I drafted an enormous murder sleeve! I started with the sleeve from McCall's 5213 and thought about the logistics for a LONG time. I finally did a mock-up of the pattern as-is, then slowly alternated between trying it on to test the shape and tacking on more fabric, and finally copied that back to paper. The pattern ended up like this.
For a sense of how ridiculously large this thing is, that's a standard coffee mug in the bottom right corner. The left vertical edge of the brown paper is the top of the arm from shoulder to wrist, so the bottom horizontal edge is the wrist, and the white paper on the right side is all the extra hanging floof that gives her sleeves that huge length and roundness. The white paper on the left was for adding extra width at the shoulder to accommodate the pleating around the neckline. I didn't necessarily want extra width at the wrist (it's PLENTY wide already), so I thought I'd eventually cut the left side down along that diagonal line, but I ended up leaving the width all the way down.
What that pattern creates (minus the extra shoulder width that I hadn't tested yet at that point) is this.
The nightgown started out as McCall's 6743, which had the gathered scooped neck, raglan sleeves (or the right shape to add them in), and a lot of fullness through the body. I used view A and extended the hem to the floor. For the pleats I planned to use a historical German hemd tutorial, which calls for two 55-56" bodice pieces and two 28" sleeves. That's where the extra width in the earlier sleeve modification came from, bringing the sleeve up from 3" to about 28-30." To add the extra width to the body I made a second center piece (the original pattern uses two sides and one center per front and back) and then extended each pattern piece about 4" so each total front and back would be about 55". I also added about an inch to the height of the neckline, intending to fold that under to finish the edge and create the slight ruffle above the pleating. The maths on lengthening the whole thing failed me, so it ended up a few inches too long, but better that than too short. I scrapped the idea of testing the pleats themselves, so I just did a few rows of gathering to get an idea and it turned out well.
I did another mock-up of the sleeve with the extra width. Instead of tapering that width down to the wrist like I'd planned, I left it the same width all the way down so I could easily cut it on the fold. And because, you know, there's no such thing as too much with Lucille's impractical clothes apparently, so why not make the wrist more full.
The robe started as Simplicity 1551, view B (which I primarily wanted for the sleeves and train). I started with the back and side back, adjusting the seam lines to get rid of the fitted princess seams while retaining fullness and then sewing those together to make one big piece. Rather than cut the robe back with the pattern, the whole back will be draped from the full width of one piece of 60" fabric with the center being pleated by hand (similar to a robe à la française or Watteau pleats for you historical costumers) and the new pattern piece traced on the edges for the flat and unpleated sides, sleeve head, and the train. It's hard to get a good look at it in the movie, and I think there's more to it than this, but this is pretty close. Also, draping pleats is the funnest thing ever.
Using the pattern again for the front of the robe, I followed the same process as the back, getting rid of the princess seams and turning the two pieces into one large piece. This way, each front and back is only one piece, and there's only a side seam on the final thing. I widened the shoulder and collar area so it's less of a v-neck like the pattern shows, and matched this extra width along the collar of the back piece. The sleeve heads took a lot of fiddling with, both because I had changed some seam lines and it needed to be enlarged to accommodate the size of the nightgown's armhole and sleeve bulk. As a result, the sleeve itself was a total nightmare. Which was ironically fitting, since the robe sleeve was supposed to be the one piece that was perfect as-is. I'm not even sure what all I did to it or how I finally got it to work, but basically I lowered the bottom (armpit) of the sleeve head to match the new armhole shape, and widened the top (shoulder) of the sleeve to allow more pleats and give a better overlap of the edges. There's still some wonky bits along the underarm, but nothing really problematic, so I'm happy enough with it.
So all together, it actually looks like a proper thing!
Right before I started cutting out the final fabric (several months after doing the mock-ups), I got out the pattern pieces to refresh my memory and make some tweaks. I decided the nightgown's giant murder sleeves weren't giant or murderous enough, so I tacked on some more fabric to the width under the arm and the length. After trying it on they finally ended up being too long, at least in proportion to the robe's sleeves, so I cut it back down along that drawn line.
Next time: construction on the *actual* costumes finally!
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