Bath Ball Beetlewing Bodice

Once again, it's been forever since I've posted! Sorry about that. I post updates a lot more frequently on my facebook page and my instagram, but all the finished dress diaries will still go here. =)

I've just finished making the bodice for my c. 1847-50 ball gown, which will be embellished with jewel beetle wings (called elytra) and worn to the annual Victorian Ball in Bath at the beginning of May. I am basing my gown on a couple of extant ones at the KCI and on some fashion plates.

First of all, here's my finished bodice, worn with a random 18th century petticoat over my corded petticoat for the full-skirted effect. It's hand-stitched in silk thread, made of cotton, and edged with figured silk organza. I draped the pattern on myself, with fitting help and photos courtesy of my good friend Emma. (Thank you!!)

Now for some inspiration images. First of all, a great, great many further images can be found on my pinboard for this project, including extant pieces, more fashion plates, patterns, etc.

The dress on the left is at the Kyoto Costume Institute; I'm not sure where the one on the right ended up.
The photo is from the Cora Ginsburg LLC catalogue, 2000, p. 23.

Now, there were a lot of potential ways to pleat the bodice, but I fell in love with this Worth 1867 ball gown (it's at the Royal Ontario Museum, where I spent a large amount of my childhood) and wondered whether the pleat style had been used earlier.

Unfortunately, the image link doesn't work anymore...

Of course there are many, many fan-fronted gowns in the 1840s and '50s, but they're usually caught back into a yoke at the neckline. However, I started to find a variety of gowns with a similar pleated or even cowl-neck front which started as a fan at the waist and then never got pulled back into a yoke. There are a lot of examples on my pinboard from the 1840s and '50s, but I'll copy one here from 1846:

A detail from the plate at left

February 1846, from the Met's digital collections

Of course, you'll notice that mine is pleated a lot more like the 1860s one, with defined pleats rather than rounded rolls. I tried to keep them rounded, but the cotton didn't want to support itself unless it was pressed into a pleat, and then they sort of got permanently pressed down as I stitched them onto the structural layer of the bodice. So there it is. I like how it looks and I'll live with the slight anachronism.

So on to the construction. I began with a sketch of the design, and a fitting over my new corset. The original pattern was modified from the 1840s bodice mockup I made for a different dress last year (it never got past mockup stage, and the fabric is still in Canada), which was done over my 1890s corset as that's all I had at the time. So it needed a bit of tweaking.

I built a full bodice, with cotton lining and a sheer cotton over-layer, and finished the neck edge with piping and silk habotai trim. I then laced my corset around my rolled-up pillow and pinned the bodice over it so that I could drape the pleated layer on top.

I stitched the pleats down over the foundational layer and then edged the neckline with a strip of figured silk organza. This organza also appears on my c. 1815 ball gown, and I have a lot left, so it will probably show up on everything for a while. It's gorgeous stuff though!

I also made some corded piping out of the silk organza, and used it to edge the bottom of the bodice. I then added a strip around the waist like a belt, which you see in quite a few fashion plates. I think it will help define the waist in a sea of frothy ivory.

I procrastinated forever on draping the sleeves, which ended up being kind of curved rectangle-trapezoid things. Not that difficult. =P I stitched the pleating invisibly from the underside and added a further detail in the organza. I'll also add some beetle wings to this detail when I get to the embroidery stage.









There are bones on each seam on the inside, wool-stuffed pads in the side-bust/armscye areas to prevent buckling, and a waist tape to relieve pressure on the outer fabric. The bodice closes with waaaay too many hooks and eyes up the back, and, as on period bodices, the eyes have been individually thread-wrapped in silk thread to hide them and help keep them from slipping open.

This serves as my entry for February: Tucks and Pleats for the HSF/HSM, so here is the HSF info:

What the item is: c. 1847-50 ballgown bodice. This is the first step in the ballgown I'm making for the Bath Victorian Ball in May, and it is based on extant beetlewing-embellished gowns from the late '40s to c. 1850, as well as a variety of fashion plates. I chose this style of gown both because beetlewings are wonderful and because the gowns tended to be made of cotton, rather than silk, which I can afford. smile emoticon

The Challenge: February - Tucks and Pleating (and, if I'm honest, January - Procrastination...I left it for way too long before drafting the sleeves. And they're basically curved rectangles.)

