Regency Jumper

Although I have never been a huge fan of Regency period fashions, I couldn't resist hopping on the bandwagon when several of my DFWCG friends started talking about venturing into the era. I made this jumper to wear to our 19th Century Tea Party, and it was a bit of a rush job, but I ended up liking it a lot more than I expected. For inspiration, I looked at the illustrations in the book "Mrs. Hurst Dancing", which is filled with lots of great jumper dresses that you don't see as often in other period sources.

The dress is made out of reproduction striped cotton that I found in the clearance bit of a quilt store. I used a Regency dress pattern from Period Costume for Stage & Screen as a guide, but there was a good bit of tweaking along the way. The habit shirt is not period at all in its construction (I made it from a 1970's blouse pattern), but it's good enough. For undergarments, I'm wearing a linen chemise made from this diagram, a set of linen corded stays from the Past Patterns pattern, and a cotton bodiced petticoat from the same pattern as the dress.

My favorite parts of this outfit are the accessories. I took a pair of cheap pointy-toe flats from Target and painted them with acrylic paint to match my outfit, then tacked on some ribbons to give them even more of a Regency look. The hat was my first experiment with straw braid millinery, and I love the way it turned out! You can read more about the hat-making process on my blog.