Southern Belle Gown - All Together

June 24, 2016

We arrived home from Williamsburg, and went back to our busy schedule. This last Friday it dawned on me that "Oh my! The Homeschool Ball is in one week, and my dress isn't nearly done!!"

I reluctantly went to the sewing room. I say reluctantly because I haven't liked this dress from the get-go. But I need to have something to wear to the ball! Since fairy godmothers aren't the kind of things you can pull out of your closet whenever you need them, I decided to sew the dress whether I liked it or not. I sewed on the overskirt, hemmed the ruffle, put in the invisible zipper, then tried it on...

To my surprise, I LOVED it!!

My younger sister was saying "told you so!" because she was

telling me all along that it would be great.

I used Butterick pattern 6195 for the bodice, I made up the sleeves (you can't really see them because of the ruffle - the ruffle is just a long strip of fabric I sewed into the bodice binding), and I used Simplicity pattern 5724 for the skirt ruffles.

The bodice in progress:

The skirt ruffles are trimmed with 3 inch ivory lace from Hobby Lobby, and at each high point on the ruffles, I tacked on a faux rose. I purchased 30 of them on Amazon. When they arrived I was a bit worried because they were all squished! Really squished. I took each one and spread out the petals and let them sit on my bed for a few hours. To my relief, they revived.

I realized how easily the thread I used to tack them down pulled through the rose, so for backup, I used a safety pin to secure each of them to the overskirt. No roses flying off of this dress!

The overskirt is attached to the bodice. I made a separate petticoat that ties with a drawstring. The hoop is very wide, and I didn't want to have all the fabric for the skirt bunched up around my waist, so I made it in two tiers. The top one is a piece of a cotton sheet that is much smaller than the actual skirt. I gathered and sewed the skirt pieces and stitched them onto the cotton, then sewed the side seams together.

The petticoat inside out:

I added a casing, then hemmed it. Now THAT was a project in itself. The skirt was made of 20 feet of fabric. That doesn't sound like a lot until you try hand stitching all the way around it! But no worries - I finished in time.

~

4/11/16
A quick post about the ball...

So the Homeschool Ball was amazing as always! It went by so fast though!

Getting ready:

Curling all that hair...