Fabric/Materials: Bodice lining is cotton twill. Bodice outer layers are cotton muslin. Gold trim is figured silk organza. Piping is the silk organza with a cotton core. Under-trim on the neckline is silk habotai. Wool batting (meant for spinning) quilted into cotton twill pads in the side-bust/underarm.

Pattern: draped by me, on me, based on period sources and extant bodices.

Year: c. 1847-50.

Notions: Hook and eye closures (so many of them...) individually thread-wrapped with silk thread; silk thread for the stitching; cotton cord to fill the piping; bones (some steel and some extra-thin cable ties); wool top/batting for the side-bust pads.

How historically accurate is it? The cable ties are not accurate, but they mimic very thin whalebone pretty well. The pleats should be a little softer and rounder for the '40s and '50s, but they creased when I was draping them and that seems to be permanent. There are a bunch of extant pleated ones from the '60s, so I'm calling it okay. One of the bones in the back of the bodice goes too high - it reaches up past the armscye - which was necessary to fix the buckling in that area. I should have interlined it in a stiffer glazed linen or cotton; I know for next time. The rest of the materials and construction methods are accurate according to my research, and the stitching has all been done by hand in silk thread. So maybe 80%?

Hours to complete: haaaaaaah...

First worn: Just for photos. Its first official outing will be at the ball in Bath in May.

Total cost: I think about £20 for all the cotton (including skirts). The bones and the organza were stash; I think the bones were originally about £7 total and the organza is negligible because I used so little of it. The cotton interlining was also stash, and was originally free (excess from a class project in my undergrad).

I will leave you with some closer photos of the finished bodice, and a shot of the beetle wings that will eventually be stitched all around the skirt hem. =)

1780s Stays: the Making Of

As promised, here is the blog post on the making of my new 1780s linen stays. I began draping the pattern on April 3, and finished building the final stays this past Tuesday, June 9th. A loose estimate suggests that I spent over 300 hours on these stays, including sourcing fabric, dyeing fabric, patterning, and stitching, but not including research. Next time it won't take quite so long, since I have the pattern and have now gone through the staymaking process twice.

My mannequin at school (alas, now dismantled and in another province; RIP) was perfectly padded out to my figure, and was one of my favourite things ever. I had made so many things from it over the two years I had it that I knew exactly what to expect from it (eg, it has narrower shoulders than I do) and how patterns made from it will fit me, and this allowed me to alter the draped pattern into an historical silhouette (eg, raised bustline, molded waist) without messing with the mannequin itself. Thus, I was able to drape my stays pattern directly on "my body," rather than starting with someone else's draft.

For those who have not draped foundation garments before, I will write a detailed description of how I went about it. I highly recommend it, if you think it's something you want to try!

I started by pulling up photos of a number of extant museum garments on my phone and arraying my Norah Waugh and Jill Salen books around me on the table, and with these as references I simply drew my pattern lines on the mannequin. You will note a number of guidelines in these photos, and for those who have not draped in the past I will identify some of them: in blue I have my natural waist, a high v-back neckline (my 1770s caraco), a much lower v-back (left over as reference from the drape of my regency gown), and a raised bustline for historical garments. In green are the stays lines, a number of lines left over from my regency ball gown bodice (again, as reference, as I know where those lines sit on my body in the final garment), a raised bustline reference right at center front, and a lowered waistline.

I used a heavy cotton twill to trace off the pattern, rather than regular factory cotton, because this allowed me to ensure the smooth lines and relatively flat pieces necessary for stays (factory cotton is somewhat prone to molding and stretching to curves on the mannequin, which boned linen buckram will not do!).

I cut out 4 of every pattern piece and sandwiched two pieces of posterboard between two layers of twill to make my mockup. I stitched in one cable tie per panel, and used lacing strips to try it on and fit it. You can see this mockup beside the finished stays above. This method worked very well, and was a lot faster than stitching all the boning channels into a fabric mockup and trying to do it the traditional way! With the mockup finished, I made the relevant alterations to the pattern and traced it out into a final version.

