Henriette's Dress

A friend of mine who is living in Nigeria, asked me to make a dress for her as a surprise for a visit home. She told everyone she was coming for a visit in July, but made it home for a big SCA event in June. I did my best to keep it quite on what I was doing.

I consider myself a pretty good seamstress but I knew her figure would be a challenge. She's pear shaped and a lot bigger than me.

She chose a dress from "The Romance of Alexander", but with buttons. So she ordered the fabric online and low and behold, I got it just 3 days later. The buttons were also speedy, I received them in about 4 days.

We'd had her take all of her measurements which in itself was tough. She couldn't find a tape measure for about a day. Sending the cook in to the village to purchase a chicken or something, she asked for her to pick up a tape measure.

So after getting measurements, I set out to make a pattern for her. I took one of my patterns, copied it and quartered it. The stretched the pattern out to fit her figure. I know I made it too large, but I'd rather take it in than panic and have to add inches.

It was a standard cotehardie with tippets on the sleeve and buttons down the front. I made a simple gold underdress for her, gores in the back and on the sides, pull over in style with long sleeves that would cup her hands in a style we both like. Who wants a tan line on their hands? I don't and I knew she wouldn't either.

The overdress was made the same way, but with the buttons. Tiny damn little buttons with a long shank  on the back. 25 buttons in an 18 inch space. Worked out fine, but were a bit of a pain to sew on though. The tippets on the sleeves in the illumination are lined with fur, you can tell by the little seam lines where the white furs were sewed together. She did not want fur, we used white linen.
                                                             
Two days before she was to wear the dress, she landed at LAX. But first things first, she had a business meeting to attend and then she would be mine for a few hours for the only fitting.

We took up the underdress a little bit in the front and quite a bit in the back. The sides were fine and so were the sleeves.  She tried the overdress on and we had to adjust the back seam and I shortened the shoulder seems a little as well, I didn't want her to have the gold chemise showing above the blue at her neckline.

It took me about 5 hours to do the hems, combined there were about 6 yards of hemline.

Her friend added the gold leaf fluer's
along the bottom of the dress after I
had turned it over to her.

A different friend made the cauls for
her hair and they were so freeking cute!

She loved it and looked marvelous!