitting.  At this point I realized that I would need to use ties to close the gown so I found a decent blue procion dye in my stash to dye some white 1/4 inch tape.  This way I wouldn't have to worry about tucking the ties into the back.

I'll trim the ties to make them smaller but I think this will work out.

The skirt was made up using French seams and stitched to the bodice.   I ended up having to trim off a good amount for the hem.  Here's the final fitting worn over my corded petticoat and stays.

Here is the finished gown:

I'm quite happy with the way this gown turned out.  It ended up taking way longer than I expected as I spent so much time on the shoulder trim.  I'm glad I took the time to do it the right way though.  I'll update this post when I get pics of me in it in a period setting.