Essential Ornamentation (+two mini-tutorials!)

When I left you last, the pelisse was in one piece, though sans collar and many other little details. After Christmas, I finally had the time to put this to rights. (If you haven’t read the first part of this post about the Burnley and Trowbridge pelisse workshop, you can read about it here.)

Here is the extant pelisse that I’m using for inspiration.

It took me several test runs to get the collar just right, and when I finally got the flare and height just the way I wanted them, I sewed it all in place. Since the fabric is stiff and a bit unruly, I basted the outside of the collar to the body of the pelisse before folding the other side of the collar over and prick-stitching everything in place.

*Yes, I did hem the sleeves as well before moving on!

Once the collar was on, I got to do the really fun part–trimming! I started by making a pile of fabric flowers for ornamenting the cuffs and belt. The flowers are quite simple–here’s a quick tutorial on how to make them:

I started with strips 3″x 10″, but you can adjust these measurements to get different sized flowers. The strip gets sewn into a ring.

Fold the ring in half so that you have a neat fold on one edge and two raw edges on the other.

Take hold of the raw edges, and bring the section you are holding over about an inch, arranging the pleat so that it is at a diagonal. Stitch once up and down through the bottom of the pleat.

 

Continue taking pleats into the center, stacking them so that you have the smallest possible amount of raw edge showing in the front. Try to keep the pleats nice and even. As you go, put one stitch through the bottom of each pleat to hold it in place.

Pull the final pleat down so that the tip of it covers up the other raw edges, carefully arranging the outer edges to your liking before you stitch it in place. On several of the flowers, I had to wrap the thread around the lower point to pull it in nice and tight. Don’t worry if you need to do this, the bit of gathering adds to the overall look of the petals.

Stitch a button or other decoration over the center of the flower, and you’re finished. I got so lucky with these buttons from Farmhouse Fabrics–they’re nearly identical to the ones on the extant pelisse I’m copying!

Next came the belt. I made this using another fancy trick from the Burnley & Trowbridge workshop. That is, I think I did. I may have. It was something Janea showed us really quick at the end of the day, and I was very tired, and didn’t completely understand what she was showing us at the time. So what I really did was something that made sense to me, picked up on the bits of Janea’s instructions that I did remember. Whether or not it’s exactly what we learned in the workshop, it worked very well, so here it is:

Basically, it’s a way of making something look as though it has piping around the edge, while only having to sew around the perimeter of the piece once.

I cut the base shape of the belt out of some canvas I had lying around. It doesn’t need seam allowance or anything. Then I cut a strip of the main fabric about an inch and a half longer at each end and three times as wide (I just eyeballed this, it doesn’t need to be exact).

Pin the interfacing to the wrong side of the fabric.

Fold the edge of fabric back so that it is right side to right side, and the fold lines up with the edge of the interfacing. I did this bit by bit as I sewed, rather than all at once.

This is what the edge of the piece should look like.

Begin backstitching around the perimeter, 1/16 or 1/8 away from the edge depending on how big you want your “piping” to be. You should be stitching through one layer of interfacing and two of fabric.

Continue stitching around the edge, keeping the fabric as smooth as possible as you go around the curve. My fabric was so thick that this was nearly impossible, but the smoother the folded-over layer of fabric is when you stitch it, the smoother your finished edge will be.

When you finish stitching the perimeter, pull the fabric edges back to the wrong side of the piece and pin in place. One side should overlap the other, that way you can crease a small part of it over to finish the underside neatly.

This is what your edge should look like as you pull it around.

This is what the finished back should look like. I was able to use the fabric’s selvage edge to finish it off, so there was no need to turn it under. Make sure that the final side you fold over covers up all of the raw edges.

Here’s what the finished “piping” looks like.

I ornamented the finished belt with two of the fabric flowers I made earlier.

When the belt was finished, I ornamented each cuff with four more of the fabric flowers and a smaller band made in the same way as the belt.

The pelisse is buttoned all the way down the front, so buttonholes were a huge ordeal that involved cocktails with my friend Amy and many, many episodes of Gilmore Girls.

The next step was to put a row of trim all the way down one side of the front, around the hem, and up the other side (there will be two rows, but I miscalculated how much I was going to need, and have to order some more). The trim comes from one of my favorite sources for fabric and trim, Farmhouse Fabrics. They have a wonderful selection of lace; I get nearly all of mine from them.

 

As you can see from the extant pelisse at the beginning of the post, there is a double row of trim around the collar as well. In the picture, you can just see the inner rows begin to slope towards each other before they disappear around to the back, out of sight. The trim pattern I did is my best guess from looking at the angle of the original trim.

There’s a row of trim around the edges of the belt as well, just inside of the false piping.

