A dress for Hamburg

After no post for months it's now time to start again! The living-history-season is almost over for me (from july to mid-august I had events every weekend!) only one museum-event will take part in september, it is near Hamburg and therefore I need a new dress to keep me warm and cozy. The years before I did often freeze there...

As I want to avoid buying fabrics I use one from my stash. It is maybe the most authentic fabric I ever used, it is handspun, handwoven and handdyed wool. But I don't like it very much... it does look very coarse and not very elegant, but well, it will keep me warm and it will look very authentic for a rural enviroment.

I used a commercial pattern because I had no time to draft and my lovely husband does sew it for me by hand :)

The pattern is the "1795 work dress" by "fig leave patterns". I like that pattern very much! It contains a real booklet with information about the extant garment the pattern was taken from and the instructions do tell you how the original dress was exatly made (it has also more modern instruction for those who want to sew by machine)

I had to make some alterations, first I did rise the waist - it seemed to unelegant to me - and so I shortened the bodice about 2 cm ( 3/4''). I omitted the patches that are attached to the shoulderstraps of the original, because I see no need for them, maybe they were attached on the dress because it was worn at these places. I also omitted the underarmpieces of the sleeves, they were just too roomy and would not look nice with this thick fabric.