Regency: Marianne Dashwood’s Enormous Hat

 I love Sense & Sensibility - the book, as well as both the 1995 and 2008 adaptations.  Last post, I showed you the new dress I made which was sort of inspired by a color worn by Elinor (Hattie Morahan) in the 2008 miniseries. 

This time I have made a GIGANTIC HAT like the one Marianne (Kate Winslet) wears in the 1995 movie. I love Regency hats, although most of them look pretty silly on me (some of them are just silly in general, let’s admit it), but I just HAD to have Marianne’s big hat, silly or not. 

I ordered a big floppy sun hat from Amazon to start with. Reader, it arrived crumpled up in a little tiny bag and it was so wrinkled and crushed! I steamed it flat again and reshaped it on a foam head to get it back into shape; then used my steamer to bend the brim in the front and back, securing the edges with a bit of thread to hold the brim in place while it dried. 

Since most of my Regency wardrobe is done in blues and greens, I changed the color scheme a bit from the inspiration pic: I used a powder blue fringe-edged ribbon for the band and ties, and natural brown ostrich feathers for decoration. 

The feathers are stitched and glued in place; I steamed them a bit to help curl them so that they would flop over the brim like Marianne’s feathers do. The steam ended up not doing much, so I ran the spines (I don’t know the correct terminology) through my fingernails tightly, like you do with curling package ribbon and scissors, and then made them nice and curly. 

Now, I don’t know if Marianne’s hat also has flowers on it, or just feathers, but I opted for both. The flower is just WAY too big, but this whole hat is just ridiculous, and I love the way the deep purple color looks with the blue ribbon and brown feathers. 

Tada! I LOVE this hat. It’s just so HUGE and fabulous!  Now I need to get myself a big hatbox to keep it in. Oh no, more shopping, lol. 

Regency: Blue “Elinor” Dress

After all the work I spent March and April doing on that blue Norse dress, I was ready for a Regency palate-cleanser to reset my brain. 

In February I bought two more packs of IKEA’s “Matilda” sheer cotton curtains on clearance that I planned to use for a new  gown, but at the time I wasn’t exactly sure what to do with it - until I watched the 1995 Sense & Sensibility for the hundredth time and saw this: 

Yes, that’s a photograph of my television, lol. I THOUGHT that I couldn’t find a pic of this dress anywhere online, so I watched the miniseries again (oh no!) and took this picture. It turns out that the reason I couldn’t find it was because this is a green dress, but in this particular scene it looks so perfectly gray-blue, like a stormy sky, and THAT is what I wanted. 

bodice front before dyeing

I used the Simplicity S8941 for this one, just like the white one I made in 2022. I love the way the dress feels, and the way it fits me; this time I made the skirt a bit longer (the 2022 dress was too short and I had to add a panel at the bottom), and I made the sleeves full length this time, which took a bit of re-drafting. Most of the dress is machine-sewn; although I did finish the hems and sleeve cuffs by hand. 

Once it was finished, I dyed the whole thing. I opted to dye it after I made it because I wanted the white cotton twill tape drawstrings to be dyed as well, and I didn’t feel like trying to dye them separately - I didn’t want to risk messing up the color. I used Rit Dye’s Pearl Grey and Evening Blue (2:1), with a couple of capfuls of Teal thrown in to warm up the color just a bit. I’m super happy with the way the color came out: 

The color didn’t come out exactly 100% the way I was envisioning; but I LOVE the color I ended up with SO MUCH.

All done! This was pretty quick - it only took me about two days to sew; the dyeing process was done in the washing machine and took about half an hour and then a complete wash cycle to finish it off. 

I think for my next Regency trick I’ll make myself a new hat. I’ve always wanted Marianne’s big hat from the 2005 S&S with Kate Winslet. More S&S! Yay! Stay tuned… 

Regency: Blue Floral Wrap Dress

My latest Regency creation: 

This is a wrap-front dress made from LM’s (#129) Spencer pattern, to which I added rectangular skirt panels like I did for my velveteen pelisse last year. I also widened the neckline a bit, and shortened the sleeves to 3/4 length. The fronts close with cotton twill tape ties, which are hidden by the white sash wrapped around the waistline. 

The fabric is from a set of cotton sheets I had in my stash. The floral pattern isn’t 100% period, but it’s close enough, I think. The lace itself is polyester, found on Etsy and trimmed to make the design work for this neckline. 

The dress took me just a couple of afternoons in late July to put together, but I had to wait for the lace to arrive in the mail, which took two weeks, so I just finished it today. 

I added a little button placket to the back, just so the back wouldn’t be totally plain. Nom-functional, but cute! 

This was originally inspired by this dress of Elinor Dashwood’s in Sense & Sensibility 

Other inspirations include: 

From Galleries of Fashion, 1796

Henri-Pierre Danloux, unsure of the date

unknown fashion plate

This project was a nice breath of fresh air in the midst of what has been an absolutely insane summer for me - I’ve been working my butt off in just about every possible way. SCA event season starts up in a month, and I still have a lot of preparation to do for all of that - I really needed a break to work on something utterly frivolous to rest my mind a bit. I love this dress! 

Final note: the newly-refitted dressmaker’s dummy was fantastic to use for this project. I was able to size and drape and fit this dress wholly on the mannequin, and it fits *perfectly*.  Granted, this was a very simple pattern, but it was a good test run for the “new” dummy and I’m very pleased with how it went.