And that’s it! I’ll have to put that second row of trim on when it gets here, but then this three-month-long project is finally finished! (I didn’t do the sleeve caps, because I think  I like it better without them–what do you think?)

I really shouldn’t have taken these pictures first thing in the morning!

 

I have to say, I’m incredibly proud of this project. I learned so much doing it, and I can’t thank Burnley and Trowbridge and Janea Whitacre enough for the pelisse workshop. It was an amazing experience, and I don’t think I could put a price on the knowledge and experience I got out of it. I hope I can make it to another workshop soon!

I’m planning a bonnet to go with this pelisse soon, and when it’s finished, I’ll try to do a nice, outdoor photo shoot with it. I think all that work deserves some really pretty pictures!

Thanks for watching!

Hannah

Learn to Sew Again: The Burnley & Trowbridge Pelisse Workshop

If you’re like me, you’ve read a lot of historical fiction, or possibly historically-inspired fantasy books. Inevitably, somewhere in these books, a woman gets a new dress. The dressmaker comes, takes measurements, shows her swatches and sketches, goes away, and a day or two later, the dress arrives, lovely, and perfect, and above all, finished. Now in my case, when I was young, I dreamed of reaching a skill level where I could work that fast (yes, yes, I know, the dressmaker would have had apprentices to help as well, but twelve-year-old me does not care). The older I got, and the more I sewed, the more I was baffled. I could sew fast. I could sew neatly. I didn’t actually start using a machine until I was 18, so I had years of hand-sewing experience. But there was still no possible way I could complete a garment, let along a ballgown, (even with help) in 48 hours. If you’re someone who knows anything about the differences between period and modern construction, you’re already laughing at me.

Over the years, especially since I started interpreting, I have added to my repertoire of hand-sewing skills, but nothing has shone light on the mysterious speed of historical seamstresses and tailors like the Burnley & Trowbridge workshop I attended in October. I signed up with two of my dearest friends, Amy and Melissa, almost as soon as the workshop was announced last winter, and the three of us planned for months and then trekked across the Appalachians to Williamsburg, VA. There were several times over the months between signing up and going when I considered dropping out for purely financial reasons. Even minus the hotel, gas, and price of admission, this was going to be an expensive project. I can’t tell you how glad I am that I stuck with it.

Seriously. Go to a workshop here. It will blow your mind. Burnley and Trowbridge also sell beautiful period fabrics. You can shop on their website, or check out their Facebook page.

The workshop was led by Janea Whitacre, who is the Mistress Milliner and Mantua Maker at Colonial Williamsburg. Over the course of the three day workshop, she taught each of the (approximately) dozen women in the workshop how to make a Regency pelisse from the ground up. We started by ‘cutting on the person’ (draping on a body, rather than a dress-form), and stitched everything using period techniques that have fallen out of modern dressmaking, but suddenly explain how it was possible for a skilled dressmaker to produce garments so quickly. Everything about period construction is centered around a single goal: sew the smallest number of seams possible, mostly by not sewing the same seam twice unless absolutely necessary.

Amy draping my bodice.

Sewing my bodice.

Melissa and I were very excited about our finished bodices!

Thanks Angela Burnley, for letting me use these photos!

With machines to help us, sewers today are rarely troubled by the idea of bag lining, where the same garment if made first of lining fabric, then of fashion fabric, and put together afterwards. But think how silly that would be if every seam had to be sewn by hand! You’d have to make the same garment twice! The period techniques we learned for lining are like magic tricks. You put your fabric together in a way that boggles the modern sewer’s mind, sew a single seam, and it all comes out stitched and lined! For example: did you know it’s possible to sew a lined sleeve with a single seam? You just fold the sleeve with the right sides together, fold the lining with the right sides together, stack the two pieces on top of each other, sew down the length of it once (though 4 thicknesses of fabric), turn the fabric right side out and, voilà! the lining is inside. The seam allowances are all going in one direction, but here’s the thing: who cares? When did it become more important to have seam allowances open than to sew efficiently?! The old finished product looks just as good, keeps the lining from twisting around inside the sleeve, and halves the sewing time. And it could be done on a machine, if you want. There’s literally no downside.

My Completed Sleeve

No need to worry about putting things in backwards when Melissa sets your sleeves right on you!

If you want to learn how to line a bodice in half the time, you’ll have to attend a workshop yourself, since Janea is a thousand times better at explaining in person with the real pieces in front of her than I could ever be trying to put everything in a single blog. I’m telling you: take one of these workshops, they are more than worth the price of admission and the travel time. The first couple of hours were worth the $165 I paid. B & T only have a couple of their workshops for this year up, but keep checking back.