(Needless to say, I would request that no one use this pattern without my permission)

You'll notice that I put tons of balance marks, or notches, into my patterns. I find that this is very simple to do as you drape a pattern, and makes a huge difference when you're trying to match floppy bias edges, so I try to put in as many as is reasonable.

I cut the pieces out of a double layer of outer linen and a structural layer of linen buckram. I had dyed the outer linen a sort of tea brown using quebracho, a natural bark dye. It's hard to judge what colour quebracho is going to dye, and based on my last batch I had hoped for it to be a bit more pink, but the colour it turned is a good 18thC stays colour so I'll live with it. =)

With the pieces cut and all layers sandwiched together, I drew out all the boning channels on the back of each buckram piece and pinned the lines through to the right side of the dyed linen. Then, piece by piece, I began backstitching the boning channels using white linen thread. It took me nine days to do the ten pattern pieces.

I actually had the double of each of these done too, but they didn't fit in the instagram photo. =P

Now, normally this would be the point at which the bones would be inserted, while each piece is still separate from the others. However, this would mean that the pieces would be rigid and uncooperative as I tried to butt-and-whip them together along the seams. Since I have tendonitis in one of my wrists (the left one - my fabric-wrangling hand, not my stitching hand, from exactly these sorts of things), I decided that it would be wiser to whip the seams together first and bone them afterwards.

I then put in the eyelets (or rather, most of the eyelets, as I decided later on to add more in the front so that I could ladder-lace instead of spiral lace - more on that later) and began to insert bones. I was using 1/4" halved round reed from Burnley and Trowbridge. I had planned to soak or steam it to make it cooperate, but in the end all I had to do was slide two into each channel at one time and all but the most sharply curved evened each other out.

I did find the reed somewhat brittle and I broke a few, but once they were all inserted they seemed sturdy enough. That said, I would recommend reed for projects where the bones are close enough together to support each other; bones which sit more than an inch apart from others are prone to snapping.

After the bones were in, I covered the seams with 1/4" plain weave linen tape, also from B&T, which I had dyed dark blue in a vat of natural indigo. I ladder-stitched it down using silk thread dyed in the same vat.

Now, I should add in a note here about the indigo seam coverings. By rights they should be white or tan, since these stays are intended to be worn in Virginia. In Europe, seam coverings were all sorts of fun colours - for instance, this pair from the V&A:

You can kind of see the blue silk tapes here; if you go to the link above and zoom in it's easier to see.

Or this pair, allegedly from France although I can't find the institution:

But in America, seam coverings don't seem to have been quite as changeable. There's this pair from Vermont, which has indigo and white seam coverings, but since the outer fabric of the stays is indigo as well it's quite a different situation and therefore not evidence for my use of indigo.

I really like how the indigo looks, so I'm going to keep it for now. But if it looks like it might be problematic in Williamsburg this summer, I may just cover the indigo tapes with white ones and then take them off again later.

But back to the story.

Staring at the boned and taped stays, I realized that while I had set up the center front eyelets for spiral lacing, most of the originals had ladder lacing - and I liked the look of the latter (haha pun) much better. To my own chagrin and despair, the part of my brain that is relentlessly perfectionist decided that I was going to add 14 more eyelets, and there was nothing I could do but comply. Thus, the front went from this...

...To this

Much better. Although I didn't stick with the blue ribbon in the end. It just didn't quite match.

Now it was time for binding. I had ivory pigskin left over from my first set of stays, and as it turned out I had *just* enough to do everything I wanted to on this pair. I used ~1" strips to bind the edges, sewing them first upside-down on the front of the stays and then pulling them to the back. The main thought in my head as I did this was "Whyyyyyyy did I put 8 tabs per side on these things?????"

As seen on extant stays where the binding has come off, the edges of the stays are whip-stitched first for stability, and then the binding is stitched 1/8" from the edge. I stitched the binding on using backstitch, but on each corner of my tabs I put a single whipstitch to hold the bones there in place, as they liked to swing out sideways from the tapered tabs.

At this point I also switched to the ivory ribbon, which is more correct for America (again, in Europe you find coloured silk ribbons in front, but America seems to have largely kept to white and ivory).

