mourning calico

So back in January, I shared a new natural form dress that I had made for a Little House on the Prairie group that was in the works for Costume College.  But then I had a change of heart and decided that I wanted a lighter weight cotton dress instead of a heavy wool one.   I also am a hopeless follower, and when I heard that my friends were making calico prairie dresses, I decided that I needed one too!  I found a great deal on a repro calico fabric from Saunders Fabrics, and I picked a black fabric with a simple diamond pattern, which I thought it would make a lovely half-mourning dress.  I'm so glad that I ended up switching plans because I think we made such a fun little group of Ingalls sisters in our nicely coordinating calicos.

For something a little different, I decided to try a yoked bodice, which was an incredibly popular style in the late 1870's.  In April of 1879, Peterson's Magazine features a plaid yoked house dress and stated that "the deep waist is made plaited back and front into a yoke; a belt around the waist, with a bow of ribbon on one side." Most of these yoked bodices had high, round necklines or small standing collars, but I found one example of a yoked bodice with a middy collar on a teenaged girl, so I thought that the V-neck might help keep me cool while I also try a style that I haven't done before.  

To help me get started with the construction, I found 2 yoked bodice patterns and several narrow overskirt diagrams in Fashions of the Gilded Age, Volume 1: Undergarments, Bodices, Skirts, Overskirts, Polonaises, and Day Dresses 1877-1882.  Although I changed these patterns up quite a bit to make my own dress, they were a huge help as I figured out the overall shapes.  

I used cotton velveteen for the collar, cuffs, and belt, and I edged it with natural linen rickrack, which really made these features stand out nicely.  The buttons are vintage and slightly mismatched, which is a fun little detail that seemed appropriate for a prairie dress.  I'm always amused when I see Victorian photos of women who have a mismatched button on their dress.  It happens more often than you would think, and I love imagining a practical frontier woman just replacing a missing button with something "close enough" and not wasting any time worrying about it.

I also wore a silk bow at my neck, and a mourning rosette at my waist. The rosette was a lovely gift from 2 friends, and I made a faux tintype of my husband to use for the portrait.  Similar mourning badges were quite popular after the death of Abraham Lincoln, and you can see a similar style here.  

As the finishing touch, I restyled a vintage black straw hat into a bonnet.  You can see the "before" version on the left.  I cut the brim off in the back of the hat and then wired the edge and covered it with petersham ribbon so that I could curve it around my face.  Then I stitched some wide vintage lace into the inside of the brim, and I trimmed the outside with some vintege ribbon and the original black feathers from the hat.  The ivory silk bow that was around the hat when I bought it was repurposed for the bow at the neck of my dress.

I love the long, loosely curled ponytails that you sometimes see in the late 1870's, so I took the easy way out of styling my hair and just attached a clip-in hairpiece and tied it with a bow. I think it's a nice change of pace from the more severe buns of the 1880s.

I only got a few posed pictures of my dress at Costume College, but I'm hoping to get some more fun ones in a pretty setting when I wear it again this winter.  But if you'd like to see a few more, you can check out my Flickr album.