To get some photos of my new Edwardian wool dress, I took the opportunity to use my fiancees workplace as settings and my sister as photograph.
I’m wearing: The brown/plaid wool skirt, lacy shirtwaist, wool bolero and my Titanic hat (with a quick fix-up) Underneath I have my S-shaped corset, petticoat, chemise, corset cover, stockings and black “American Duchess” Gibson shoes.
Photo: Maria Petersson
As soon as I laid eyes on this fashion plate I knew I wanted it
(and of course the costume ;-))
Jen at Festive Attyre made the most fabulous recreation of it a while back.
And even though I knew I could never match her skill or perfect Edwardian look, I really wanted a similar look.
So when the HSM challenge 9 – “Brown” approached I scouted out my stash for the perfect brown and plaid wool fabric, and got to work.
I drafted the pattern using Nora Waughs “The cut of women’s clothes”
I cut the pieces on the bias, carefully matched the plaid to meet at an angel at the seams.
Matching the plaid
I used some white cotton for the foundation and stitched bias-tape to make boning channels to get that nice body-hugging look of the corseted skirt of this era.
The skirt closes at the front with hooks and eyes, over a placket and secured with another pair of bones.
I finished by hemming the skirt using a 10 cm wide strip of beige cotton for hem-facing.
And that’s it.
The skirt from the inside
The finished Skirt:
Just the facts:
Challenge: HSM15 nr 9 – Brown
What: A 1900s brown/plaid walking skirt.
Pattern: I drafted my own using Nora Waugh’s “The cut of women’s clothes”
Fabric: 3 m of plaid wool an bits and scraps of cotton for interlining and hem-facing.
Notions: Thread, 2 m of bias-tape, 2m of boning, and hooks and eyes for clouser.
Time: About 10 hours – the fabric matching and hand stitched hem took more time then usual.
Cost: About 200 Sek (32Usd) – all material came from stash but I bought this fabric on sale about a year a ago with a similar project in mind.
How historical accurate: Pretty good. The fabric and pattern are all good. Even though most of the skirt is made by machine the finishing are hand-stitched, as it should be fr this period. I did use some modern techniques on the foundation piece. I’d give it a 7/10.
First worn: Will be worn for photos on October 4th.
Final thoughts: I like how it came out, both the sweep of the skirt and the pattern matching looks really nice, but I’m not completely happy with the raised waistline and I might go back to tweak it a bit later on. But a ll in all it’s a nice piece to have in the costume wardrobe.
After studying the various looks of the character Clare in the series “Outlander”, comparing them to the fabrics from my stash I decided to go for the simple laced up jacket and skirt that’s became symbolic with the series.
I started by making a skirt out of some plaid wool I found in my stash (which I’ve bought on sale about a year ago).
The construction is really simple, since it’s basically two widths of the fabric sewn together and gathered to a waistband.
I used some linen scraps for he hem facing and hooks and bars to close the waistband.
The finished skirt: 
Then I started on the bodice.
Using the pattern from the yellow caraco jacket, only changing the front to accommodate a stomacher instead of button closer, and adding a peplum at the bottom edge.
I used some leftover beige wool for the jacket, interlining it with some linen scraps and dark green wool for the stomacher – all made to match the plaid of the skirt.
It went together pretty fast even though I made it completely by hand.
The peplum being attached.
Trying the jacket on my dressform.
I attached the lining made from two different pieces f left over cotton sheets. 
Then it was time for the eyelets to be made, using a separate fabric strip attached hidden under the boned front edge.
The finial thing to make was to ad channels and boning to the stomacher.
The skirt and jacket ready to be packed for the photoshoot. 
The finished outfit/jacket:
Just the facts:
What: A 18th century jacket and skirt.
Pattern: The jacket is my own draft (yellow Caraco jacket), and the skirt is just two rectangles stitched together.
Fabric & Notions: Skirt – 2,2 m plaid wool, thread and hook & bar.
The bodice: 1 m beige(left over) wool, 1,5 m white cotton for lining and interning, m cotton cord, thread, buttonhole thread, 60 cm plastic boning.
Cost: Everything came from stash but 300 sek would be a fair calculation.
Time: Pretty fast for a complete hand made costume – about 20-25 hours for the whole outfit.
Final thoughts: I really like this outfit. It’s warm and cosy and I really enjoyed wearing it for the photoshoot.
