1790 - 1810 Shift

This past weekend's project was the innermost layer of an outfit - a shift! My old shift was made out of a rather heavy, draping "linen look" fabric from Jo-Ann's tennish years ago, sooo... time for a new one.

Inspiration? It is a pretty basic shift, like any number of shifts from 1770-1810. If I had to pick a particular reference I would offer this one: 

Shift, American, early 19th century, MFA, 99.664.51

Mine has no sleeve ruffles, partly because I don't have fine enough fabric (the fabric used for ruffles was often finer than the linen used for the body of shifts or shirts), and partly because I wasn't sure I would like the look (would they show under long sleeves? Would they look cluttered under sheer puff sleeves?) and partly because I just wanted to make a quick and basic project that was easy from start to finish. The sleeves are also slightly shorter. But the body is cut as one (without side gores), as shown in the MFA example. 

All seams are felled with a blind stitch, and the hems are stitched with the same. 

The drawcord channel is simply the neckline edge folded twice. At center front, I cut a slit and finished the edge with thread and a buttonhole stitch. Slightly below that, I embroidered my initials (the "D" ended up leaving a little more room for imagination than preferable, but not enough to rip out and restitch.) 

What propelled me to make this shift this past weekend was actually this little conversation in the Historical Sew Fortnightly Facebook group, about how to flat fell a gusset without puckers. I made a line-drawn step-by-step guide, which may not be less confusing than any other explanation... but it is one more something that might make sense to somebody! 

Exterior gusset construction.Side body seam and the sleeve seam in felled opposite directions just for aesthetic appeal.

Interior gusset construction - note the slightly elongated shape of the corners where they meet the side body and sleeve.

While I was hoping to enter a chemisette for the HSF Firsts & Lasts challenge, that probably won't be finished for a while yet, so this will be my entry (even though this is already way past the deadline!) These are the deets: 

The Challenge: Firsts & Lasts - this is the first garment to be worn on the body. Unless drawers are involved, in which case those might go on first. But I don't wear drawers with my Regency kits, so this counts as the first item put on! 

Material: This cotton/linen blend (I was in a hurry when I ordered and missed that the fabric was a blend, but I have it now so it will have to be used!)

Pattern: My own, based off of extant shifts. 

Year: 1780-1810

Notions: Cotton string, stolen from a length of drapery pleating tape I had in my trim box. 

How historically accurate is it? The fabric is not quite right, as it's a blend. The thread is poly and the primary construction seams were machine-stitched. However, the pattern is fairly authentic, and the secondary seaming (flat-felling) and hems are hand-stitched. I'd give this a 75%. 

Hours to complete: Around 8, and most of that was felling the seams and hemming. Actual pattern, cutting, and basic construction probably took 2-3 hours. 

First worn: Haven't worn it yet! 

Total cost: About $20 for the fabric, as I already thread and string (which would probably add up to around $4-5). So a decent estimate for this would be $25

Pictures on a body coming soon! 

TECHNICAL DRAWING - Bodice; c. 1805-10

We had a snow day today! In Atlanta, GA! This is a rarity, but the snow is for real - I am watching my front lawn turn white as I type. Because of the snow, especially because this is an area that is ill-prepared for snow, my office was let off early. So what did I do? Came home and drew clothing in Illustrator (this is what I do every day for my job, so... I guess I am in the right field?)

I have been doing a bit of research for the new pair of stays I need to make, and I came across this very interesting piece of clothing at the MET:

It is categorized as a "corset," but I haven't seen anything quite like it. There are two bodices of clothing that I have seen (will have to find and add to this post later) that have springs similar to this one - but this is the only one I've seen with bust gussets.

I haven't much to say about this, I spent all afternoon sketching and now I have to run clean, but I thought it was interesting enough to sketch, so enjoy!

Side question: does anybody know where I can procure little springs like the ones contained in this bodice? I want to make a pair of garters with springs, but I'm not sure where to find them. I suppose I'll check the hardware store first... I know I have seen a reproduction of spring-loaded garters by somebody, somewhere, but I can't remember who made them. I would be much obliged to anybody who could point me in the right direction!

Almost there!

