1866 Small girl's outfit
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1865-1870 A dress and jacket in cotton for a small girl
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The back of the dress and jacket
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The dress mounted
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The back of the dress
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Detail showing one of the braid motifs
Description
The cotton piqué has a small pink polka dot print.
The dress bodice has box-pleats, about ½" wide, spaced across it; there are seven on the front and three on each back panel. The back is fastened by four white buttons and worked buttonholes, and a hook and eye at the waist. The sleeves also have box-pleats, about ¾" wide where they join the armhole, narrowing to ⅝" at the ends, where they have a ⅞" wide band, with a ⅜" wide machine-made lace edging sewn inside, ⅛" showing.
The neck edge has a ¼" wide self binding with the lace edging sewn inside. A braid, ³⁄₁₆ " wide, made of plaited pink and white bunches of threads sits on the lower edge of the binding and two lengths of this run round the bands on the sleeve ends.
The skirt is gored and sewn flat into the ¼" wide waistband of the bodice. A belt, 1¼" wide, is stitched on over this at the centre front where its top edge rises to 2⅛" high, and at this point it is decorated with a spray of seven lengths of the pink and white braid with a white button at the top of each. The braid runs along the edges of the belt, which fastens at the back with two hooks on one end and two pairs of worked bars, 2" apart along it at the other end, maybe to fit different sized girls.
Two lengths of the pink and white braid run round the lower skirt, ¼" apart and 1⅞" up from the hem, and there are seven of the braid sprays, 2¼" high, spaced round it. The hem has a self facing, 2½" deep.
The front of the jacket is fastened at the top by five white buttons and worked buttonholes 1¼" apart, and the neck edge has a ¼" wide self binding. The lower edge has a self facing 1¼" deep, and dips to a point at the centre back, and six inches to each side. A double row of the pink and white braid runs all round the edge, about ¾" up from the hem. There is a braid spray motif on each front and above the points of the hem at the back.
The sleeves are quite wide, narrowing at the ends where there are double rows of the braid, ½" up from the edge, and one braid spray on each.
Contemporary illustrations
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Child with a Ball by Johann Baptist Reiter, 1865
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Fashion drawing in The Englishwoman's Domestic Magazine, July 1867