But I suppose you want to see the concrete item I got out of this, and not just hear me geek out about all the tricks. So here you go:

Each of us brought our own inspiration images to the workshop, and I was working to reproduce this extant piece:

I’ve been wanting to try reproducing it for a while, and I’m so glad I didn’t get around to it until now.

When I was originally planning this project, I wanted to make it out of this silk from Renaissance Fabrics, but sadly, in the two intervening years, they ran out (shocking, I know). It’s incredibly difficult to find really interesting striped fabrics like this, and finding one that had stripes and florals was pretty much a pipe dream, but luckily, Renaissance also had a lovely cream, fawn and sky blue striped silk faille that worked very nicely. It even picks up  the colors of the original piece.

Most of my process shots are from after I returned from the workshop. As you can imagine, everything there was happening way too fast to get many pictures in. By the time I left, I had a completed bodice and the sleeves and skirt were set and pinned in place, ready to be attached. The bodice seams are all sewn by top-or-prick-stitching (I chose prick) through two layers of fabric and one of lining, then covering the seam on the inside with the other lining piece and quickly slip-stitching it into place. Since I wasn’t lining my skirt, I got to learn about a fun little thing called a mantua maker’s seam, which allows you to sew a fully finished seam like a french seam with just one row of stitching. The Fashionable Past has a quick tutorial here.

The first thing  I did when I got home was to sew the sleeves in place. Since the material is very thick and pulls hard against the pins, I basted it before doing the final prick-stitching. As you can see, the fullness is controlled by pleats, rather than gathering, since these are much easier to set on a person.

The skirt was attached the same way:

After that, I had to take a break for a while in order to finish the company dresses for the Jane Austen society AGM. You can read about Heather’s here, and Meredith’s here. When I got back to the pelisse, it was time to finish the front edges and hem.

The front bodice edges were finished by folding in the edges of both fabric and lining, then prick-stitching them together.

At this point, life got in the way again as I rushed to complete holiday gifts. But once the holidays were over, I could finally buckle down and finish this project, which was now spread out over three months.

Not unlike the project itself, this post is not getting away from me, so I’ll wrap it up here, and there will be a special 2nd edition of this post on Wednesday, where you’ll get to see collar, trimming, buttonholes and the finished product! Here’s a sneak peek:

See you then!

Hannah

Read Part 2!

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Miss Croghan’s Accessories, Part 1: Things Get Ruff

When I first started interpreting 1816, I loved pretty much every aspect of clothing (as I do in many eras) but there was one accessory I shook my head at. I laughed about it. I swore I would never wear it. You’ll see what I mean:

The Ruff. (These are, in order, an 1815 fashion plate from Costume Parisien, an 1815 fashion plate by John Bell and an 1815 sketch by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, one of my favorite portrait painters.)

I thought it was silly. Why would anyone want to make their neck wider? Or look like a disgruntled chicken fluffing her feathers?

But it says something about how fashion works that the longer I’ve been doing Regency, and the more images I look at, the more I like the ruff. It’s frilly and feminine, and it’s one of those details that is so beautifully, distinctly a part of its era. It can really give a period outfit that finishing touch that makes it seem like more than a costume.

And ruffs like these, inspired by Elizabethan fashion, stuck around though the 18-teens and into the ’20s. In 1822, when Ann Croghan wed Thomas Jesup, they were still fashionable in all shapes and sizes:

(Extant dress ca. 1818, 1822 La Belle Assemble Fashion Plate, 1822 Ackermann’s Repository Fashion Plate)

So I set out to make my  very own chemisette with attached ruff (a chemisette is a simple garment that fills in the neckline of a low-cut gown in order to make it more modest for use during the day). The nice part about this particular accessory is that when it has done its duty for the wedding, it can go into my regular 1816 wardrobe. I kept the ruff on the small side for 1822 in order to ensure that this is the case.

The basic structure of a chemisette is incredibly simple. The body has three pieces: one back piece and two front pieces (I believe they can also go the other way, with the opening in the back). The real fun and interest of a chemisette comes with the collar: plain, ruffled, lacy, embroidered, or full on ruff. Mine is made of cotton voile, so it is a bit sheer, but not overly so.

The only seams in the body are at the shoulders. Since there’s no lining, I made these french seams, meaning that I sewed a narrow seam with the wrong sides together, then flipped it around with right sides together and sewed a second seam that encased the raw edges. I flipped back the fabric edge for the second photo so you can see both the finished edge and the raw edge it is enclosing.

Then it’s time to hem, and hem, and hem. Every edge but the neck needs a hem. The bottom hem is slightly wider so that you can put a string though to secure it under the bustline.

The collar is tall, so that it can fit plenty of lacy goodness, with overlapping points in the center where it comes together. Like most collars, it is made of two identical pieces sewn together, which makes neat edges all around, and gives a bit of extra stability for attaching those ruffles.

