Cotton Print Dress, c.1895

Another for the railroad event. I fear the picture doesn't do justice to its amazing puffed sleeves. I like to think Anne Shirley would approve.

 

Cotton print dress with yoked bodice.

For this dress, we were trying to outfit a female telegrapher of c.1895. The goal was a washable, practical garment for a working woman, while remaining identifiably 1890s. 

I draped the bodice and sleeve, using a narrow coat sleeve as the base, and more-or-less adapting my 1850s methods to the diagrams given in Bertha Banner's 1898 Household Sewing with Home Dress Making. The sleeve puff is copied from an 1890s dress in Janet Arnold's Patterns of Fashion 2, though without the paper interlining which made the original nigh-spherical. The skirt was cut following instructions for goring skirts from Jeanette Davis's The Elements of Modern Dressmaking (1896) in conjunction with the description of a print "housemaid skirt" from Banner. The dress is worn over the corset previously mentioned, and a gored petticoat, which I neglected to photograph. The petticoat is cut along the same lines as the dress skirt.