La Mode Illustree. December 8th, 1889 - Crossover Bodice with Off-Center Closure

Pattern: Wonderful, and highly recommended!
I have compiled below all the blog posts I made on this garment. 

   I started the first dress, Fig.1, from the 12/8/1889 issue of La Mode Illustree, and I think it just might be all right ;)

Tracing out this pattern was pretty simple. La Mode Illustree had well made patterns with good, clear markings and easy to read symbols (Unlike Salon de la Mode =P) I typically use plain white paper and/or Christmas wrapping paper with a plain back (great price after the holidays), which I then trace through with a tracing wheel. However, I certainly wasn't going to damage an antique pattern by punching lines of holes through it. So, I bought this 50 yard roll of art tracing paper. The stuff is AMAZING.

The antique pattern, which I could never bring myself to damage.

The roll of tracing paper with the pieces already traced out. I use a china marker (grease pencil), but you can use anything. Even a sharpy marker won't bleed through the tracing paper=) 

This pattern came out incredibly small. In the original, the waist is about 22". Now, I am terrible at scaling and/or upsizing patterns. I can increase a waist and add some to a bust easy enough, but when it comes to transforming a 22" waist petite into something that will fit a 30" waist average and still maintain the proportions and style of the original...mmm...my skills end up lacking. So, I just increased everything by 1/2" on all sizes and told myself that other tweaks would have to be made on the form.

I usually don't bone bodices because I want people to have the option to machine wash, and bones make that quite difficult. In this case, though, it is necessary. That center front dart there HAS to be straight to look right, so boning it is. 

For the fabric, I have decided to go with a pastel sea-foam green wool that I bought a few years ago for $4 a yard. Seriously, how could I NOT buy the entire bolt when it was 100% wool and $4 a yard? Below you can see my workup of the bodice so far.

As you can see on the side there, my slap-dash method of increasing the size went a bit far, lol. I'll have to take that seam in by about 1.5", and on the other side as well. 

I finished the bodice from the La Mode Illustree dress. There are a few fussy parts, but that's mostly due to having NO construction instructions (they are on the supplement, but I can't read French, lol).

Sorry my picture looks kind of "meh". My dress form was not the proper size, so I had to pad it, making it a bit lumpy in the torso there, lol.

To get an idea what the pattern pieces look like, here is the layout as it appears on the extant supplement. This pattern actually comes with a lot of instructions (that whole paragraph you see under the layout). If only I could read French =P. I am posting the picture in it's original size so you can hopefully read it.

Excerpt from pattern supplement. La Mode Illustree - December 8th, 1889.

The Skirt: I have not actually decided yet if I will try to make the skirt featured with this pattern. For one, it's very simplistic and I can probably make it just from sight without going through the trouble of tracing out another piece. For second, the skirt pieces are in the pattern at 1/20 scale. It would be a lot of work to trace out and re-scale something that is, when you get down to it, just a few rectangular patterns and a standard sloped front piece. We'll see...

With the Skirt

   I went ahead and made up the skirt too, though I did not use the pieces from the La Mode Illustree pattern. I just eyeballed it from the fashion plate and made up my own, with some help from the skirt instructions on the pattern (Thanks soooo much to Sue Fischer for translating the French).

The skirt is a basic gored underskirt with a strip of silk pleated to the front. I then folded the vertical edges where the silk lay and stitched, almost giving the illusion that the center front silk was a separate panel entirely. It's really fussy if you can't get the silk to pleat in right. Fashion plates always show these perfect vertical knife pleats on dresses, but 9 times out of 10 you can't get them to lie flat in reality, lol.