Looking back at 2016 and forward at 2017

There is much to say about what happened in the world in 2016, but here I will keep away from that and just sum up my costuming year of  2016. As I had decided that I was more inspired by steampunk and cosplay than by historical, I did not take part in Historical Sew Monthly this year.

My first big project turned out to be historical. It was not at all planned, but some friends of my was so enthusiastic about the Natural form era that I could not resist it, and as usual, after looking at fashion plates I was sold. I landed in 1876. I had to do quite some work to figure out the skirt supports, as it was a new era for me. It also was a bit tricky as 1876 had a transition fashion between the bustle and the slim natural form. When I started at the actual dress, an injured toe at a vacation meant that all the hand finished trim was done a lot sooner (and in larger amounts) than expected.

After this very feminine dress, I went to menswear steampunk, inspired by English 1500's gowns and the BBC series Wolf Hall. Here is my steampunk Tudor crossover. I made the gown and hat, and decorated the bag.

I also made my first cosplay: a Star Trek Voyager uniform. I was not attempting to have every seam and fabric exactly as in the series, but I am happy with the overall look. As a big fan of Captain Janeway in Voyager, I have wanted a uniform like this for a long time! Here shown cross-nerding (yes, I do like to make up new words!) with a Doctor Who Tardis at NärCon in Linköping. (At which I felt a bit old - some of the participants was probably not even born when Star Trek Voyager was first aired...)

 Then, more steampunk: the ghost detection backpack. It was both challenging, scary and fun to work with hard materials and screws and glue instead of fabric and thread, but the box still has not collapsed, so I guess it worked out :-) I worked quite a lot on this leading up to the steampunk convention in Gothenburg in the beginning of November.

 

After the steampunk convention, I had a lot to do at work, so I was too tired to do any sewing at all. Now, I am slowly beginning to get my inspiration back. I have unusually few plans for next year thou. I will most likely be going to another steampunk convention, so I want something new to wear for then. I am currently planning a crinoline gown that is half forest fairy, half mechanical. We will see later how the turns out. I am currently in the phase when the gown is so amazing in my head that I am afraid to begin sewing and see it with the inevitable flaws of reality.

The not so amazing drawing of the forest mechanical gown, along with cryptic annotations in Swedish. And weird arms. I am not that good at drawing, but I think I draw arms even worse than the rest of it. 

 Except for the forest mechanical dress, I have no ideas at all. I should make myself like two or three historically inspired blouses for modern wear, as I never find anything I like in the stores, but that kind of sewing never seems to happen - there is always a more inspiring costume up ahead. Let's see what actually happens in 2017! 

1876 dress photo session

I May, I posted about my 1876 afternoon dress. Since then, I have made a hat to wear with it, and made another photo shot. Since I am so happy about how the pictures turned out, here they are - the 1876 dress, now decently worn with hat and gloves! The pictures are taken at Lambohovs Säteri, just a kilometre from were I live.

I also got some less dignified pictures - this is what it looks like when you bike to the location (wearing chemise and corset under normal trousers and jacket, and a flimsy hat instead of a biking helmet) and then dress on the spot... :-)

"How do I put on this mess of a skirt?"

"Without dignity! Probably shouldn't have put the hat on first..."

As always, thanks to Olof for photographing!

1876 afternoon dress

I have not been posting much for a while, and the reason for that is that I have been busy hand sewing trim on the 1876 dress - not much to post about. But last Saturday I got a chance to use it my parents birthday party at a manor, so I increased speed a bit and managed to finish it in time - even one day ahead! Here is a post about the construction of the overskirt. There is not much to say about skirt and bodice construction, so here I will just post pictures of the result, taken at the beautiful Kohlswa Herrgård, a small manor close to where I grew up. Also I will give the facts about it as for HSM. 

As always, big thanks to Olof for patient and skill-full photographing! And please disregard that I am outside without hat and gloves - how improper of me!

Inside...

 And outside.

Close up of overskirt, back.

I just had to add some bows.

Crocheted trim with hand made tassels (I think I made about a hundred...)

With my parents. Yvonne wears her Gagnef, Dalecarlia, folk costume.

We also got a tour of the old orangery, which was remade into a suite, in a mixed modern/old-ish style. As decoration, I found an old book, which turned out to be from exactly the year my dress is pretending to be, 1876! It is a collection of magazines, with stories, travel reports, poems, and the like. Of course we had to take a picture of me reading something "contemporary".

