1770s - Blog Posts

Started on a new fall ensemble! This amazing gown is from a Tischbein portrait from 1770! I’m halfway through the petticoat now, and will hopefully be finishing it up in the next few days.

I’m using two shot taffetas for this dress - a blue/green taffeta and a red/yellow taffeta (that looks bright orange!). Things are going a bit slowly because there is a lot of hand-sewing involved. The hem on the petticoat is 2″ deep and all had to be hand-sewn. The edges on the fabric ribbon that will become the box-pleated trim also had to be hemmed by hand, all 360 inches! It was horrible, and now it looks like I’ll have to add another length of fabric on, so that’s another 120 inches to hem! Yeesh. I’m still hoping to wrap the petticoat up by the end of the week, though!