This is just a little sneaky peek at something I’m working on at the moment. It’s a costume for Aldbrickham Clog & Step Dancers. I play recorder and concertina for them, and I’m helping out a friend who needs a new blouse.
We wear roughly Edwardian costumes, based on the working clothes worn in the countryside until about 1914. I’m putting this one together based on a Renaissance pattern, a steampunk-Victorian pattern, measurements taken from two existing blouses, and a bit of imagination!
Okay, so I did have an ulterior motive for making those last two ties. This is the dress version of Simplicity 2307, the same as the fish blouse I made a little while ago. Once I’d cut out the hem band, sleeve bands and neck facing I had plenty of fabric left over, so a couple of ties seemed like the way to go.
This dress isn’t supposed to fasten at the neck, but I find it a little low cut for my liking. I plan to add a hook and eye, or a little button and a thread loop, and I thought that a matching tie would be the perfect finishing touch.
Hopefully it will also help to disguise the fact that I just can’t seem to get the neck facing to sit nice and flat. I had the same problem on the fish blouse, but thought that it was to do with having too many layers of interfacing. I didn’t interface the neck facing this time, and the back piece just doesn’t want to stay put. I need to double check the pattern piece, because it seems as though there’s just too much fabric there.
I’m also a little bit uncertain about the proportions of this pattern. With the hem band it comes down to my knees, which is fine, but there’s something about the length of the dress or the depth of the band that just isn’t quite right. Maybe the band needs to be a little less deep. Maybe the dress needs to be a couple of inches shorter. Maybe the band stands out too much because of the contrasting fabric. I’m not sure.
I think I need to wear this one a couple of times, before I decide what alterations I need to make to the next version.
This is Folkwear 117, the Croatian Shirt.
I bought the pattern intending to make it in the dress length, but I didn’t have anything like enough of this cotton lawn, so I made a rather short shirt instead. I started this project about eight months ago, and then it was put to one side while I was working on sewing for other people. At long last, I’m really pleased to have it finished.
The fabric is a lightweight cotton lawn and the buttons are vintage, from one of my many inherited button tins. The close-up of the buttons and tucks is the most accurate for colour, but that still doesn’t show how bright this shirt is!
The construction is a mixture of ancient and modern. All of the long seams and the hem have been serged, for speed and strength. The pin tucks were all stitched down by machine as well. The yoke, collar and cuffs are all finished by hand. All of the fasteners (there are poppers underneath the buttons) have been hand sewn too.
I think this is the approach I’m going to take when I put together my prototype dressing-up smock for the museum. Serged seams, especially under the arms, will make a smock far more resistant to tearing when it’s being taken on and off in a hurry by a class full of enthusiastic children. But the finishing will all be done by hand, as will the smocking and embroidery, so they’ll get an idea of what an authentic period garment would have been like.
