I’m a sucker for big bows on little dresses. Just as an example, for instance, the shoulder-bows on the fluffy white dresses on the Princesses in the 1846 Winterhalter portrait of Queen Victoria and her family have always been EXACTLY what floats my small dress boat. When a scrap of white striped cotton floated up in my stash, I decided that it was time to sew my own mid-Victorian Winterhalter dress for my American Girl Doll. She needed something subtle, after her aniline Halloween ensemble!
I found some yellow French wired ribbons for the shoulders, and I ordered some orange-to-yellow mokuba ribbon on ebay, and while I waited for the ribbon to arrive, I drafted up a party dress for an early-Victorian Princess.
I wanted the bodice to be gathered, not pleated, and I wanted the gathers to run STRAIGHT DOWN, not sun-raying away from the neckline, so I ran multiple parallel lines of gathering stitches, basted (excessively) the gathered fabric to a flat cotton base, and cut a wide almost off the shoulder neckline.
The sleeves were done similarly – a gathered puff sewn top and bottom to a smaller cotton base, and then a ruffle added onto the bottom of the sleeve.
When the mokuba ribbon arrived, I sewed it onto the skirt in an oversized Greek key pattern, tacking it down with knots of cotton embroidery floss.
I ran a double row of ribbon around the waist, again, stitching it down and punctuating with orange floss. To balance all the yellow I ran a row of large orange knots around the neckline, and as a final splash of color I made a very large bow indeed from the striped cotton, edged it with the mokuba ribbon, and sewed it onto the back waist! Addy was QUITE pleased.