The “Outlander” outfit:
My well known love of fast progress made me decide to start the “Sew 17th century challenge” with one of the faster pieces – the skirt.
Close-up of the skirt.
Staying true to my promise to avoid new fabric purchases, I choose a golden/beige satin from my stash. I’m not sure of the fabrics content but I would guess on a cotton/polyester blend. The fabric was gifted to me a few years ago and I saved it for something special – and I think this outfit more then qualify. 
I even got enough left (after the skirt) to piece out a 17th century bodice at a later date.
Without pattern, and with no particular help from the painting, I decided to copie the look of an extant 17th century skirt I’ve studied pictures of.
I started by cutting two skirt lengths of the fabric and stitched them together.
Then I hand basted three rows of spaced running stitch through the top edge, and pulled to create nice cartrige pleats.
Then I cut a piece of bias tape and stitched it on over the gathers to create a waist band.
I also made sure to secure the gathers by stitching the pleats to the next one the inside.
the cartrige pleats from the outside…
..and from the inside
I had some debate on how to make the waistband and thous treat the bias tape. my first thought was to simply fold it over and tack it down to create a regular waistband. But then I started thinking – a visible waistband would work for this outfit since he bodice sits on the outside, but if I ever wanted to make a matching beige evening bodice the tabs needed to be tucked inside and thous show the waistband.
Not so good.
So instead I decided to fold the bias tape all the way over and tack it down to the pleats on the inside. This technique created a nice and smooth look. 
From the outside
Then I added hooks and bars at the waist, and hemmed the skirt after measuring and folding the bottom edge.
Back view on hanger
The finished skirt:
Facts:
What: A 17th century skirt
Pattern: None – just two rectangles gathered a the waist.
Fabric & Notions: 2,5 m of cream polyester satin, thread, 1 m bias tape, hook and eye.
Time: about 4 hours
Cost: Free – the fabric was gifted to me
Final thoughts: I’m not sure the bias-tape waistband was such a good idea – the waist seems to be growing for each try on.
For the upcoming 1850s “Crinoline day” I decided i needed a new dress (even though I teqnicly have two perfectly functional ones already – Green 1840s and Brown 1850s Paisley)
This time I wanted to focus on the light summer dresses I’ve seen so many examples of lately.
So I picked one of my favourites as my main inspiration and started looking for fabric.
Main inspiration
And to my surprise I found the perfect one straight away, and it was on sale. Yay! 
It’s a sheer cotton with the light feel of voile, and a pretty, light plaid pattern with lots of white to make the dress fit for summer.
At the moment I was rushing to finish my “Downton Mary dress“, so I couldn’t comit to the new project straight away, so to get tings moving I decided to start working on the skirt.
I almost used the same simple tequnices as in my sisters 1860s skirt (which I made a month later) – Cuting three skirt lenght of whole fabric widhts, matching the pattern and stitching them togeter to a huge circle.
Then I stsitched two rows of gthering stistches at the top and pulled to get the right waist measurment. I purpusly used one fabic widht for the front and two for the back, to disturbute the poufiness to the back.
Then I stitched a cotton tape to the gathered waist 
and turn it under by hand to get a small but sturdy waistband.
I used my dressform to measure and pin the skirt lenght 
Trying it out on my dressform
and make sure the back clouser looked good. 
Then I folded, pinned and hemmed the skirt, using 1 cm long heming stitches.
All and all it took about 4 hours and was an evenings welcome break from “Lady Mary”
The finished skirt:
A couple of photos with the skirt, (not) Gabardi blouse and green bonnet:
As you can see I also discovered I needed to shorten the skirt about 5-10 cm – great!
Back to the ironing table…
Nexts up: Construction for the dress bodice…
To have something to go with the hat, and shirt/blouse, my sister also needed some other pieces to make her outfit (why do I do this to myself).
And to save my sanity, I decided on yet another quick and simple project.
A straight skirt sewn on machine.
I had some trouble finding a fabric I liked (and thought my sister would like)
Lovely cotton prints, but none that would serve my purposes.
Then I stumbled over this great (and quite loud) print, which I immediately loved.
I started by cutting three widths of fabric the length the skirt needed. 
Then I matched the prints at the seams and stitched the widths together.
If you look closely you can see the edge.
