A Question (or Two) to My Civil War Lady Friends.
On Thanksgiving, my husband's cousin, Holly, asked me for guidance in making an 1861 ball gown. She and her husband will be attending a Sesquicentennial Ball for the founding of Vineland, and she wants to make an authentic as possible gown. She knows how to sew already and just needs some help in knowing what to make, what materials and colors are
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Um, you should go there. Definitely. They'll have the answers to probably every question you have and some you haven't thought of yet.
And holy crap! She's 41? Dude, she can get away with dressing way younger than that. Not debutante styles or anything, but she probably shouldn't feel pressured to dress matronly. She can totally dress fashionably without being considered "of a certain age".
Since she's not a debutante but not an old woman either, then she has tons of options for colors. She can wear vivid jewel tones (sapphire, ruby, emerald, etc.) or lighter, more pastel colors. The thing to keep in mind is not to choose a dark color, because the low light in ballrooms would make her appear as a floating head. The dark color would disappear. Taffeta is right on for fabric choice. Light satin would be OK, too.
Since she's not a debutante, she should avoid the "ruffle explosion" school of trimming, and go for something more understated.
She'll want a tucker around the neckline of her bodice, which is length of white net, organdy or lace which forms a ruffle around the neckline. It might have a ribbon run through a channel or eyelets/lace to draw it up tight.
She also needs a crinoline! No fashionable woman who would need a ball gown would be without one! There are directions here for making a cage crinoline. A couple places sell kits, but the cheapest one is about $90, and you can buy the supplies for about half that. Over the crinoline she'll need at least one petticoat and a petticoat to go under it to preserve her modesty. This is getting a bit all over the place, so I'll post a list of garments she'll need to be fully dressed in another comment.
Dancing slippers -- she can get away with ballet flats unless she wants to invest in repro shoes, in which case, Robert Land is the way to go.
I don't recommend the Simplicity of McCalls patterns for ball gowns because they add modern ease, and that's such a pain to deal with on your first dress. TV or similar is so much easier to deal with.
Gloves are short, wrist length affairs. Light colored for evening. I'd go for kid leather over anything else. White cotton fabric ones might be OK, but most cloth gloves that are available for purchase today look pretty chintzy. Crochet as the standard strikes me as unlikely, because even if crochet was used, it wasn't done that widely. I can't recall seeing a single pattern for crocheted gloves, and if they were commonly used, then the patterns would be there.
This is a helpful link. Kay Gnagey knows her stuff! She also makes really affordably priced corsets which are supposed to be really comfortable. The Sewing Academy ladies highly recommend them. Civil War era corsets aren't like the later ones. They're more like hugs! :D The only people who don't wear them are the infirm, women who are so old they have just given up, and dress reform radicals. She needs a corset.
She'll also need some sort of headdress, but I'm not too sure on the particulars for that. It will probably involve lace and flowers.
If she wants to do some research (or you want to do some for her), search Google Books for fashion magazines printed between 1859 and 1861. They have lots of information on what is fashionable with comments on who it is best suited for, i.e. young ladies, married women, old ladies. Also, they have pictures.
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Chemise -- directions for chemise and drawers
Drawers
Stockings -- fine silk or cotton, white is safest
Garters
Shoes -- on before corset!
Corset
Modesty petticoat
Crinoline -- another how-to here
Petticoat to smooth crinoline wires
Skirt
Bodice
Hair ornaments
She'll also need some sort of shawl or wrap if it's cold, but that is a whole other topic.
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PS--My mom asked me after my wedding how old she was--she didn't believe it either!
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A note on the garters: They're the tie around the leg kind, not the descending for a garter belt kind. Like 18th century garters, kind of. Sometimes they were elasticated, because rubber was available. There's a knitting pattern in an 1862 issue of Godey's for garters which have a tassel and fasten with a loop on one end. Picture here.
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