Today, I'm putting in the hemstitches on the half-robe/shortgown (I really need to figure out which is which. Or if they are the same). Then, all I have left is the linen lining! That has a little piecing to be done so that the front overlaps properly, and then it is set. I might add a little skirt to the bodice lining, too, but that is optional and might not make it on before the deadline.

The past few days, I've worked on sleeves. I hate sleeves (insomuch as one can hate an element of design.) I mostly hate drafting patterns for them; I have no aversion to wearing them. I cut out and basted on three muslin sleeves before cutting my final fabric. I don't have much of this fabric left (only the lower half of the skirt, and a few scraps here and there), so I couldn't afford to fly by the seat of my pants like I usually do.

I had originally intended to add a 2-piece sleeve to this garment (as per 1790s), but I found more research than not which indicated that the sleeves for this type of garment should be cut as one piece. I found this (below) example in my Costume in Detail book:

Bradfield, Nancy. Costume in Detail: 1730-1930
Costume & Fashion Press/Quite Specific Media; 2nd edition, 1997

My pattern ended up looking like this:

Which mocked up like this (pardon the splatters all over my bathroom mirror. I had no idea it needed a cleaning so badly! I guess bathroom mirrors are like glasses - it takes a startlingly long time to notice that they are actually dirty, but then it is fairly appalling...):

Must say... this short gown does not exactly emphasize a slender figure.
And I don't have a terribly slender figure to begin with, so I look just
rather broad. Oh well. I still quite like it.

It was a LITTLE snug over the chubby part of my bicep, but I just fudged a little into the pattern when I cut it out of final fabric. I had to piece together my sleeves, and I added a linen lining with the lower part pieced in as fashion fabric (as per the Costume in Detail half robe). If you look closely at the picture below, you can see that the outer sleeve is pieced just above the wrist, and there is a little triangle under the arm. I'm actually pretty pleased that this garment will be so pieced, as I feel like this sort of thing would have been scrapped together back in the day.

LEFT: right sleeve and lining turned right-side-out.
RIGHT: left sleeve and lining turned wrong-side-out.

Penelope, my 100lb Lab/Pit Bull mix faithfully lay next to me as I cut and basted and cut again. When I say "next to me," I mean directly in-between myself and anywhere I needed to go. That is her habit. But I love her too much to make her move out of the way (it makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside to know that she always wants to be nearby, so I leave her be).

HSF 2014 Challenge #1: Make Do and Mend - Part 1

What do you know, I think I am actually on track to finish the first HSF challenge of 2014, on time! I am so excited! I still have to keep up the momentum through the week and finish up the sleeves, but hopefully that won't be a problem. My darling boy volunteered to cook almost every night, so that will free me up in the evenings. I've just got to bang out that sleeve pattern tomorrow night!

I tried on the dress one last time, and almost couldn't chop it up. Too many good times in this dress! However, I had already pulled off the sleeves to (unsuccessfully) re-vamp them, and I've been bothered by the various period-incorrect bits of this for a while now. So... after taking these pictures, I sat down and picked apart all the seams.

Bodice off, 2/3 length cut off of the skirt, and trimmed a bit off the lower
skirt to even out the skirt-front into a nice, tidy rectangle. 

I don't have a lot of in-progress pictures (oops), but today I got almost everything thing together but the sleeves. I popped it on the form and noticed... a couple problems.

The front is pretty cute. The top-front is gathered separately from the bottom-front (as observed in extant short gowns and jackets). There is a bit of awkwardness going on at the side-front bodice - I think my drawstring might be going back about 5"-6" too far, allowing some awkward gathering of the bodice shell. Hopefully tacking the drawstring down at side-front will even that out.

The shape at the side skirt dips in a bit, probably because it is a straight-up rectangle. And the pleats hang kind of "chunkily." However, I am pretty sure my skirt shape is correct, so I won't be correcting that.

All that remains is to trim the armscyes to form a more period-correct back shape, and pop on the sleeves. Then there are a few finishing bits like the hem and under-bodice, but that shouldn't take more than an evening.

I am so ready to have a completed project!

Construction Study - 1790s Silk Gown

As I was perusing Pinterest the other day, I ran across a dress that I had pinned a while ago, but hadn't really examined up close. The dress caught my eye again and I popped over to the MET website for a closer look (it is the best museum website - many pieces in the collections have HUGE pictures that you can zoom to get a closer look at garment details).

