1860s day dress

Somehow I managed, between assignments, to make a whole Victorian-style dress in the past couple of weeks, complete with techniques I haven't tried before. (Ignore the lack of buttons though - I'm still awaiting them in the post). I used Laughing Moon's Ladies' Early 1860's Day Dress for the main part of the dress, but as I wasn't convinced about the sleeves, I used the sleeves from Butterick's Making History #5831.

The back featured some weird fake-seams which I managed to pull off pretty well:

And I did a whole 'lotta do-it-yourself piping, which I've also never done before. I thought it would be real fiddly and difficult, but it was real easy! I made metres of the stuff! Unforch didn't get any photos of it before I used it, so will endeavour to get some in the future. But here are some of it on the dress itself:

My next project will be a similar-ish style inspired by the maid's outfits from Downton Abbey. Despite them not being fancy or sparkly like the upstairs costumes, there's something about them I'm really drawn to. I like their simplicity and functionality, and above anything else perhaps I just relate more to the working class than the upper class. Anyway, here are some examples:

And here are a couple of other examples I found while Google-snooping.

I think I'll do a black one first and then hopefully source enough patterned green or something similar for another one. Now those wretched buttons better show up soon, I hate having UFOs lying around.