Girl's Bottle Green Silk dress, 1841

    (Yesterday I was planing on posting this dress, but instead spent the entire day updating my computer so my blogger would work...so be prepared for more frequent blog posts now that I am modern once again :)                   I truly believe that things find me...... and this little dress must have been waiting for me to come along for some time.  I happened on a photo of it while searching for something totally unrelated one day. On my computer screen, it looked gold in color.  I have several gold silk gowns of this era already, so kept on with the research I was doing.....a day or so passed, and it kept popping back into my mind. I think I even had a dream about it.  Strange tho, I couldn't remember where I had seen it.  Quite a while passed, and well, you guessed it, up it popped again~ this time tho, it came to its new home.  I was quite pleasantly surprised when I opened the box and it was no where near the gold silk I had seen on my computer, but a gorgeous bottle green!

  This little tag was gently still attached to one of the eyes at the back closing.  Before I get into what it has told me....let me just thank the generations of hands that this dress has gone through, both related and not, for not removing it.  I hope that if you, dear readers, purchase things to keep or sell, with little notes attached, no matter how cryptic they may seem, keep them with the piece!  This gown is a wonderful piece of history without known provenance, but with it, History comes more alive, more easy for our minds to grasp, when we can match it with a name, and therefore a physical place in time and history.
   From clues on the tag, this dress belonged to and was worn by Mary Merrill Morse Rice in 1841 when she was indeed, 7 years old.

  Pip is modeling for me, and at the same age as Mary when she wore it, it is a perfect fit. Shown over period undergarments and one petticoat.  The dress is fully lined, hand stitched from a soft silk taffeta in the popular fashionable style of the very early 1840's with fan front bodice, just like what her Mother would have worn, but with out the yoke at the neckline.  Sleeves are long passing the wrist in length, and being set very high up under the armpits.

   Center back closure with hidden hammered hooks and eyes~ note to the upper left in the picture above, the horizontal seam where the silk has been pieced in.

   The front of the bodice is gathered in fan front style, with a ever so slight point at the waist. Hidden right front pocket is 8" deep....plenty of room for treasures!

  All major construction seams are piped, I love the little triangle of silk pieced in over the shoulder.  Textiles were still very expensive, and every tiny piece was used.

   There is but a single darn near the hem in the front, made from a matching green silk. I wonder what Mary got her dress caught on??? Was she playing??? Perhaps is got caught getting into the carriage for Church one Sunday???  I wonder if her Mother, Melissa, was upset???

  The dress is boned on both side seams with 1/4" whalebone strips, and the bodice front lightly wadded behind the gathers...perhaps to be worn during the cold Connecticut winter months.


  Here are some close views of the front and back gauging Sherri~ be sure and click on the pictures, I left them BIG so you can try and appreciate the details.

   The arrows are pointing to the single row of vertical stitching that runs the length of the side of the fan front. This type of stitching is 99% of the time ALWAYS the stitch that holds the pleats in place on 1830s gigots, especially towards the end of the decade when the fullness was gradually taken in down the arms.

  And the pretty back waist seam~ if you enlarge you can see the rows of basting stitches, one is totally hidden within the seam, one shows just beneath the piping and the 3rd at the bottom of the gathers.