Day 23: Made for Yourself

I love that I get to sew at my job, but every now and then I need a little bit of inspiration. So, when I was almost out of fabric and projects at the end of July, I started flipping through some of my costuming books and decided to make something a little different than my normal fitted gowns - a chemise a la reine!

I've sewn the one featured in Norah Waugh's The Cut of Women's Clothes, with just a few slight modifications. Essentially, a chemise a la reine is made of three tubes with gathering and shoulder straps, so it's not a complicated pattern, but there is a LOT of sewing involved! The gown has a circumference of 134 inches, and so sewing gathering channels along it and hemming it was quite the endeavor.

No sleeves yet, but progress on the gathering channels!

However, once I put some ribbon through the casings, the gown really started looking like what I was hoping for! I shortened the shoulder straps a little bit (although I might have cut them a bit long in the first place) and put the sleeves on, and voila!

The finished gown, it's so floofy!

Now I just need an excuse to wear this, other than around the house... That's why I'm showing off this project today, with the prompt Made for Yourself - even though this gown is accurate to the era we interpret at work, it doesn't really fit with what I do every day, so I probably won't be wearing it as part of my job. Still, the light cotton muslin is so comfy for summer wear, so I'm content to just wear it at home for now!

I don't have a wig or the ideal head wear for this at my apartment right now, so my market bonnet is a temporary stand-in