This dress is put together with a billion pieces of fabric. Well, maybe not a billion, but way more pieces than I would consider using. I would have given up on squeezing a dress out of what appears to be an insufficient length of fabric (I suspect this was an older style dress which was re-made in the 1790s). However, this is  great example of the thriftiness that was implemented in a lot of historical garments. I pulled pictures of the dress into Illustrator and made flats of all views, in order to decipher just exactly how this dress was constructed. I left off the little webbing tie in my drawings, because it seemed purely decorative and does not contribute to the construction of the dress at all.


FRONT:
- The sleeves are clearly two-piece sleeves that are patterned into a slight "L" shape, with a bend at the elbow. As we'll see in the SIDE picture, they open at the wrist for about 6"-7" in a button placket which closes with a single button.
- The front neckline has a small (1/4"-3/8") drawstring casing, probably formed by an internal binding or lining. I did not see any prickstitching along the top edge, which makes me curious about where the lining attaches. However, that may be because the front view photo doesn't zoom in quite closely enough for me to see the stitches.
- There are two extra seams in the front-bodice: one on each "princess" line (vertical, mid-breast).
- There is definitely a waist seam (I have wondered that about some of these dresses!) There are tiny stitches delineating a drawstring casing below the waistband (3/8"-1/2" wide).
 - There is a slit from center-front of the neckline, down to about 7"-8" below the waistline. This little slit ends at the first block of pieced skirt. The edge of the slit is finished with tiny running stitches or prickstitches.
- The skirt is pieced together in three rows. There does not appear to be any order or symmetry in the piecing of the skirt, although it appears that the largest unbroken block of fabric was placed in the vertical and horizontal center.
- The hem is stitched very close to the edge (1/8"), with tiny stitches. I can't tell if the hem is faced, and the stitches are little prickstitches that are holding the facing to the fabric, or if it is just a teeny, tiny hem.

Dress, 1790s, French via the Metropolitan Museum of Art - FRONT`

SIDE:
- The shape of the sleeves is most obvious in this view. There is a little puckering at the elbow, indicating that the "L" shape of the pattern was more pronounced than the shape of the wearers arm at rest.
- The button placket at the wrist is finished around the edge with tiny prickstitches. There is a single button (approx 1/2"-5/8" diameter), and the lone buttonhole is placed at a 45 degree angle.
- It is clear from from this angle that the front of the skirt is a rectangle, and the fullness at the side-front is created with two deep pleats, layered directly on top of each other.
- The next set of pleats is placed at side-back, and is made up of another two deep pleats (but possibly less deep than the side-front pleats).
- The front skirt peice ends at side-back, farther back than the side-back pleats. There is an odd triangular shape piece of fabric added, presumably in a spot where the dressmaker was desperate and needed to patch for a perfect corner.
- The height of the lowest row of fabric appears to be consistent, despite being made up of random widths.

Dress, 1790s, French via the Metropolitan Museum of Art - SIDE

BACK:
- As was standard for backs around this era, the center-back panel is very small. Because of this, the sleeves extend quite a ways into the back. I noticed, however, that there appears to be no correlation between the placement of the back sleeve seam, and the CB panel.
- There are two small triangular wedges at the shoulders, adding just enough fabric to make up a nice wide shoulder strap that meets at CB.
- The actual CB panel is pieced down the center, but I didn't call that out with a red line because that was a common construction, in order to achieve symmetry in the fabric pattern. This seam could probably be left out, though. The embroidery around the panel consists of a backstitch lining the outer and inner edges, and a wiggly chainstitch weaving between the two lines of backstitch.
- Both sides of the front bodice extend all the way around to meet the curved seams of the CB panel. These also appear to have been pieced. Note that, unlike the skirt, the bodice is carefully pieced with symmetrical seams (which makes the dress look less like it emerged from a rag-bag).
- At the base of the bodice, where the CB panel joins the side-front panels, there are two little medallions. These medallions are made up of self-fabric covered buttons (same size as the sleeve buttons, 1/2"-5/8" dia), mounted on a gathered cockade of self-fabric. I like this little detail - it makes the dress just a little sweeter!
- This skirt back has a LOT of fabric! In addition to the double pleats on each side-back, there appears to be a triple inverted box pleat directly at center-back. That is to say: three deep pleats folding one way, and three deep pleats folding the other way, all meeting in the center. Each of those pleats has got to be between 3"-4" deep. (The museum appears to have displayed this dress with a little bum pad in the back, which would have been accurate for a few years in the late 1700s. All that pouf is not caused by the skirt, but it would probably also be pretty full without the pad!)
- There is no train - the hem of this skirt is even with the floor (more or less) all the way round, from front to back.