Then I pleated the upper edge to the right waist measure and added a small strip of fabric for waistband.
I finished by folding and stitching the hem, and adding hooks and eyes for clouser.
The only thing that took some time was the hemming – if I’d sewn it by machine I could have called it my
“1 hour skirt”.
The finished skirt:
The facts:
What: A 1860s skirt
Pattern: None – just used rectangular pieces
Fabric & Notions: 3,5 m blue patterned light cotton, thread and hooks and eyes.
Time: 2 hours
Cost: about 300 Sek
Final thoughts: The skirt turned out just like I envisioned, and my sister likes it too, The only thing in need of change are to shorten the front a bit to keep my sister from stepping on it.
A skirt is a skirt by any other name…
Petticoat or not to petticoat – that is the question…
Ok, enough silliness.
Last weekend I’ve made a 18th century petticoat/skirt.
Here in Sweden “Petticoat” means – “under skirt” or hoop-skirt if you’r talking wedding dresses, and a skirt is just a skirt – nothing else.
But in historic sentence these two seems to be interchangeable (at least to me, since I’d always had a bit trouble keeping the two apart in English).
But I then I read in “Cut of womens clothes” that after 1660s “the underskirt was always called a petticoat”.
Does that mean you can call the same garment “skirt” or “petticoat” deepening on the way it is worn at the moment?
Anyhow,
I’t was such an easy and quick project even though I made it by hand.
One day in front of the computer watching series, and it was done.
I bought this brown fabric for a steal from an online fabric sale – convinced it was a striped cotton twill (as the website claimed).
But once delivered it was more like a heavy polyester made for suits and pants. Darn it.
Well, the price of sending it back would be more then the fabric itself, so I decided to go ahead and make my skirt anyway.
It worked surprisingly well, if you don’t count the bump in my fingers from pressing the needle through, and the heaviness of the fabric gives the skirt and hem a nice drape.
The construction is really simple using two width of fabrics and cartridge-pleating them to a narrow waistband.
I also made sure to hem it quite short, to mimic the length of the fashion plate.
Finished:
Fabric: 2 m of brown polyester “twill”
Notions: thread, Hook and eye.
Cost: about 40Sek (6 Usd) all and all – I told you, a steal 🙂
Time: About 5 hours of hand stitching.
Final thought: I like the drape of the skirt and the pleating looks really nit, even though I would have wished for a thicker fabric.
I think the skirt will look great combined with the new bodice/jacket and accessories I’m working on, for the “peasant fiest” I’m hoping to attend in about two weeks.
“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.
Back in january when I did my sum-up on what to make for this years HSF challenges, I decided to make a 1850s daytime dress for the HSF 14. Paisley & Plaid. 
My original inspiration.
Love the skirt, and the fringes.
I had this great brown/white paisley bedsheet from IKEA that I was dying to use.
So when the challenge deadline approached, I got the fabric from my stash and started working.
This outfit took me a great while to compleat and I did take lots of photos while working on it, so I decided to choop the dress up into three different posts.
Starting with the skirt:
I ripped the selveges from the sheets to be sure to get straight edges. But I emedetly regreted that idea…
This is how of the grain line the sheets were made. It differs about 15 cm from one edge to the other. And on top of that I discovered the print was made to match the crocket grain line, leaving me with lots of un- centered paisley prints. Bummer.
Well, that was too late to do anything about, so I just continued working. Ripping rows of fabric to make into gattered flounces.
I decided to make the skirt in three sections, attached to one big piece of underlayer, using 4 times the width of the base for each of the ruffels. I made sure they were all wide enough to overlap each other, and stiched them togeter, hemmed and sewed a gattering thread along the top.
Then I marked the placement on the white cotton under layer. 
Using all of the apartment for this.
Then I gattered one row at a time, and pinned it in place at the markings to get them perfectly straight.
Starting on row two.
When all the rows where in place it looked like some huge ugly curtain. 
As you can see, I almost didn’t gattered the top row at all. Because it will be gattered anyway when I attach the whole thing to the waistband.
Even though the ruffels overlap each other, I decided to put some exess fabric in between the rows to make sure no white will be visible once worn.
I did the same at the bottom, using the strip of pasisley to make a nice whide hem.
Then I stiched the whole thing togeter, gathered the wasit and stiched it to the wasiband, and attached a hook and eye for clouser.
