Dress #068: Regency dress in stripes. 2016

This hand-stitched paper Regency day dress, in yellow, pink, orange, and green stripes, is straight out of a Jane Austen novel or Regency romance. It is made from chiyogami Japanese paper. Hand-embroidered lines imitate the seams and folds of the dress, with couched stitches decorating the neckline. It is stitched onto cold-pressed 100% cotton paper. The piece is based on a dress from ca. 1820, held by the Kyoto Costume Institute (accession AC4428 83-20-2AB).

By the 1820s colour was coming into fashion again, after the abundance of whites in the earlier part of the Regency/Empire era. More opulent silks were also replacing the fine cotton muslins. Lines remained strongly vertical.

The dress is six inches tall, stitched by hand on 8x10 inch 100% cotton watercolour paper, which means that it will pop right into any commercial frame in that size, and be ready to hang on your wall.

Materials: Japanese (chiyogami) paper and cotton floss on cotton paper