Dress, 1790s, French via the  Metropolitan Museum of Art - BACK

Dress, 1790s, French via the Metropolitan Museum of Art - BACK close-up

Staring at this dress and drawing it for the past few hours makes me want to try my hand at patterning it! I love the simple, full shapes of the 1790s. Maybe for next summer... Or the summer after that...

Construction Confusion

Now that the next Jane Austen Festival has been announced, I am scheming about NEW costumes! They may not be realized, because I have to finish last year's pieces first, but one can always scheme.

I would love to put together for myself a slightly more "working woman" impression, with a simple cotton dress and a cotton/linen spencer. It would be a fun exercise in print-mixing. With that in mind, I have been researching cotton print spencers, and I came across one that I really love, but the construction baffles me. I am trying to puzzle out how, exactly, it opens to be put on.

From the front view, I can decipher:
- The top of the bodice and the "skirt" (below the bust line) appear to be separate pieces of fabric. I can't tell, however, if they are gathered separately before being assembled, or if all the gathers at the front are caused by a little hidden drawstring. When I compare the shirring ratio on the upper bodice to the shirring ratio on the "skirt," they appear to have been gathered separately before being stitched together.
- The sleeves are cut in one piece on the fold/straight grain, but they are shaped to narrow at the wrist before flaring out over the knuckles.
- There are two little ties hanging down at the sides of the garment. From the front, I have no idea what purpose these serve, but you can see them a little better on the back.
- There is green trim around the neckline and sleeve hems.
- The bodice appears to be lined at the back, and it looks flat (as though the center-back gathers we see on the back view are only in the fashion fabric, mounted on a fitted lining.)

Jak, Blaricum via the Nederlands Openluchtmuseum

The back of the spencer provides a little more construction information:
- The back bodice is cut extremely narrow, and is tightly gathered. I wouldn't call the gathers "full," though, as there is no body to them (they're very flat - which would support my conjecture that this piece is mounted on a fitted lining).
- There are small (1.25"?) rectangles of fabric covering the shoulder seams, which are placed very far back.
- There is a seam (which appears to have a narrow self-fabric piping) between the upper bodice and lower bodice/skirt. This piece is flat, with no gathers in the upper or lower edges.
- There is another seam bisecting the lower half of the bodice. This piece is definitely gathered at center back, and has a little bit of green trim at the bottom edge, which cuts off before reaching the sides of the bodice.
- There are three brass (pewter? some kind of metal) buttons mounted on the lower seam. These buttons appear to be non-functional, entirely decorative.
- The green trim extends all the away around the back neckline (the entire neckline is trimmed).
- The bodice appears to be unlined on the front (the front skirt, at least).
- There appears to be an opening at the side seams, from which the striped (linen?) tapes hang! This part puzzles me the most. I have never seen a side opening like this that doesn't have some kind of apron-front piece on the front, allowing for more flexibility. Do the openings extend from hem to sleeve? Is there any kind of slit in the sleeve for flexibility? Why are the openings there instead of CF or CB? Was this common and I just never realized it? How do the ties get tucked away when the jacket is worn? Where is the front set of ties disappearing under the bodice in this picture? So many questions.

Jak, Blaricum via the Nederlands Openluchtmuseum

Also, what is that green trim made of? It almost looks like cotton fabric with trapunto stuffed rows. Or maybe they are just corded! But the trim doesn't appear to be stiff (if you look at the gathered back skirt, it folds pretty easily).

This jacket is what I am puzzling over today. I think I might have to reproduce it; it is too interesting to not investigate with a reproduction.