An Antique Christening Slip Reborn — a Hand-Embroidered Dress for Sasha
Every so often a piece comes along that asks to be given a second life, and this was one of them.
I have a large collection of antique and vintage christening gowns and slips, many of them bought with exactly this in mind — to one day recreate something new from them. There is such craftsmanship in these old hand-sewn pieces, and it feels right to give them another life rather than let them sit forgotten in a drawer.
This dress and underskirt began as an antique christening slip — one made entirely by hand, by a very skilful seamstress, from fine cotton lawn. When it came to me it carried rust stains from years in storage — on the upper part of the skirt, and some on the lace at the bottom hem. Marks like these might make you set a piece aside, but an old, hand-made piece like this is almost always worth rescuing: beneath the damage there was still plenty of beautiful fabric, and lace and entredeux worth saving.
I began by inspecting the slip and cutting it apart, pressing the good pieces ready to use. The lace I carefully unpicked to reuse as an edging for the collar, and the entredeux I unpicked and set aside for a future project — with pieces like this, nothing is wasted. I always take a little time, too, to look closely at the original work; there is so much skill in these old hand-sewn pieces, and always a technique to admire and learn from.
I had planned to use the bottom of the slip's skirt as the skirt for the dress. There was one small area of damage and one larger one, though, so I had to make a choice: to keep a good fullness in the skirt and use as much of the original as possible, I chose to include a section of the damaged lace rather than lose the fullness. Wherever there's a fault in aged material like this, I mark it with a pin on the finished dress, as I always do — so you can see exactly where it is.
From the remaining part of the skirt I then selected two pieces for the front bodice. Because the slip was entirely hand-stitched, the pintucks are not perfectly uniform, so it's difficult to find two absolutely matching pieces — but I did my best to pair them. Down the centre I used some of my treasured remnants, the little pieces I set aside for future use every time I cut into an antique dress.
I adjusted the collar pattern to allow for the lace edging I'd saved from the slip. (I made four collars, though I only needed two, knowing from experience that a few might not come out quite perfectly.) The underskirt is made from the same slip, and I have hand-embroidered it too.
Much of this was sewn through the recent heatwave, in a sewing room almost as hot as it was outside. I hadn't originally planned to add any embroidery at all. But once the heat eased and I made the underskirt, I found myself adding a little hand embroidery along its bottom edge — and then I couldn't stop. The embroidery grew to cover the whole piece: the skirt, the bodice, the cuffs, the collar, and along the waistline sides, following the lace from the front around to the back closure on both sides. Every stitch is worked by hand.
I've also filmed the making of this dress, so you can see the whole process — from the antique slip to the finished piece. You can watch the video here.
The result is a dress and its matching underskirt, made from a hand-sewn antique slip and finished with hand embroidery throughout — a new life for a piece that was made with love a very long time ago.
This dress has now found her owner in my Facebook sale group. You can still see all the photos of the finished dress here.
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