Black and White Bustled Victorian Remake

A friend has invited me to a Victorian picnic!  I am so excited, however, the only Victorian I have finished is made of heavy velvet and will be way too hot for a outdoor, summer picnic in New Mexico.  So I decided this is a perfect opportunity to redo my favorite Victorian dress ever.  I made a Victorian dress and steampunk accents for a Steampunk Vampire outfit.  I loved this dress!  Unfortunately, after only a few pictures and one wearing of a couple of hours, the dress was ruined.  I was so very angry that I have refused to remake this dress as I get angry whenever I think about it.   However, I am going to remake this dress for the picnic and a new hat as well!  

Here is the surviving bodice and the ruined skirt.  The new fabric has wider stripes and is a slightly different black, so I am going to have to redo the whole dress.  However, I am probably going to save the bodice, remove the trim and maybe alter it so I can wear it with a different skirt.

If anyone is interested in pictures/blog of the original dress it can be found at my old blog
http://dalbeth.livejournal.com/     The tag is steampunk vampire for those who might be interested. 

The first big step is remaking the skirt, as I did the first time, I will be using the Truly Victorian pattern for the 1875 Parisian trained skirt.  I learned from experience the last time that this lovely printed cotton behaves epically badly in the front aprons.  Last time, I figured this out after the skirt was constructed and spent hours trying to stitch stay tapes to the undersides of the aprons with it hung from my curtain rod.  This was most uncomfortable, so I am adding tapes before I put the skirt together this time. 

Here is the top apron.  This is a pretty narrow apron, so I did only one tape.   I used cotton twill tape for this.  I have no idea of tapes likes this were ever used on the front aprons in period but I figured it is at least a plausible solution.  I hand stitched the tapes.  

On the bottom apron I stitched 2 tapes rather than 1.  This apron is narrow enough for 1 tape, but with the tape in the top apron and the vertical strips having both aprons with center tapes gives a very strong and structured vertical line.  I wanted this to look more organic than so structured.