Clara's 1860 Party Dress

My youngest daughter looked over my shoulder at this dress and said, "Mommy, I would like that dress." Definitely a princess dress.

Clara's fashion page for today is a party or dance ensemble, with a dress, rose wreath, and slippers.

The dress is a crinoline, or hoop skirt, in the proper mid-calf length for a young girl. The tight bodice is offset by the layers of ruffles and the huge bow.

When crinolines came into fashion about 1856, it seems the fashion designers tried to add as many ruffles, bows, and bits of trim as possible. I wonder how much cloth would be used to make the ruffles for this dress?

Apologies to all who get to cut these out for your young ones... those ruffles are a challenge, although I tried to make the bottom row as simple as possible, while still matching the rest of the ruffles. If I'm in a hurry, sometimes I just cut some curves just below the lines, instead of following the exact outline.

The original dress was white with a deep rose pink bow. The shoes were also white, and the roses on the shoes and in the wreath were a matching pink.

To print Clara's outfit, use this PDF file:
Clara's Dress 28 (796k)

Clara is a free, printable paper doll. Clara will continue to be available on this blog as long as I post new fashion pages for her. You can read the introduction for the Clara paper doll here.

To print the Clara paper doll, use this PDF file:
The Clara Paper Doll (745k)