Australian Dress Register

This dress has been hand made from tamboured cotton muslin and decorated with hand embroidery and machine made lace.

The bodice is made of muslin and lined with cotton. The muslin is gathered at the centre front of the bodice, but released a little at the shoulder. The dress has a very low neckline and was probably worn with the lace insert. The waist has been let out at the sides indicating that it was re-worn. There is no boning in the bodice, but it does have a very long and narrow diaphragm. The low waist is pointed at the bottom. The dress is fastened with brass hooks and hand worked eyes.

There is delicate piping on the sleeves, which are cut on the bias. There are no persperation marks under the arms. The sleeves have two little puffs of muslin at the top of a frill, possibly echoing a fashion for the 'shepherdess' aesthetic. The machine made lace frills have been hand sewn to the dress.

The underskirt is made of the same kind of muslin. The overskirt has three tiers which are all decorated with embroidery of the same scale; however, the scallops on the bottom edge of each tier get longer. The edge of each scallop has been hand stitched. There is a lot of mending on the underskirt indicating that it has been worn many times. There is also modern darning on the top tier of the over skirt. The selvedge is 1020mm (40 inches) indicating that it may be an English fabric.