Robe à la Française: The Gown Part 2

August 26, 2021

Robe à la Française: The Gown Part 2

Welcome to part two! Time to go over the rest of the skirt, sleeves, and finishings.

The fitting I did for the skirt was a bit rushed as my mum had an appointment she had to get to. I didn't really like how it was fitting after that so I took it all off and put it on my dress form. I did leave the pins in as an initial guide but ended up moving most of them by the end. The instructions sound like they want you to make the front skirt panels go straight down, but I found that this was not really possible to do. Keep in mind that I still had the "back panels" attached which could have affected it, but we'll get to that later. I did the best I could to follow their instruction, but after a bit of fiddling and going off book, I got it into a position with the pleats in place that I liked the drape of. It really made me realise that if the instructions weren't working for me and my situation, it's okay to deviate from what has been written.

I pinned it all in place, got dressed again, and made sure I was happy with how it looked on. Luckily, I was!

After taking it all off again (I've gotten quite fast at getting dressed now), I marched on. I attached the shoulder lining straps to the rest of the bodice lining before moving on to sewing down what I had just pinned.

It was now that I finally realised what the back panels were. Earlier in the instruction when creating the back pleats, they call for you to cut out the excess fabric at the bodice side seam but square it off and leave the lower part for the skirt. Now, I remember reading this and being a bit confused. It all makes sense now, but at the time, the wording confused me. So I took off the incorrect back panels, hunted through my scrap pile, and reattached the pieces that I had cut off. Luckily, I've gotten pretty quick at the mantua maker's seam and it only took me about three hours to reattach the pieces and sew them to the front panels.

Making the pleats for the back panels and covering the top raw edge was quick and easy from then on. Even though the covering patch is a different colour to the lining, I actually kinda like the way it looks.

Next was the sleeves. I only drew out the template for the sleeve first as I did this in the evening and I wanted to try to get the sleeve done that night before moving onto the sleeve ruffles the next day. I was immediately confused with the instructions for starting the sleeves until I realised that I had also needed to cut out a lining piece. Just an incident of tired brain. Sewing the lining and outer fabric together was rather quick. The sleeve ruffles also were pretty easy although, I found it a bit weird that they want you to attach them before you attach the sleeve to the gown. I just felt like sewing the ruffles on once the sleeve was attached to the gown would make sure that the ruffles were in the correct orientation, so I did it that way.

My mum helped me fit the sleeves onto the gown. It was a very careful fitting in an attempt not to be stabbed by the pins. The real trick was once I took the gown off and had to sew the sleeves in. Sleeves are hard to attach in most garments, but the way they want you to sew in the sleeves here, I think made it harder than it needed to be. I deviated from the instructions here a little bit. The instructions don't tell you what to do with the lining, so I just made it up but I'm pretty happy with how it looks... not that anyone is gonna see it. Sewing the fashion fabric on was pretty straightforward from there.

Now, I was on the last two pages of instructions. I thought that it was gonna be a breeze from here. Boy was I wrong. I was really not happy with the length of the gown. I'm not sure if I missed a step somewhere or if my fabric width was too narrow, but I had always wanted my gown to at least be touching the ground and it wasn't. So going back to the drawing board, I did some research, asked on some Facebook groups, and took many measurements, and then decided to piece together an extra length of fabric and sew it to the bottom of the hem. This took a very long time. The hem was about 3 meters in length from the front edge around to the other front edge and I sewed the extra length on by hand. Once it was done and I was happy with it, I basically had to do it all again by sewing in the hem facing. It was about a three to four-day process (I know this because I had a cold and it was all I did), and I'm just glad that I taught myself to use a thimble before starting this project because my fingers would be dead if I hadn't.

Trim. I was really dreading this part. I love sewing, don't get me wrong, but there is always going to be your least favourite part of something you love, and for me it is trim. It just takes way longer than you think it will which makes it feel a bit annoying. However, once it's done, I think it's absolutely worth it. I won't go into depth about how I made it as I've already talked about that in my top petticoat post.

Once the trim was on, it was done!

I couldn't quite believe that it was done. I'm quite proud of it in all honesty. When I started making it, it was definitely way over my skill ability, but it really pushed me to learn and get better. The end result isn't perfect, but I still love it! When I finished it, I just put it on over my normal clothes and ran through the house letting the train follow like it was a cape. I just love it so much!