Hello! Lurker here, jumping in with a new topic since such were asked for.
I have two questions regarding "the airspeed velocity of a relatively unembellished Regency* gown c. 1805-1810": :-) 1. Can anyone opine as to how many "seamstress-hours" it would have taken an early-19c dressmaker's workshop to make a fashionable gown? Naturally the length of time would vary with the materials, the ornamentation of the gown, and how easy or difficult a particular customer might be to fit. The only clue I have is from the second series of "Poldark", in which I vaguely remember Caroline telling Demelza that her Georgian gown, though a very fine one, will not do for London in 1799, and that the London dressmakers have partly made- up gowns that can be fitted to a customer in "four-and-twenty hours." (I assume this means a one-day turnaround, but not necessarily that the apprentices would have been burning candles around the clock to complete a gown... or would they?) 2. As a practical matter, do any of you have tips to simplify and/or speed up the construction of a Regency gown? I tried to build one for a friend, using a commercial pattern from one of the Big Three (I forget which one, but the bodice is very narrow and the melon sleeves are huge and require underlining). That dress fought me every step of the way. It didn't help that I was using a lovely but very slippery China silk. I've never finished the blasted thing -- it hangs, half-put-together, in my closet, reproaching me. (Luckily for me, my friend is now too preoccupied with her new baby to be worried about not having anything to wear to a Regency dance!) I want to try again with some cotton lawn or other reasonably well-behaved fabric and a different pattern, but I want to have some confidence that I can actually finish the project. Any sage advice? *to be pedantic, I'll just point out here that I'm using the term in the dressmaking sense - the actual English Regency was, of course, from 1811-1820... Thanks! Mary Llewellyn _______________________________________________ h-costume mailing list h-costume@mail.indra.com http://mail.indra.com/mailman/listinfo/h-costume
