Where do you find a pattern for that?

So to start off the new year let’s start off with the beginning. When I want to build a costume from an established character (Let’s use Scarlett O’Hara from the 1939 Gone With The Wind in her dress from the opening scene), I look for photos of the character in the desired outfit.

Then I look for the overall seam lines in the outfit. Sometimes I have to take the image and remove the details by putting it in a image app and playing with it until I have mostly just the outline and the main seam lines or biggest important details.

You can see that I drew on the image going over the main lines of the outfit. I would need an outfit (preferably a dress, but it could be a top and skirt) that has a large skirt. short puff sleeves, princess seams on the bodice, center front opening and high neckline. I don’t have to find a pattern for a skirt or dress that has ruffles, because layers of ruffles can be added onto a basic skirt pretty easily. So after this, I start looking for patterns that use those types of seam lines. While occasionally a perfect pattern can be found, more often than not, Franken-Patterning or Pattern-Mashing may need to be done while you use aspects of one pattern on another.

There is in fact a pattern that could possibly work GREAT for this look, but it’s from 1940 and is out of print and is in fact very difficult to find.

Pattern from 1940, extremely rare.
Images from the fronts of pattern envelopes and the line drawings included with them.

So in this image I’ve taken 4 of the most likely current patterns I’d use for this dress and I’ve highlighted in red the areas of the line drawings on 1/2 of each one the parts that I think would work well for this outfit. I have put a blue X over the areas where the pattern does not fit the desired look.

I think Butterick 4954 would work, just shortening the jacket so it could just be tucked into the skirt, or sewn directly onto it. I’d use the sleeves from McCalls 4948, with a little adjustment.

What I’d do to make the patterns work:

  • add ruffles to the princess seams on the bodice
  • some small lace or ruffles on the center front opening
  • add a pair of ruffles to the top of the sleeve head, possibly with lace edging
  • add more smaller sized buttons to match the inspiration dress
  • add 8 layers of ruffles to the skirt
    • each layer of ruffle needs some sort of trim or contrast fabric around the bottom edge.

While this would make the outer layer of the outfit, it would need the proper understructure including a corset (and chemise), hoop skirt & petticoat. There are different shapes of corsets and hoop skirts. Make sure that the corset is the proper shape for the period (this is a different post altogether). A chemise or at the least a tank top really should be worn as a layer between your body and the corset. Without this layer, your corset can chafe. The hoop skirt needs to have the proper proportioning.

12 units tall by 10 1/2 units wide at the base.

So since the character in the outfit is 12 units tall by 10.5 units wide, I can do 10.5 divided by 12 which gives me 0.875. If my person who is going to wear this outfit is 5 feet 6 inches tall or 5.5 feet tall, I multiply that by the 0.875. This gives me 4.8125, or about 4 feet 10 inches wide. So I would look for a hoop skirt that had a bottom diameter between 4.5 and 5 feet wide.

A petticoat is for multiple things. It’s worn on top of the hoop skirt to smooth out the lines from the boning in the skirt. It can also cover up a hoop skirt that has a different color from the overskirts. It can also add more volume to the skirts especially if the petticoat has ruffles or layers of crinoline (stiff netting). So if your hoop skirt is a little small, you can add fluffy petticoat(s) to fill out what you’re missing.

So this is mostly for stage costuming or cosplay. For historical costuming, you wouldn’t want to use a movie as a source. Even if you were going to do a historically accurate version of this dress, you’d still want to look for the ruffles, and some of the details, but you’d want to try to find these details in extant originals, photographs or paintings from that specific period. It gets much more complicated when you realize that some things that were acceptable for evening wear wouldn’t be worn during the day (like something off the shoulders at a barbecue) or how some fashions were only worn at certain times of the year, or after certain life events like marriage, motherhood or widowhood. These “rules” change by region as well as by time period.

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