“Long petticoats to hide the feet,
Silk hose with clocks of scarlet ;
A load of perfume, sick’ning sweet,
Bought of PARISIAN VARLET.”

From Female Fashions for 1799 by Mary Darby Robinson

This summer, when venturing trough the local fabric store, I couldn’t resist buying this beautiful flowery satin fabric. It just screamed at me from the sales corner, and begged me to make it into a robe a la Francaise – so I bought it all.

And since the this weeks HSF challenge nr 19) is “Poetry”, I figured I’ll start working on it.

I started with the petticoat (since I just needed something simple to occupie my hands and thoughts from work).
Sitting in the sofa, watching old series, I managed to finish it in a couple of nights. But just as I was about to put it away as finished, I noticed the huge amount of fabric at the center front.That didn’t look quite right.
And after some additional image searching I knew I needed to rework the pleating to get a neater  appearance under neath the dress.

So I ripped the waistband of, re-pleated the skirt and stitched it back on.

Unfortunately I forgot to take proper, and detailed, finishing photos of the skirt before storing it. But I did get a quick photoshoot.

The finished Skirt:

Just the facts:

Challenge: 18, Poetry in motion

Poem: Parts of  Female Fashions for 1799 by Mary Darby Robinson.

What: a 18th century skirt/petticoat.

Pattern: None, just cut two lengths of fabric and fiddled with he pleats until it looked okay.

Fabric: 1,3 m of flowery polyester satin (yes I now, but it was Sooo pretty).

Notions: Thread and 2 m of cotton ribbon for tying at the waist.

How historical accurate: So so, the material are totally wrong, but it is all hand stitched and I think the look of it are pretty okay.

Time: About 8 hours, including the readjusting of the pleats.

Cost: 100 Sek (16 Usd).

First worn: around the house for photos.