Yellow gaulle

I made this dress to wear to a local Bastille Day celebration, with my friend Katy. It's an annual event at the Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia; they have a little street fair, and a reenactment of the storming of the Bastille. The reenactment is pretty silly, but all in good fun; they have Marie Antoinette up on the roof insulting the crowd, her defenders pelt the crowd with Tastykakes ("Let them eat cake," geddit?), and finally they bring MA down to the guillotine and behead a watermelon. But it's still fun -- plus an excuse for us to wear 18th century pretties!

I decided I wanted a gaulle -- also known as a chemise gown or a chemise a la reine. Many of them were made from light cotton muslins, but could also be made from other fabrics. I was mostly inspired by this gown from The Duchess, and basically just checked around to see if a silk gaulle was completely out of the realm of possibility. No? Okay, I've got some yellow silk shantung in the Stash, let's go. (Brilliant idea for a dress worn in Philly in July, that.) Let's hand sew the whole thing! Why? ...dunno, felt like it?

I think my sash was hopelessly wonky all day, and I'd recently chopped off about ten inches of my hair and really didn't know what to do with it. But I'm not good with hair anyway, so that might just be an excuse!

Best part of the day: We were invited to come up on the battlements and chuck cakes at the peasants! And we managed to avoid falling off the roof, which was wonderfully sloped toward a drop of doom (three stories?).

I like this dress better than I did when I first finished it; I had a sort of fit of crankyness and decided everything about it was terrible, and that it made me look enormously fat. But I actually made the sleeves fit properly, which still sort of surprises me...I hate sleeves.