I was completely inspired by Dior's recent fall collection full of beautifully done riding habits. The colors and fabrics lent themselves to the inspiration so well and those top hats!!! Every so often I like to challenge myself with something I have never done before just to shake myself up. I know it is not something which is super functional, and its not often I go to the closet thinking "why don't I have a riding habit? " but I guess desire has little to do with utility.
This is a mishmash of Victorian and modern pattern making techniques. the first attempt at the skirt was out of an awesome Victorian dressmaking book. It looked like Greek to me for the longest time, then suddenly a few weeks ago it all clicked. The lines and numbers all made sense.
Until I sewed it together.
It went together beautifully, the asterisks
(*old fashioned notches* - how charming!) and darts matched. The difference between the volume of the skirt in the illustration and the volume of the skirt in reality was too much to ignore, I know people were smaller back then but this was ridiculous! Even a slip of a woman would be hard pressed to walk in it without getting her legs tangled in it and falling on her face.
So I drafted an 8 gore trumpet skirt with plenty of volume between the knee and ankle and *Voila* passable riding skirt, even enough volume for a tab and button to hold the back of the skirt up, so I don't get caught on my side saddle.
The jacket has two piece shaped sleeves and shoulder seams that have been pushed back and are on the bias. I love how that looks once the sleeve has been set, and even more I love the way it fits. Its a little tight on the center front but an extension is easy enough to fix, and next time, bigger buttons and less of them for sure!
Eventually this will be made in some sort of darker colored fabric - not sure what color yet, or where I will wear it, but worse comes to worse, I will wear it to work. I don't think anyone would be surprised.
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