Historical dress done!

I finished sewing my 1860's dress for the Pioneer Farm.

I had put it off for weeks. Why? There's 3 rows of tucks along the hem of the skirt. They call it fashion. I call it tedious folding and ironing and sewing. I really didn't want to do it, so the project has been sitting in my kitchen for 3 weeks. I finally drove myself back to it again just so I could put everything away and reclaim some space.  The button-hole function doesn't work on my sewing machine, so I needed to sew them all by hand.

It's really not too bad, and it was interesting to learn how to do it. Speaking of button holes, did you know that Laura Ingalls Wilder was a seamstress when she was older, and she could sew 60 buttonholes an hour? That's one a minute! Mine took me about 10 minutes per hole. When I started cutting this pattern out, I intentionally made it a size bigger, because I wanted it to be airy in the sumer heat.The first time I put it on, it wasn't even close to fitting my torso. I panicked a bit. Did I do the wrong seam allowances on the entire dress? What was I to do? After a bit of worrying, I realized my mistake. I had meticulously picked a historically accurate pattern. I had forgotten that meant I had to wear a corset to fit in it. Blast.
So much for being airy.

 I marched upstairs to put on a corset (I have one for a Jane Austen costume) and suddenly the pioneer dress fit and had lots of extra space around my body. (Just ignore the modern hairstyle and glasses....I really didn't want to redo my hair just for a quick picture. Maybe next time....)

I had purchased the fabric on clearance for a total of $20, the pattern was on sale for a dollar, and the extra interfacing and buttons totaled around $5 so there's a grand total of $26.