Senior Project

Print Polonaise

At Michilimackinac, fabric would have been ordered from Europe and imported on the canoe trade routes. An outfit like this would have been worn for a special occasion or by a woman of high class. In today's historical interpretation venues, it would be appropriate to wear in the role of Therese Bondy in the daily wedding reenactment.
The fabric I chose for this outfit was a lucky find in the drapery section of Denver Fabrics. The print is similar to those of the painted silks and Indienne cottons of the second half of the 18th century. Linda Baumgarten's What Clothes Reveal contains several examples of fabric in comparable motifs, with the pattern either printed, painted, embroidered or brocaded. The Kyoto Costume Institute's book Fashion also gives a number of examples of painted silk gowns with vining floral designs.
The dress is constructed in two parts: a polonaise-style gown and a matching petticoat. The bodice is bag-lined with bleached muslin; the front is interlined with cotton canvas and lightly boned with plastic cable ties. The pattern is a modified version of my standard 18th c. bodice pattern (seen here and here). The front point has been shortened and tucks have been added to simulate extra seaming in the back, similar to the c. 1775-1785 dress on page 40 of Janet Arnold's Patterns of Fashion I, 1660-1860. The sleeve flounces are taken from pages 37-39 of the same book, seen on a c. 1770-1785 polonaise.
As pictured, the dress is worn over a chemise, stays, bumroll, and two inner petticoats. The chemise is from Michilimackinac's costume stock, while the stays were made from the same pattern as these silk stays, sans straps and a few inches smaller. The under-petticoats were made from linen and cotton; one is a slip-like muslin skirt and the other is the heavy linen embroidered petticoat that goes with my red and gold polonaise. The bumroll is made of bleached muslin, high-loft quilt batting, cotton/poly extra-wide bias tape, and grosgrain ribbon.

Note how long the skirt is. French women typically wore their skirts at mid-calf when working, but formal occasions warranted a longer petticoat. It's easy to see why when comparing how easy it is to move around in the informal outfit to the weight and cumbersomeness of this one. The petticoat is three widths of fabric, two in back, one in front, pleated to ties of cotton twill tape. There are slits on either side, about 8" long, to allow for a hanging pocket to be worn underneath. There's a deep hem in the petticoat so that it can be lengthened if needed. The polonaise has a narrow hem, but is several inches longer than the petticoat when the skirt is let down, so that the outfit can accomodate a woman several inches taller.

The polonaise is bustled up from the inside with a system of loops and ties. The first picture not only shows off my new Sweetheart fife, but it also gives a good idea of the range of motion allowed by the sleeves. This is a fairly important detail because, while 18th century ladies of class might not have had to be terribly athletic in their gowns, interpreters at Michilimackinac are required to dance and play music (at the very least) while in costume for the wedding reenactment. Ease and comfort of wearing are important considerations in any setting, theatrical and interpretative alike.

A closeup of the sleeve flounces. The flounces are a single layer of the fashion fabric and one layer of embroidered tulle lace. The fashion fabric is scalloped and pinked. In period, each little pink would have to be cut out by hand, using a pinker--like a stamp with a blade--and a mallet. I had the luxury of using pinking shears. The outer flounce was hand-gathered and stitched to the outside of the sleeve with a running stitch. The lace was a little too narrow, so it was gathered and mounted on a band of muslin to add some length, then whipstitched into the inside of the sleeve.

Here's the back seaming and a closeup of the pleats. The skirt is simply two panels of the full width of the fabric, french-seamed together and pleated to fit. The center back seam is the only true seam--the two others are small pleats. The lining does not have those pleats, to cut down on bulk.

The cap is made of a semi-sheer cotton-linen blend. It's the "Sophie" cap from the Fleur de Lys pattern, which is a bit smaller than most normal caps. For "everyday" wear, the cap would cover most of the head, while ones for formal occasions didn't have to be quite so large.

The jewelry is by Linda Jacobs, of pink glass beads with silver caps and spacers. The pendant is strung on black (poly--gasp!!) ribbon and simply knotted twice in the back. The earrings are leverbacks--very handy, as it keeps them from falling off!

You can also see the skirt hooks & eyes used to close the bodice. Ideally, they would have been silver. However, I had two packages of skirt hooks--one had already been opened and the silver ones used on a different project. When I opened the new package, there were eight silver hooks...and no eyes! What?! With both packages, total, I had eight black hook-and-eye sets and eight silver singleton hooks. Since I was living in Mackinaw City at the time, with the closest fabric store being forty minutes away in Petoskey, and because I wanted to wear the dress that night, I used black. They're flat enough that they don't really show unless you look, and certainly not from a distance.