HSF #0: Starting Simple
January 2nd, 2013
New year, new petticoat. Yep, I’m still me.
Amid the holiday rush, I managed to find a few hours each day to “zen out” on handsewing. The result, a long overdue petticoat for a swath of 1850s-era “guipure” crochet edging I finished more than a year ago. Why now, you ask? What exactly motivated me to finally get this done?
It was the Historical Sew Fortnightly, organized by The Dreamstress, who is one of my very favorite bloggers even though I’ve never met her (I always feel a bit uneasy reading the blogs of people I don’t actually know — sort of like I am stalking them).
Anyways, the idea is that participants are challenged to sew an historical (pre-1938) garment every two weeks for the next year — 26 in all. Each fortnight has a theme around which to organize your project. And best of all, there’s a bustling Facebook group to share research, inspiration, and lots of delicious pictures of the completed projects! This petticoat is my contribution for challenge #0, the pre-challenge. It’s title was “Starting Simple.” Make something fairly easy, and/or something that you’ve made before.
It’s a basic mid-19th century style top-layer petticoat. I used three breadths of 45 inch cotton, sewn up the selvedges and cartridge pleated to a buttoned waistband. Based on this gorgeous example from The Metropolitan Museum, I decided to include 6 tucks above the edging.
As is obvious from the picture of my deflated petticoat at the top of this post, I still need to put my cage crinoline together. I blush to admit I was in such a hurry to finish this, I committed the curatorial sin of using an extant cage crinoline (circa 1860-1865) from my personal collection to balance the petticoat. But I did resist the urge to get it out again for the photograph. I was also too lazy to put on my corset to figure out where to sew the buttons…
Just the facts, Ma’am:
The Challenge: #0 Starting Simple
Fabric: Cotton muslin
Pattern: Based on period directions and extant garments
Year: 1850-56
Notions: 2 mother-of-pearl buttons (I need to learn to make thread buttons!)
How historically accurate is it?About 90%. It’s impossible to get completely accurate materials — for example, the quality and size of the cotton are a little off, and I have a feeling the thread I used for the crocheted edging is the wrong size (it was the right number, but seems a little on the large side). Otherwise, it’s completely hand-sewn with period plain-sewing stitches.
Hours to complete: 20-30. Thanks to those six tucks, I figure I put upwards of 1,200 inches of sewing into this petticoat. Much of it running at 18-stitches-to-the-inch…
First worn: Not for a while yet — I need to finish the cage and/or crinoline, not to mention a whole bunch of other pieces to complete my 1850s wardrobe. This petticoat, along with others, will eventually be part of a mixed-media art exhibit as well.
Total cost: Counting fabric and crochet thread, about $15.