I really like this dress! I feel elegant, and the train was not as annoying as I had imagined. (I still wouldn't wear this dress to any crowded event thou - even on this quiet event two people stepped on the train. We are obviously not used to there being trains on clothes nowadays...)

 HSM facts:

What is it?  1876 afternoon dress

The Challenge: no 5, Holes.
Why does it fit this challenge?  I admit to stretching it a bit here. There is a crocheted trim on the skirt, which is made in a lattice pattern, so there is holes, but they can hardly be said to be a prominent feature of this dress. The trim turned out to be more discreet than I would have preferred - I should have made it in a contrasting color, not the color of the fabric beneath.

There is also a "hole"  on the over skirt where the red fabric shows through - formed not by cutting but by the adjacent fabric pieces. I find that a interesting feature of this particular time period , how there are so many ways of making an over skirt.

What time is it? Will work for 1876-1879. It is typical for the transition between early bustle and natural form, with there being still some volume at the skirt in the back, but a slim front.

Fabric? Wool blend for skirt and bodice,  red polyester brocade upholstery fabrics for trim, small piece of cotton velvet for cuff, white cotton for neck and wrist "ruff".

Notions: metal buttons for cuffs. Hooks and eyes.


Pattern: Bodice is Truly Victorian Cuirass Bodice, modified to fit without a large bustle and with another neckline. Skirt is from Fashions of the Gilded Age. Overskirt draped by me. 

How historically accurate is it? Well, fabric should have been silk for a dress like this. For bodices closing at front like this one, buttons seems to have been used on the majority of garments at this time, not hooks and eyes like I used. I think the look is pretty good thou - the elements of trim (including the diagonal "sash" at the bodice) are taken from different fashion plates and combined.
The colour combination is not typical, but it existed. I have seen a few fashion plates with dark blue fabric and red trim, but it is not common. It seems to have been much more common to either use one base color and then a trim of a similar colour but lighter or darker shade (like dark and light blue), or a soft base color with a vibrant accent of another colour, like grey with red. I probably will do a separate post about the preferred colors of this time period later...

Total cost: something like 30-35 EUR. 

Hours to complete? A lot, I would guess 50+. The basic bodice and skirt would only have been a few hours each, but making and hand sewing on all the trim took a while. Just making all the tassels for the trim, and crocheting the trim, would have been 10+ hours. 

First worn? At my parents birthday celebration last Saturday. (no-one else was historically dressed, but I could not resist the chance to wear it at a festive occasion in a beautiful old manor.)

How did I research this? The skirt support has a post of its own. The dress: mainly by looking at fashion plates and photos of extant garments. I also found this post about the so called "parasol pockets" of 1875-1876, which most likely were just decorative. I will have to add a decorative pocket to my skirt sometime, I think.

Constructing the 1876 overskirt

As I started my 1876 dress, I was a bit baffled by the overskirts. They seemed so elaborate and they all looked quite different - how to start? As I started, it turned out to be not so difficult after all. Here is how my overskirt looked step by step as I added pieces to the overskirt. 

The finished dress will get a post of its own soon, with lots of pictures from photo session at Kohlswa Herrgård, a manor close to where I grew up.

Of course, the real process was way more messy than it looks here, with cutting toile pieces, and experimenting with both them and the actual pieces. This is the pieces I ended up using. 

The front overskirt is almost rectangular, with just small darts at waist.  

And for the back, three smaller pieces.

First, the not quite finished bodice and skirt, without any overskirt pieces.

With front overskirt added:

Added the blue back pieces: 

And with the red: 

I then decided it looked too flat and well ordered while the overskirts of the time seemed more draped and gathered. I tried to add some more gathers. Experimenting out at my dress form:

Finally, it ended up like this (a sneak peak from the photo session). I would have preferred it even more draped,  but the blue was too soft and the red too stiff, so this is what I ended up will. I am pretty satisfied anyway. (I just had to add some bows as well, and there might be even more bows added the next time I use it... )

 

Early natural form transitional skirt support

This is a quite long post. In short, it is about my research about what types of skirt supports and petticoats that could have been worn under a trained 1876 skirt - a transitional year between the very full skirts of early bustle era and the  narrow natural form.

How to get this shape of skirt, that is the question of this post.