I next added the eyelet guards to the back lacing, to avoid wear on the eyelets from tightening the stays, and armpit guards to avoid sweat damage (important when I'll be wearing them daily in July and August with no air conditioning!), both using the same pigskin as for the binding. The eyelet guards are simply a matter of winding a 1/4" strip of leather twice through each eyelet so that it protects about 2/3 of the whipstitches where the lace is prone to rubbing. The armpit guards get stretched over the binding from front point to back point, stitched close up to the binding, and then tacked down at the bottom edge between the bones.

Please excuse the awful lighting on this one; it was very late at night.

 Finally it was time to line them. Each tab must be lined separately (straps get lined separately, too, if you have them), and then the main body of the stays gets lined in a single piece. This method is seen on almost every pair of extant stays, because it allows the main lining to be taken out to be washed without removing all the tab linings, which are fiddly and take forever to stitch in. Mine took about 4 days, because I was working extra shifts at my jobs and was having trouble finding time/motivating myself to stitch endless tabs when I got home.

You'll notice in this photo of the inside that all the seam allowances have been tacked down using large whip stitches; this happens before you butt and whip the main pieces together if you've boned the pieces first, and after the stays are boned if you're doing it in the same slightly rearranged order as I did. Additionally, you can see here that my outer linen doesn't extend all the way under the eyelets as it should. I thought I'd left enough excess when I cut the pieces out, but I was wrong. =( Luckily, the buckram is strong enough to make up for this blunder.

After the tabs were lined, I lined the main body of the stays, and put the ivory ribbon back in, and they were done!

You'll notice that these stays have no straps. I was considering adding the tape straps that criss-cross in the back and get hooked at the front waist, but to be honest I don't think I need them. I find that my stays ride up and need help staying down, rather than getting pushed down and needing assistance to stay up (largely, I think, because I have a smaller bust and thus have nothing to put weight on the top of the stays). There are many extant examples which seem to have no straps and to never have had any straps, and thus I feel justified in leaving them off. They give me headaches and inevitably show at the neckline of my jackets, anyways, so why bother?

For a photodump of photos of the finished stays, go to my last blog post, here. I'm hoping to do a photoshoot soon to get some better shots; my cellphone selfies don't really do it justice. But you get the idea. =)

Thanks so much for reading! I hope that this was helpful in some way to somebody. If you have any questions about my construction methods, research, material sources, or anything else, please do not hesitate to ask and I'll do my best to answer!

HSF 5: Practicality, or, The Stays are Finally Done

Yaaaayyyy! Stays are done.

I made these for my two month internship in Colonial Williamsburg, so they needed to be comfortable, light, and cool: thus, perfect for the Practicality challenge (although they're slightly late - I ended up working two jobs and these took a back seat. whoops). I made them of linen and reed to keep them light and August-proof, and kept them as skeletal as possible. They also needed to be as accurate as I could make them (both for my own satisfaction and to wear them as an interpreter), and I therefore used period techniques and all hand-construction. The result is an incredibly comfortable pair of stays - I honestly forgot that I was wearing them for a while this afternoon! Very pleased with how these turned out.

I will write up a whole making-of post soon, but for now I'm just going to photodump. So let it commence.


Just the facts:

The Challenge: May - Practicality

Fabric: all 100% linen. I dyed the outside stuff with quebracho (a natural bark dye), the inner layer is linen buckram, and the lining is just a plain bleached linen. It is sewn with linen thread, and the seam tapes are indigo-dyed linen. So basically they're made of linen, with some leather, reed, and blood thrown in for good measure.

Pattern: I draped it on my mannequin based on extant examples, and then cleaned up the resulting pattern with reference to various drafts made from museum pairs (Norah Waugh, Jill Salen, etc). After a mockup I made a final draft, which will now be my working stays pattern from which to draft future pairs. I highly recommend doing this if you have a mannequin on hand. And posterboard is great for stays mockups - flexible enough for the curves, and if you stitch in one cable tie per panel it holds shape perfectly.

Year: about 1780-85.

Notions: 1/4" reed boning (2 per channel); linen plain-weave 1/4" tape, which I dumped in an indigo vat, to cover the seams (and the same, undyed, for lacing the back); ivory silk ribbon for the front; pigskin for the binding, armpit guards, and eyelet guards.

