Bridgerton Gown

Inspiration

I knew I wanted to create a Bridgerton inspired gown as soon as I watched the show for the first time!  I decided to theme my 17th birthday party around Bridgerton, which gave me the perfect occasion to wear one!  Every year for my birthday we host murder mystery parties, and my character for A Scandal in Bodgerton was very clearly based on Penelope Featherington, so I decided to make a dress that merged her style from the early season with mine.  

Funnily enough, the yellow vertical striped fabric and sheer floral lace that I chose match one of her dresses almost exactly, which was entirely unintentional!

I loosely followed a tutorial from Micarah Tewers's 2021 Halloween costumes YouTube video to get the basic construction for this dress.

Process

I started by making a mockup of the bodice!  On the show, they don't use princess seams, they instead use darts to shape the bust, so I decided to do the same thing.  Once I was happy with the fit and neckline of the muslin, I draped a new sleeve to fit the new armscye!  I usually reuse sleeve patterns between projects with only small alterations, but since I wanted a very small puff it seemed appropriate to draft a new one!

Since the skirt is relatively simple, I just used a strip of muslin to figure out how much fabric the pleats would need, instead of making a full replica.

Once the bodice was patterned and the skirt was calculated, I cut out my fabric!  I used the mockup muslin for the lining of the bodice, and the body of the dress is just a plain weave cotton!  The lace I absolutely adore, I feel like the simple geometric feel of it really helps bring my style into the piece.

The first sewing step was to attatch the lace to the yellow fabric!  I didn't want it to move around any while I was working, so sewing the pieces together (both facing the same way) seemed like a great way to prevent that.  

Once I had that set, I sewed the neckline on the front and back pieces.  Unlike Micarah's dress, I decided to use an invisible zipper for the closure, so I had two back panels!  To prevent any weirdness on the shoulder seam, I tried a new technique: opening the front and back pieces along the neckline-like a book with the neck seam as the spine-and sewing both the lining and the outer shoulder seams at the same time!  This hid the rough edges, and made sure that there were no angle mismatches involved.  After I had the shoulder and neck seams, I put in the darts and topstitched the neckline!

Then I did the sleeves, while the side seams were still open.  I basted the top edge of the sleeve so I could gather it to fit the armscye, then sewed it in place.  Once that was set, I sewed up the side seam (adding a ribbon to tie in the back) so I could try on the bodice more easily, since I wanted to make sure the bottom puff of the sleeve was comfortable on me!  It took me a very long time to get the bottom puff how I wanted it, but I got it eventually!  I used elastic to make sure getting it on wouldn't be an issue.  Then the bodice was basically done!

The next step was hemming the base and lining of the skirt, which I decided to do with a rolled hem.  There are actually no visible raw edges in this dress other than in the sleeves!  Once the skirt was hemmed, I sewed all three pieces of fabric together along the top edge, to make sure nothing shifted while I was pleating.  For the pleating, I decided to do relatively deep pleats confined in the back, both to give the gown that regency silhouette and to make sure I could move in it!  I sewed the pleating to the both the outer and inner layers of the bodice, for added strength, then used a ribbon to cover the rough edge.  I ended up handsewing the invisible zipper in because I was having issues with it shifting in the machine!

Then it was complete!  I think this dress turned out beautifully, and is way more comfortable than I expected!

Results

I am so incredibly pleased with this gown!  I really want to highlight how comfortable it is.  The skirt is not restricting at all, and I made sure to leave enough room in the sleeves so I could lift my arms fully!  I kept all of the paper patterns that I used in this dress, so I'm ready to make another.

Reflection

This gown is so gorgeous, and I am so excited to make another!  I plan on making a Bridgerton themed Deadpool variant for the Fan Expo this year.  While I made this dress, my mom used my instructions and pattern to make her own, which is also stunning!