Tag: petticoat

New dress, new jacket

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I made Simplicity 1755 to wear to a wedding. Then I realised I didn’t have a smart little jacket to wear with it, so I thought I’d better make one. This is a short bolero hoody, with long bell sleeves. (I drafted the pattern myself.) I couldn’t get any bias binding to match, and I didn’t have time to make any with the left over fabric from the dress, so I bought the least-clashing colour and went with that. What you can’t see in these pictures is the machine embroidery that I added over the top. I thought it would help to tone down the very pale lilac, so there are little leaves embroidered all over the binding. Definitely a finishing touch that I’m going to use again, I’m really pleased with it.

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Here I am, looking wistful in a gazebo. As you do. No matter how hard he tries, Paul just doesn’t seem able to take a decent photo of me, so you’ll often find me staring away from the camera looking a bit grumpy. (Any suggestions that perhaps I’m just not very photogenic will be met with derision. And then crying.)

I’m pleased with the dress, but my lack of a 1950s-style well-defined waist does make it look a bit frumpy. I do need to change the collar though. As you can see, the hook and eye kept coming undone, and that made my brooch wonky, which annoyed me all day. I’m wearing a huge floofy petticoat in these pictures, but I took that off half way through the reception because it was just too damned big and annoying. I have a very low tolerance for uncomfortable clothes, so anything that I have to fiddle with or which makes a nuisance of itself will very quickly be consigned to the charity shop pile. (Or the boot of the car, in the case of the petticoat.)

I will make another of these dresses though, just with a slight alteration to the front neck. And I’ll definitely be making more of these little jackets. The only change I need to make to this one is the hooks and eyes on the front. I think I’ve sewn the eyes on back-to-front (I didn’t realise it mattered!), and the jacket won’t stay closed. But once I’ve sorted out the fastening, I want to make another one with narrower sleeves, and one with a printed cotton lining, and a longer one with pockets, and a fancy one with needle felting… I have a lot of plans for this design!

Vaguely Victorian

I’ve been asked to work an extra day this week to help out with a school visit, for which I may have heard myself ask my boss “would you like me to come in dressed as a Victorian?”. The session goes with the Victorian part of our building, Palmer House, which was designed by Waterhouse (of Natural History Museum and Reading Town Hall fame) and built in 1880-82.

Paul, bless him, has managed to rein me in from “I NEED TO MAKE A COMPLETE PERIOD-CORRECT VICTORIAN OUTFIT BY TUESDAY” to “please can we have a look in your wardrobe first”.

Victorian-ish outfit

However, I may have used “dressing up as a Victorian for work” as an excuse to buy a corset. I chose a black brocade one which was on the “corset of the day” offer for £25. It ended up costing me almost £40 by the time I’d paid vat and extra for super-fast shipping, but I still call that a bargain. It’s not expertly made, but it’s no worse than any Vollers corset I’ve owned in the past, and it gives a “Victorian enough” shape under all those layers, so I’m happy with that.

The website was a bit weird – I kept finding other people’s things added to my shopping cart and at one point it kept telling me that I was logged in as somebody else, which made me very nervous about giving them my credit card details. But I placed my order at five to three on Friday, 3pm being the cut off for next day delivery, expecting it to arrive on Monday. The postman knocked on the door at 9:30 on Saturday morning, with my corset! So that was extremely impressive. (He also brought my lingerie-sewing book which I thought had got lost in the trans-atlantic post, so hooray for that too!)

Victorian-ish outfit

I posted on Facebook about making a Victorian outfit in a hurry, and Chris from Progress Theatre offered to lend me a bustle pad from their wardrobe. I replaced the worn-out elastic with cotton tape, and I think it’ll make quite an acceptable late-Victorian silhouette.

Victorian-ish outfit

Next I added my lilac petticoat, for volume, and a plain white vest to cover up the black dress and corset. I went for black foundation layers because I’d originally intended to wear a black blouse, but the two I thought might be suitable turned out to have inappropriate sleeves.

Victorian-ish outfit

Here’s a side view with the bustle. Is my bum going to look big in this? 😉

Victorian-ish outfit

Next layer: the ivory lawn pintucked blouse that I usually wear for being a rural Edwardian when I’m out with the clog dancers.

Victorian-ish outfit

I spent all day making this skirt, but unfortunately velvet doesn’t photograph at all well in poor light so I can’t show it to you properly. It’s Simplicity 2207, the same as my red and black stripy one.

Victorian-ish outfit

And for the finishing touches: a black wool man’s dress waistcoat, a length of black ribbon, and a marcasite brooch in the shape of an owl. I wear this waistcoat to work quite often, usually with the owl on the lapel.

Victorian-ish outfit

I must admit that I’m not completely convinced by the bustle, even though it’s much smaller with the weight of the velvet skirt on the top. I was looking at photographs of Victorian teachers and the more I see the less I’m convinced that a bustle, even a small one, was worn underneath everyday workwear.

I’ll try the whole outfit on together, and hopefully I’ll be able to get some better photos while I’m at work tomorrow. I can’t do much about my extremely un-Victorian hair and glasses, sadly, but I think this is not too bad, considering I had almost all of it lurking in my wardrobe already!

