1880's hat and gloves

This summer I finally made the missing accessories to complete my 1887 style late bustle dress. The gloves are hand stitched from leather. I used my previous glove pattern with small adjustments to make them fit even better and lengthened them to cover all skin and reach under the 3/4 length sleeves. The hat was made using the adorable Truly Victorian TV551 pattern. It's a buckram frame hat covered with silk taffeta and decorated with feathers. I wanted it to look like a lady had walked in to a boutique and chosen a hat that she liked and paired it with a dress she already had, so I didn't want to use the scraps from the dress to make it. I think the brown silk goes nicely with the dress but doesn't look too carefully matched. More like regular clothing.

And with this I was finally able to have the 1887 dress from last year officially finished.

Construction pictures:

The gloves were just stab stitched from the inside.

The hat frame and wired brim.

The hat pattern is unaltered, but I constructed the hat using techniques closer to those in Lynn McMasters's patterns. 

1887 dress

This dress is based on an Ageless Patterns dress pattern, which are great for authenticity as they are copies of original victorian patterns, but the pattern pieces can't be trusted to be used just as they are. I had to make a lot of adjusting to get the pieces to work together. The skirt is striped silk taffeta and black duchess silk satin draped on an unbleached cotton four gore base that I drafted myself. The hem is faced with the satin. The bodice is made of the same materials, silk taffeta and silk satin flatlined with unbleached cotton. It's boned with spiral steel cased with cotton and hand sewn on the seam allowances that were whip stitched in to the cotton lining. I'm still going to make a hat to complete the outfit, but this is how the dress turned out.

Construction pictures: