Beginning Preparations for Gettysburg

I'm just starting to get my projects together for the Gettysburg trip in November. I already have a day dress, bonnet, and sontag, so the day outfit is set, but nothing for evening wear. Enter a partially finished dress that Sarah was kind enough to gift me a few years ago. She had fallen out of love with the fabric, but I like it as it is outside of what I normally wear.

Sarah had finished most of the bodice and assembled the skirt panels. But let's face it, I'm bigger than Sarah in the waist, so I need to let the bodice out. Happily, there is a bunch of leftover fabric, so I can replace the side panels with wider ones.

Here is the bodice, you can see the left side done by Sarah, and where I have begun removing the panels on the right side.


Using Sarah's original pieces as a guide, I then made wider panels out of muslin and basted them back into the bodice to test fit. Now I need to do some more fitting, as I am not sure whether I overshot adding in width. But that requires going and putting on my corset and fumbling with a back closure...so I'll tackle it later. And then, of course, on to the final version in the fashion fabric.