Steampunk Petticoat

Petticoat

You might have noticed that this is made to roughly the same pattern as the black linen dress. This time the ruffle’s a bit shorter, but that was mostly because I’d almost run out of stripy fabric. The body of the dress is a little longer to compensate. The hem is trimmed with one layer of wide flat lace, and another of red gathered lace to provide a little bit of extra fullness. The butterfly sleeves are simply overlocked at the edges, and the beaded trim matches the skirt.

Petticoat and skirt

Here’s how they look together – rather smart, I think! The plain red doesn’t exactly match the stripes, but I think they’re close enough that it doesn’t matter too much. The petticoat doesn’t make the slightest bit of difference to the fullness of the skirt because it’s much too narrow, so you probably won’t even see the two layers of lace. The attention to detail makes me feel better about the outfit though, so it’s worth the effort.

Skirt and petticoat.

Purple & Black

Today I have been mostly sewing an outfit that I planned almost a year ago, when I was offered my current job. I bought three men’s shirts from Marks and Spencer (lilac, pink and lemon), and bought some poly-cotton and broderie anglais trim from Fabric Land to make three matching petticoats.

Purple petticoat

Here’s the first petticoat – a variation on my usual elasticated skirt. I lengthened the pattern to just below the knee, and then added a 10″ ruffle with a matching broderie anglais trim.

Black skirt

The skirt is made in four panels, and had pockets in the side seams. The waistband is attached in exactly the same way as the petticoat, and the hem is trimmed with gathered broderie anglais. I’m not sure what the fabric is, except that it’s a nice heavy suiting weight. It’s most likely polyester, although the weave looks a little bit like dense linen. (This is what happens when you have a fabric stash that goes back more than a decade – sometimes you can’t remember what you’ve bought!)

I have a pretty lilac sash belt that I can wear if I decide I don’t want the elastic to show, but I actually like the fancy elastic so I don’t mind if it’s visible.

Now I want to knit myself a black v-neck tank top, although that might be pushing the slightly schoolmistressy look a bit too far. We’ll see.

Broderie Anglais Circle Skirt

Broderie Anglais Circle Skirt

I’ve been clearing out my fabric stash, and stumbled upon four metres of crinkle broderie anglais at the bottom of a pile. I bought this while I was working at a fabric shop, and had been sent to a different branch for the day. Black broderie anglais is a very rare beast, so I snapped up as much of it as I thought I could carry home on the train.

It’s been sitting in the stash ever since because the sewing machine I was using at the time would have made a dreadful mess of this crinkly fabric. Thankfully my trusty overlocker has no such problem, and I ran up this simple skirt in no time.

The spots of pink that you can see through the holes in the fabric are from my Giant Petticoat of Doom.

I have just over a metre of fabric left, and I’m planning to use it to make a matching top. I’m not a hundred percent certain about going out in an outfit made entirely from crinkly fabric, mind you. I don’t want to look as though I’ve been sleeping in it!

Half a petticoat

Simplicity 3737 petticoat

I’ve been trying to make this petticoat since March, but it was causing me to swear so terribly that it’s been shoved in a carrier bag underneath my sewing table for seven months. This is in fact only half a petticoat. There’s supposed to be a second layer on the bottom two tiers, but I absolutely couldn’t face doing all the gathering again, so I left it out.

As it happens it’s pretty much as full as I’d want it to be underneath a circle skirt (I’m going for “fullness” not “panto”), and several people on the Pattern Review site confessed that they’d either left out or chopped off the second layer.

I’m not completely convinced that I  actually like it. I’ll have to wait, and decide after I’ve worn it a few times.

Mind you, it doesn’t really matter whether I like it or not – I’m absolutely not going to make another one, so I’m sticking with this!

Cherry Skirt

Cherry circle skirt

I’m a little bit poorly this week, and the medication I’m taking is leaving me unable to concentrate, so I spent the day yesterday making a very simple skirt.

It’s made in the same way as my Elasticated Skirt but instead of being an a-line shape, this one’s a full circle. What looks like the waistband is actually a matching sash belt – the waist is made from my usual frilly elastic. There are nice deep pockets hidden away in the side seams, and that’s five metres of lacy trim sewn on at the hem.

I’m also still making Simplicity 3737, a petticoat that I started working on in March. Unfortunately it hasn’t spent the past eight months in storage magically sewing itself together, so I’m going to have to get on and finish it. If you hear swearing, it’s just me. Drowning under fourteen metres of net. Ugh.

Progress on the petticoat.

Petticoat - in progress.

This is Simplicity 3737 (now out of print), view B. You’re looking at the bottom tier of the inside layer – which itself is two layers of dress net/crinoline, edged with satin bias tape.

I still have to make the outer layer, and attach it all to the yoke.

So far I’ve been working on this for three days, and the biggest difficulty I’m having is the amount of space it takes up! 

I’m perilously close to losing my temper with this, so I think its time to pack it away and work on something else for a while.

Having a little look at the internet.

For the past two days I have been wrestling with fourteen metres of dress net and fifty metres of bias tape.

I’m hoping that these ingredients will eventually turn into this Simplicity petticoat. (Bottom right.) So far I’ve cut out all forty-two pieces, and stitched them into the appropriate tiers. Now I need to do all the gathering, and sew all of the tiers together.

I am beginning to understand why petticoats are so expensive, and also wishing that I’d just bitten the bullet and bought one in the first place. Petticoat Perfection do one which would have been absolutely ideal.

The cartoon is by Dave Walker at We Blog Cartoons. I have a print out of this pinned to my noticeboard, where I can see it every time I think I will just go and have a little look at the internet…