Since my oldest daughter has become interested in folk music and dancing, I have been focused on sewing her some period clothes that she can wear for dancing events.
Girls dresses during the Regency era were remarkably simple in structure and make an ideal quick sewing project! I found a picture of a basic girl’s dress when I was searching online, and there was even a pattern to go with it. The links for all the relevant webpages are provided below.
This dress is fairly standard for the era and the pattern can be fairly easily adapted for different sized children. Once the garment is made, it is even pretty easy to adjust as your child grows, which was surely as desirable to the contemporary families as it is to families today.
The Pattern
The pattern for this dress has been provided online as an image file and can be saved to your own computer. It will need to be scaled up to full size and drawn out on some dressmaking paper. Make sure you allow extra for seam allowances.
Some measurements to take:
- Waist measurement: remember that this should be measured at the high Regency waistline.
- Waist to floor: this measurement will be the length of the skirts.
- You could also take additional measurements around the chest, over the shoulder, and around the arms if desired. I didn’t, but I made sure I added extra in the seams when cutting out so that adjustments could be made once the bodice was fitted.
Enlarging the pattern:
This particular pattern would probably fit a six-year-old girl, so it is possible that you may have to enlarge the bodice to adapt it for an older child, as I had to do.
In order to do this, I made a mock up of the bodice and made several changes to the pattern. I extended the shoulder straps, I added a bit extra width in the centre front (after comparing the pattern to the “waist” measurements I had taken), and I extended the centre back to make it wider as well. I also found it useful to allow extra for the seams under the arms.
Then all it takes is a quick fitting to get all the seams right. At the fitting stage, you may find the armholes and/or neckline also need trimming.
Construction Steps
Step One: Sew the side seams of the bodice together, followed by the shoulder seams. The pattern includes a very narrow piece as a side-back panel, but I omitted this piece.
Step Two: The pattern for the skirt is slightly flared or gored, however I cut mine in the early Regency style – in large rectangles. The front skirt (cut on the fold) measured 22 cm wide and 120 cm long. (I allowed an extra 20 cms at the bottom as a deep hem that could be let down as my child grows taller.) The back skirt (cut two) was 45 cm wide and 120 cm long. (Unlike the pattern, my version has a centre back seam.)
Hint: Allowing extra for a deep hem will mean that the garment can be let down as your child grows. Allow more than double (even up to triple) the waist measurement for the width of the skirts, especially if you are not using gored skirt panels. This will mean that the child will still be able to walk and run!
Sew the side seams of the skirt together. Sew the centre back seam, allowing an opening of 15-20 cms at the top. I sewed a topstitch around this opening.
You can also hem the skirt at this point, using your measurement from the waist to the floor. Because my skirts were rectangular, it was quite easy to take up a deep hem and then hide the hemline with some rows of decorative ribbon.
Step Three: The back panels of the skirt are then gathered and can be attached to the bodice. Remember that the back area of the dress will be further gathered up by the back drawstrings later.
Step Four: The sleeve seams are sewn and I pleated (rather than gathered) the head of the sleeve to make it fit the armhole. The bottom edge of the sleeves are then hemmed. These particular sleeves are not supposed to be gathered around the bottom edge, but I decided to do a small box pleat to draw them in a bit.
Step Five: The neckline of the bodice can be finished with a strip of bias binding, which acts as a casing for a drawstring. I also sewed a strip of bias binding around the waist seam as well (rather than turning the seam itself into a casing, as the pattern suggests). I also used some more decorative ribbon to disguise the stitching lines of the casings.
Step Six: Insert cotton tape through both of the casings to form two drawstring ties at the centre back.
The dress is now complete!
This little daughter is keen to go dancing in her new dress. Hopefully it’s her cup of tea!
Related Posts
Sources and Relevant Links
Costumes for a Regency Child – by The Oregon Regency Society (image source)
Free Online Pattern for a Regency Girls Dress and a Regency Boys Skeleton Suit – from Regency Society of America forum
National Museum of Denmark – the dress pictured is from this collection, however I have been unable to find the page for this particular dress.
How fortunate is your daughter?
😀 Very! She was so excited!
I am new to sewing and have made one dress. My daughter loves this one. Can you help me out with some tips on how to enlarge it? Any help would be appreciated. Thank you 3rosepetals@comcast.net
To enlarge it to adult size? Or to an older girl size?
Essentially you need to make four basic enlargements:
1. The length of the skirts – for this you measure from the Regency waistline to the floor/ankle and make your skirt panels that long. For an adult you will need to make the skirt width wider so your legs have room to move too. You could look at some of my adult Regency dresses to get an idea of how wide the skirt panels of this era are.
2. The front bodice panel – for this it is helpful to just hold up the pattern piece or a sheet of paper or some calico to the chest and trace the neckline, the armhole placement and the waistline. You are mainly changing the centre front (to make the neck opening wider), making the shoulder straps longer, and making the side seams bigger to cater for a bigger chest circumference. For an adult you may need to look at doing darts or gathering to fit it around the bust area.
3. The back panel – this is altered in a similar way to the front panel. It is important to have extra seam allowance at the centre back panel (about 3 inches on each side for a child, but more for an adult) in order to be able to lace up the drawstrings and have that “gathered” look. Having this extra material at the back also helps stop the back placket/opening gaping open.
4. The sleeves – this is much harder to alter for a beginner. Some easy solutions: You could find a sleeve that already fits and draft a pattern from that. You could cut out a practice sleeve from calico to make a sleeve mock-up and then try it on, alter it, re-cut/re-sew/re-try, etc… until you are happy with it.
I altered this pattern quite easily to fit an older child with no bust. However, altering it to fit an adult might be more difficult, as I suspect that this style might be more suited to a child’s figure. In this case, it could be worth finding an adult pattern that has similar features and using that instead.
Hope this helps!
Thank you my 7 yr old will be very happy if I can figure it out.
It should be pretty easy for a 7 year-old, as this pattern would fit a 6 year-old, I think. Just do a mock-up of the bodice (and/or skirt) in cheap material that can be thrown out if you make a mistake. That way you dont need to worry about wasting material. Good luck! 🙂
[…] steps that I used were very similar to that for the basic Regency girl’s dress I have done before, so I will not detail all of the steps again here. Instead I will briefly […]