1660s dress

I have always had a fondness for Dutch paintings from the 1650's and the 1660's. My favorite is Ter Borch, but Gabriël Metsu has painted my favorite dress and that became the dress my project was mainly based on. I also found the 1660's bodice pattern and construction notes on the book Seventeenth-Century Women's Dress Patterns: Book 2 extremely useful. The dress is completely hand sewn from duchess silk satin, linen canvas, mid weight linen and a finer white linen using linen and silk threads. I'm wearing it over a shift, a linen petticoat and a rump. I plan on making the appropriate shoes with the square pointy toes and colored stockings soon, but I want to make sure I get my other Costume College dresses done before that. Meanwhile I wore it with my 18th century shoes and stockings.

And a fun artsy photo taken with a phone application.

Construction:

The panels are two layers of thick and stiff linen. They have seam allowances only where they are joined to other pieces and the seam allowances are folded inside before joining the two sides together. The channels are stitched with a spaced back stitch. The pattern is based on the 1660's bodice in Seventeenth-Century Women's Dress Patterns: Book 2

The panels are whip stitched together and boned with cane, except the two CB bones that needed to be very narrow but durable. I used the spring steel strips from windshield wipers that keep the rubber parts in form. They are only 2 mm wide but durable and bendy. And won't rust.

The project continued by completing the middle layer. The original had all kinds of small fabric pieces scattered around and even paper, but for simplicity I just cut the pieces in same shapes (without seam allowances and tabs) than the boned layer and used only one kind of mid weight linen.  In the picture below I have also already added the silk layer on top of back panels and made the lacing holes.

Then I covered the rest of the bodice with silk. I stab stitched all seams through the boned layer.

Then I bound the neck edge and tried it on.

The I made the wings and the sleeves. The sleeves have an inner layer of linen canvas, doubled in the top half.

They have silk on top and are lined with fine linen. One sleeve cartrige pleated and bound and a finished wing.

The wings are two layers of linen canvas wrapped in silk from the underside.

And then with an added layer on top, stitched from the right side. The underside:

The wings were back stitched to the edge.

And the sleeves whip stitched and back stitched on the bodice. Some time before I had bound the tabs with silk grosgrain and lined them individually.

After whip stitching in the lining, the bodice was finished.

I loved the construction on Kendra's skirt so I pleated and bound the waist the same way. 

There is a small train to the skirt. Otherwise it's just straight panels running stitched together.