Since the collar needs to fit snugly around my neck, the body of the chemiette had to be gathered into it, which I think adds another level of pretty detail. With the collar attached, the only thing left to do was the lace. I got a pretty simple cotton lace with a pattern of dots for it, since all those layers meant the pattern wouldn’t be very visible anyway. Plus the dots imitate the dotted Swiss dress fabric, which I enjoy.

Now the fun part! (Look at me accidentally taking pictures going every which way)

My chemisette and lace even got to come with me on a trip to my parent’s house in Michigan. (See that blue carpeting? Chicago O’Hare.)

Once the lace was all gathered and attached, I just had to add a couple of strategic hook and eyes and here it is:

I took pictures first without the dress, so you can see how the whole thing works. Next time I do one of these, I’ll get more lace and gather it more so that it really wants to stand out, but I think this is a nice not-too-ostentatious start to my ruff-wearing experience.

Here it is with the dress on.

Bonus picture: I made a corded petticoat last week (no blog post about that because there’s only so many pictures you can take of sewing 25 pieces of cord between two layers of fabric before everyone falls asleep), so here’s a picture of the dress with all its corresponding underthings in place.

The event is coming up quickly (only three weeks!), so it’s good to see things coming together. There’s still a wig and veil to complete, though! Don’t forget to come see it at Locust Grove on July 18th!

Hannah

The Wedding of Miss Croghan, Part 4: Finis

Deep breath. And. IT’S FINISHED! Exactly one month to the day after I started this crazy journey, Ann Croghan’s wedding gown is complete. As you could see in my last post, things were winding down last weekend. The skirt decoration was finished, the dress was shaped like a dress, the lining was in, but there was still a ways to go.

As you may remember from my first post about this project, the sleeves were inspired by these from an original 1822 wedding gown:

I had been putting them off for three weeks, but everything else was done, and and it was time to face the sleeves.

The first step was to cut out the pieces. The white piece is a bit larger than the blue so that it can get gathered in the center. I carefully drew and cut out the teardrop shapes so that the blue would show through.

But, of course, when you cut a bunch of holes in your fabric, you have to do something to keep it from falling apart, so I bound the edges of the slashes in blue.

While that was a long and fiddly task, the tricky part was doing the little button loops that contain the excess fabric between each set of slashes.

First I used the extra bias strips that didn’t go into binding the slashes and made little flat cords, like spaghetti straps.

Then I covered some little buttons I had lying around with more of the blue fabric.

I attached each button to one of the fabric cords to make a loop.

Once those were done, I just wrapped them through the slashes, secured the button, arranged the extra fabric how I liked it, and stitched them in place.

When the sleeve pieces were sitting on the table after I’d cut them out, Brandon walked by and asked “What are those football things?”

“Sleeves.”

“No they’re not.”

“Seriously. I promise. They will one day look like sleeves!”

So I set out to prove that they would indeed, someday look like sleeeves. The first step was to gather the lower part of the sleeve into the sleeve band, then to sew the underarm seam to form a ring. (No picture of that since I figured you’d seen enough pictures of me sewing a seam that could or could not be the one I was talking about).

And then to fold under the sleeve binding and stitch it in place to create a nice edge. See? Now they look like sleeves (sort of). It’s easy to forget how bizarre pattern pieces look unless you know what you’re looking at.

Here’s what I get for doing things out of the natural order. I had to wrestle with the entire heavy dress while I gathered the sleeves onto the bodice and stitched them in place. But look how pretty! The puffs are longer and the extra fabric in the center a bit less than in the inspiration, but I’ll take it!

But puffs weren’t the only part of the sleeves! I used the white fabric with no blue underneath to create the rest of the sleeve, so that it would be a little sheer, and stitched it to the inside of the sleeve band on the puff.

As we all know, every wedding dress could use more lace! So I added some at the cuff and sleeve band.

We’re down to the smallest finishing touches now!

Buttons and buttonholes.

Hemming the blue underskirt.

That’s it! With that final anticlimactic and interminable seam, I was finished! The height of the skirt back may need a bit of adjustment once I’ve completed my corded petticoat and tried it on, but here it is!

Once again, I couldn’t have done this without help from some fantastic ladies! I can’t wait to show you all the rest of the outfit as it comes together (or maybe I’ll make you wait until July to see it all together!). If you possibly can, don’t forget to come to the Locust Grove Historic Picnic on July 18th. You’ll get to see the dress in action at a period ceremony, plus lots of other fun stuff including dancing, a reading by the Kentucky Shakespeare Company and much more!

You can also read about the making of the chemisette! And the veil!

Thanks for watching!

Hannah

To see the entire finished ensemble, click here!