How historically accurate is it? I am tempted to say that these are as accurate as I can possibly get right now, but I will lower the rating to about 95% because the indigo tapes on otherwise very plain stays are plausible but not directly documentable, and should probably have been white. I do have some evidence for them; just not tons.

Hours to complete: including sourcing fabric, dyeing fabric, and hand-stitching, well over 300.

First worn: just now, for photos.

Total cost: not that much, actually. All the linen was stash fabric except for the buckram, and I only needed a yard for that. Reed boning isn't too expensive, the pigskin was leftover from my last pair of stays, and the silk ribbon came to about $3. The dyes cost a bit, but I had to buy them for a class anyways. Altogether this probably ran me around $50 in new materials. Not sure what the stashed bits cost anymore.

I love how swoopy they turned out!

This is as close as I can get to a back view; sorry. =P

After only a couple of hours of wear, they already have some shape-memory.

The bustline is cut quite low, as seen in a few period examples. I wasn't sure how this would work with my small bust, but it seems to have actually turned out really well.

Please excuse the horrible quality of these selfies. When I can find someone to take proper photos for me, I will!

A more complete blog post will be coming soon, as I have waaaaaay too many construction photos for these. =D

HSF March: Stashbusting - 18th Century Knitted Mitts

This one was actually done about two weeks ago - well inside the challenge deadline - but I was so preoccupied with getting the corset done that I never took photos or posted about it.

For March's challenge, stashbusting, I decided to finally make the 18th century mitts I'd been planning for so long. I do still plan to make bias-cut silk ones with embroidered finger-triangles, but for now I just needed something to cover my arms with the short-sleeved jackets. (On a side note: there's a weird rumor floating around the non-costuming part of the internet that mitts were for propriety, like covering Victorian ankles. I don't even know where to start with that one.)

ta-da

 Anyways, a couple of years ago my mom gave me a beautiful ivory cashmere sweater that had some holes in it because she thought I might be able to use the lace edging. I do plan to use that, too, but my first thought was actually that I could use the sleeves to make mitts.

There are many 18th century and early 19th century examples of knitted mitts, both in advertisements and in the form of extant examples:

1787, made of knitted linen thread.
http://web.archive.org/web/20080226054038/http:/www.antique-lace.com/date1/2432/2432.htm

Late 18th or early 19th century, French, silk knit
http://www.mfa.org/collections/object/pair-of-mitts-46496

Advertisements list wool, silk, and linen as possible materials for knitted mitts, and women might either purchase fine pairs or knit their own. Homemade knitted mitts were knit in the round, but my research suggests that some examples made for sale were frame-knit and seamed. Additionally, some retailers advertised that they specialized in turning old stockings (presumably those with worn-out heels and toes) into mitts (I have since lost the advertisement proclaiming this, but I have been informed by others that a reference to the same may be found in Linda Baumgarten's What Clothes Reveal, 2012. As I do not own this book, I cannot confirm whether this is true, nor provide a proper reference).

My own mitts are hand-stitched together from pieces cut from the original cashmere sleeves, and the edges are whip-bound in silk floss. Cashmere, although available by the 18th century in the form of 'Kashmir' shawls, would not have been made into mitts. Additonally, mine are a bit workaday and cobbled-together for such a fine material (as compared with, for instance, the pink silk ones above). But they're shockingly warm for such a flimsy thing, and they look right, so for now they'll do.

The Challenge: March - Stashbusting
Fabric: frameknit cashmere sweater, silk floss (both from my stash)
Pattern: my arm
Year: late 18th century (early 19th century versions don't often have the finger triangles)
Notions: none
How historically accurate is it? Eh, maybe 65-70%? I'm reasonably sure that frame-knit mitts of fine cream or ivory wool are period, and extant examples show edges occasionally bound in silk. However, mine are made of cashmere, which was not yet available in this form, and my silk edging isn't quite the same as that seen on extant mitts.
Hours to complete: 4 or 5, with the edge-whipping and blocking
First worn: around my house when I'm cold
Total cost: $0, right now. A few years ago the silk floss cost about $25, and I have no idea what my mom paid for the sweater originally.

A couple more photos:

So there you have it! Somehow I managed to be late on this, even though I finished it over my March Break vacation. Sigh. And now I'm plunging into my 1770s stays, which I highly doubt will be done by the April challenge due date. Oh well. =)