The Crafty Side of Life: Another round of rococo

Thursday, December 11, 2025

Another round of rococo

This time for a friend :-)

Bob joined our group last year (after many years of deliberation), and she works hard on building her own historical wardrobe.

But she also loves yellow. And for years I had a plan in my head, and being who I am I also did have the fabric for it, though there was no hope or plans me ever wearing yellow. But for some reason this yellow fabric jumped me in the chain of fabric stores I keep mentioning, and I had this picture in my mind...

I also had these two dress saved on my 18th century pinterest board.

And at a tipical way of mine, I started to see the whole dress with different accessories, with white petticoat with a straw bergere hat, and then with black petticoat, with black bergere hat, that could also served as a historically accurate bee princess costume.

Back then I offered it to a few people in our team, and one of the girls thinking about joining us for our 18th century adventures seemed interested, then she changed her mind, and the fabric languished on my shelves for years.

Then came Bob, whith her love of yellow, and a need for her own 18th century dress. So I grabbed the opportunity and/or Bob, and would not let go, until she said yes, we can make the dress for her.

I am afraid, since this was a pet/dream project of mine I did not let her work on it as much as she would have liked, but alas...

We used the same Aidah pattern as I did for my striped rococo dress, this time with a different view/waistline.

I asked Bob, what would she think if we cut the back, so the stripes would make a chevron pattern?

Is it historically accurate? Not really, but it will look ever so cool. All right.

Since this was my 4th Italian gown (and the 3d Aidah), things went smoothly, though we did had a bit of time with the pleats.

Proof that I did let Bob not only work on her own dress, but sew with my industrial sewing machine:

While Bob were pondering whether to use a white petticoat or a black one, I bumped into the perfect yellow cotton, and she also said yes, that is what she wanted, though she did not know it before :-)

With the decoration, originally I had wanted to use the pinked ruffles I used on my red dress, with some embroidered rose deco, but then we had a bit of fabric left of the yellow oe we used for the petticoat, and I asked, what if we use it for the decoration...

And then I asked, what if we use the striped on the unicolor for the dress, and the unicolor on the striped version for the skirt? (Oh, I have suspicion, that grows stronger every day, that I have adhd, but that is how it works. It starts on a small piece of thing, like a picture, a fabric, and then I build a whole thing, a whole many layered outfit around it, where everything goes with everything and everything has a meaning,)

We prepared miles and miles of ruffled deco, pinned part of it on the bodice to see how it should look, and let Bob take it home and sew it on, so I'd have time to make the pink striped dress for myself.

I was so happy that someone liked my yellow striped dress idea enough to go with it, and then wear it. I also hope Bob enjoyed to work on it it with me, even if I would not let her sew as much as she'd liked. Sorry Bob, next time.