Brown Wool Campi Dress

In late July, I decided I would like another Pennsic Project (TM) in the form of a lovely brown wool dress. I utilized the spare laced front patterned and quilted pieces not used with my red linen Campi-inspired dress and covered it with wool. The skirt consists of three roughly 48H by 58W rectangles of fabric, sewn selvage edges together vertically and hemmed.

Obviously, this didn't get done during Pennsic because I decided to take All The Classes and time during daylight hours was sparse. I picked up the project again in September to demonstrate hand sewing at a demo, then again for actual project completion slash deadline for January 9th's Twelfth Night in Pentamere for Mistress Crespine's covert addition to the Order of the Pelican.

Portrait of a Young Woman
Sandro Botticelli

When I initially pulled the dress fabric from storage, I was looking to give a nod to Sandro Botticelli's Portrait of a Young Woman (right). I had most of the bodice constructed and the finishing work done when I started musing on how exactly to do the ladder lacing. I wanted to try something other than rings on the inside which can cause puckering of the fabric, so I spoke with another seamstress who recommended sewing grosgrain or twill ribbon on the inside to form the ladder then lacing the ladder with ribbon or cording.

A fantastic idea if I hadn't already tacked down every piece of lining on the bodice! Due to the now time crunch, I decided to machine sew 5/8" cotton twill tape and use cotton lucet cord instead of ribbon. The side effect of not thinking this through all the way? I had to now place some trim on the front of the dress to cover the sewing machine thread runs.

Fortunately, I do enjoy hoarding trim I rarely use, so I pulled out a festive Calontir Trim in taupe, brown, red, and green and covered the sewing machine sins. It looked a bit plain, so I added trim down in more of a Campi style. Since my original idea was totally kiboshed, I chose to try my hand at unsupervised cartridge pleating.

Overall... I'd call this dress a success. It's not what I started out trying to make, but after six months of on and off thinking about it, it works quite well. One clever thing I've noticed is the friction of the lucet cord vs. the texture of the cotton twill ribbon means I do not have to tie off when I'm done lacing. It will hold true most of the day. Bonus!

Adding trim.

Cartridge pleats!