The finished skirt (worn over a crinoline):
The HSF facts will be included in the next post (where I’ll show the bodice), but I will give you some skirt facts right now just to make myself remember.
What: A 1850s skirt.
Fabric: 1 white cotton sheet (IKEA) and 1, 5 paisley cotton bedsheet (IKEA).
Notions: Thread, hook and eye.
Time: about 8 hours.
For the HSF nr 9: Black & white, I decided to make some pieces I’ve needed to make my next big costuming project work.
Since my plan is to make a compleatly hand made Robe Anglaise as the next challenge (due 1 june) I needed to give myself a head start. So by making a simple piece for this one, I could save some time and make it possible to start the Anglaise earlier.
The theme of this challenge fit perfectly for some of the pieces I needed for the “Art” gown to be finished.
First: The skirt.
A 18th century petticoat/skirt made from regular white cotton (I needed it to be both quick and cheap).
I used a regular white cotton fabric that I found in my stash.
Since I made almost the exact skirt for the previous challenge, I won’t bore you with construction detals, but instead go straight to the Finished photos. (If you’re still want to know how I made it, take a look at my Pastell UFO skirt.
Just The Facts:
Challenge: nr 9: Black & white.
What: A 18th century skirt/petticoat.
Pattern: None, just measured and cut.
Fabric: 2,5 m of white cotton sheets.
Notions: Thread and 2 m cotton ribbon for tying at the waist.
How Historical Accurate: So so. The time constraint caused me to sew it by machine (and Ialso do think it is stupid to handsew pieces which are clearly in the wrong material). But the shape and construction are plausable.
Time: 4 hours
Cost: 60 sek (9Usd)
First worn: Not yet. But hopefully at june 6 for a huge costuming event.
Final thoughts: I had some trouble deciding on the bottom flounce.The original calles for fringes, but there was no way I was going to get hold on some cheap and sutable ones in time. I did try to make my own, but they lacked the weight neccesary to hang nicely. In the end I opted for a narrow flounce, and I’m pretty happy with the result.
***
The second thing I needed was a bigger bumpad.
I’ve made a temporary one about a month ago, to wear with my Edwardian dress. However, I didn’t had the time to finish it, so last night I picked it up again.
Pink and purple cotton basted to several layers of quilt padding.
It was originaly ment to be a quilted petticoat, but as you can see, I didn’t get very far.
I covered the pad in white cotton, leftover from a previous project. Making self fabric bias-tape to trim the edges and make tying ribbons.
It was such a quick and easy project.
Finished:
Just the facts:
Challenge: 9 – Black and white
What: A bumpad – 18th century to early 20th century.
Pattern: None
Fabric: 0,5 m of white cotton (originaly 0,5 m of quilting padding and some leftover fabric scraps).
Notions: Thread.
How historical accurate: Not at all. Maybe the shape will pass, but the construction, material and look is all wrong.
Time: 1 hour (perhaps 30 min more, if it hadn’t been half finished already).
Cost: Nothing since I only used leftover scraps.
First worn: Not yet. But hopefully at june 6 for a huge costuming event.
***
I had time to make one final item before the deadline – a fichu.
I wanted to make one large enough to wrap around the body and tie in the back, like you se in many paintings from the 1780s.
Using some adwise I got on the internet, I cut two large triangles and stiched them togeter to make one huge.
Then I shaped and rounded of the neck, to make it wrap better around the neck. I french seamed the center back, and hemmed the whole thing – everything by machine. 
Close up: French seam and hem.
Finished:
All my “White” items at once.
Just the facts:
Challenge: Nr 9 – Black and white.
What: A big fichu ca 1780.
Pattern: none.
Fabric: 70 cm of dotted white polyester organza.
Notions: Thread
Historial accuracy: I think the pattern shape will suffice, but the material and use of sewing machine is all wrong.
Time: Half an hour.
Cost: Perhaps 20 Skr (1 USD)
First worn: Not yet, but hopefully at a big costuming picknic next month.
***
I had originaly planed to make all tese items compleatly by hand. But as usual life happens, and time is never enough for everything you want to do – so this time the hand sewing had to go.
But I don’t really mind. I kind of think it’s a waist of time to hand sew istorical items made from polyester fabric.
And as you probably can guess – I hadn’t even started the “Big Project” yet.
Fashion Through Herstory 