I Own a Little House on the Prairie TV Costume!

 This costume was hidden in someone’s private collection for a couple decades, and the owner wasn’t sure how famous the costume really was, but had been told it was a wedding dress from Little House on the Prairie…  This private collector also had gowns worn by Ginger Rogers and Irene Dunne.

In early 2011 this collector then sold it to an antique clothing broker who listed it online as a Little House costume that was possibly a wedding dress.  One day while perusing recent additions to antiquedress.com, my heart just about stopped!  You see, a framed photograph of this dress hung on the wall of the room I was sitting in!  (The photo below.)  Since I have every costume from Little House practically memorized, I was able to assure the seller that it had never been worn as a wedding dress on Little House, but was in fact worn by Karen Grassle during the episode “At the End of the Rainbow“.  (This was after close scrutiny of the pictures she posted online, of course, and I was astonished of how pristine the costume still looked after all these years.)  The dress came complete with the original hat worn by Karen Grassle, and the only part of the costume missing was the bar pin at the throat.

The rest is history!  The dress was ordered, and I absolutely fell apart when it showed up.  I couldn’t believe that after all those years the costume hadn’t been snatched up by a musuem.  For those who are not aware of what happened to most of the Little House costumes, nearly the whole passle of them met an untimely end when the movie musuem they were housed in caught on fire and burned down a few years ago.  When the show ended in the 1980s, producer Kent McCray purchased all props and costumes from the Little House wardrobe department, and eventually shipped them off to the Old Tucson Museum in Arizona.  For decades they were proudly displayed for Little House fans to view, but in 1995 all the costumes housed in the museum were completely destroyed in the fire, except for four lone dresses that survived.  So how this costume made it out of the Little House TV wardrobe and into the hands of a collector who didn’t know what it was, I’ll never know!  (While I still haven’t been able to get in contact with Karen Grassle, I was able to hear from the casting director of Little House (Susan McCray), and emailed with her about its story.)

Onto the costume details:  This gown is constructed of a rayon satin brocade with a lovely rose pattern woven into the material.  It is a sturdy satin, lightweight and still very pliable (quite unlike a duchesse satin).

The bodice is flat-lined with heavy white cotton duck, and the inside bodice seams are pinked but not finished.  It has very thick polyester boning (four times the thickness of Rigline boning) sewn into the bodice without casings.  These “bones” as they are called stop right below the bust.  The bottom of the bodice is finished with a wide facing of the satin jacquard, and the back is closed with heavy duty hooks and eyes.  This gorgeous bodice is in fantastic condition and is still so sturdy!

The Venice lace inset is lined with English cotton netting.  The edges of the fabrics are not finished, but haven’t frayed much all these years.  This same lace is repeated down in the undersleeves.  They are what you could call “false undersleeves”, since the lace only comes up far enough to meet the bottom of the satin sleeve, then is joined with silk lining to make the rest of the undersleeve.  I was quite impressed by how thick the binding at the edge of the lace sleeve is!

The pleated silk organza collar is one of the only parts of the garment that show some wear.  It has faded to an antique ecru/yellow color, and the silk has begun to shatter, as silk does at a certain age.

And the skirt is breathtaking!  It is lined with cotton batiste, and the waistband is finished with rayon petersham ribbon (couture grosgrain ribbon).  The main layer of the skirt is straight with an enormous attached ruffle at the hem edge.  The overskirt has all the details.  I find it really interesting that the seamstress (whoever she may be) put in two rows of ease stitching down the front of the apron/drape, when they could never be used to cinch up the overskirt.  You might have noticed these in the slight ruched effect down the center front of the skirt (in the front photographs above).  The stitching alone could never be strong enough to actually cinch it up, so she must have put the threads there just to add a little more character to the front of the skirt.

The only parts that I don’t think were very well constructed were the hand sewn pleats on the overskirt drape.  It would appear that someone quickly tacked these pleats by hand, but the skirt has so much weight to it that the original hand stitching is really being pulled loose.  I may repair these, but up till now I’ve wanted to keep the costume in its original condition.

As for the photo shoot of this Little House costume, I wish I had more time to do a better job with a Victorian makeup/hair look!  But these pictures were taken at the exact same time as my 1950s rose pink dress last August, so I had to jump from a 1950s ponytail into a Victorian updo.

It was a wonderful experience to wear this dress once, and I’m still so amazed it fits without alterations.  After all, I am at least three inches shorter than Karen Grassle, but somehow our measurements were the same.  (You’d have to be 35″/25″/36″ to wear this gown.) Going forward it is neatly preserved in a box.

I hope you all have enjoyed seeing this gown up close!  Do let me know if you’d like to see photos from the inside of it.

Till next time!

Katrina @ Edelweiss Patterns

~ All recent photographs of the dress are the property of Katrina Holte/Edelweiss Patterns and may not be reproduced in any form without written permission.  You may use the photos on Pinterest as long as you link back to my website. Thank you!

Please note: The film stills from “At the End of the Rainbow” are copyright by NBC.