Introduction

Somehow, my first historical sewing project of the year turned out to be an early natural form dress. Two months ago I did not even like natural form, but all it took to change my mind was an enthusiastic friend showing some pictures :-) As I want to do the transition between "late early bustle" and early natural form years, ca 1876, I have been thinking a lot about petticoats, crinolines and bustles. I could even go so far as saying I have been a bit obsessed by skirt supports lately... As usual for me, I concentrate on the fashion of those wealthy enough to follow the latest fashion.

Terminology:

Before I start properly, I will define some of the terms I intend to use. By structural support, I will be meaning any kind of skirt support that either has boning in it or serves only to add volume. This includes for example boned bustles small and large, crinolines, and the smaller ruffled horse-hair bustles. Petticoats on the other hand could add a quite considerable amount of support if they have ruffles, cording, tucks, is heavily starched, or some other trick used historically, but they are still basically a skirt. (Petticoats with built-in boned bustles will be structural support, for this post...)

The challenge

Transition periods in clothing are interesting but tricky. Nothing is as clear as for the typical dresses of an era.
For early bustle period, there is the typical bustle dress, and good patterns are available for bustles and petticoats. 

Day dress with the big bustle skirt 1870-72

1870's bustle (from the Met)

1870's bustle

For the narrower form of natural form, the only support needed would probably be a petticoat with lots of ruffles (and maybe a small tournure), or a slimmer bustle with small horse-hair ruffles 

1879 dresses from La Mode Illustre

1881 dresses from magazine "the Queen"

A slim 1882 petticoat with ruffles

Early 1880's horse-hair bustle skirt (from the Met)

 But in between? What happened to the bustle between these two extremes, as the skirt narrowed, and how fast did it happen? The shape I am aiming for is like in these fashion plates from 1876-1877.

Little addition at hips, quite a lot volume that needs support at knee height, and a train that needs some volume and protection. The question does not get easier by the fact that the choice of a structured skirt support (bustle, crinoline, ...) and choice of petticoat is by no means independent. For full blown bustle dress, you'd obviously need a bustle, but for smaller fashions, the same shape could most likely be achieved either with some structured support and a plainer petticoat, or by using petticoats with lots of volume.

Method 

In trying to figure this out, I have been reading blogs and webpages of other people making natural form underskirts, and I have been looking at fashion plates, advertisements from the period, and pictures of extant garments.

Other people's work

Searching and asking, I found some other people had been doing the same.
I will not put their pictures here, but follow the links to see their great work!
Historical Sewing made an 1876 trained and ruffled petticoat with corded ruffles, and made a good tutorial.
The Modern Mantua-Maker made a full set of underwear for first half of natural form era, including petticoat with ruffled train and a boned skirt support. 
There is the Truly Victorian 1879 Petticoat with Detachable Train.
And Yesterday's Thimble has a good tutorial for an 1876 Petticoat with train. 

Period options

 Looking mostly at advertisements from the time, I found a number of options, depending on how much support you need and where you need it (hip, thigh, knee or ankle height). 

Petticoats

Petticoats with more or less ruffles:

1876, from the Met

Petticoats From Demorest 1877-1878

Petticoats from Buttericks 1878

Trained Petticoat—Harpers Bazar, 1876

Bustles

1876 bustles from The Ladies's treasury

1876 petticoats and petticoats+corset cover, with built in bustle, from Le Moniteur De La Mode

Crinoline like type

A skirt support from a period source, reprinted in Fashion of the Gilded Age

A number of hoopskirts and tornures, 1883.

The latest picture is from 1883, a bit later than mine, but it is not improbable that this variations have been around earlier as well. At the least, it illustrates how many sorts of skirt supports that were available at the same time.

My conclusions

From reading other peoples work and looking at period information, I got the conclusion that just one petticoat would not be enough but that several probably could work. That meant that the choice was either to make at least two petticoats, both with lots of ruffles, or making a structured support and get away with a plainer petticoat, with only enough volume to hide the boning of the structured support. From what I could see from my advertisements, both options could be plausible. Comfort spoke for the second alternative. I find padding with petticoats to be a lot heavier and warmer than using a crinoline/bustle to get the same volume. Also, laziness did - I think it will take me less time and energy to make structured support+petticoat, than it would take to make several petticoats with lots of ruffles.

After way too much thinking (obsessing?), I chose to base my work on this one:

 It has some support all the way down, including some for the train, which means minimal need for petticoats with heaps of flounces. For petticoat, I chose a simple one with only one ruffle, and gathers in the back to control the amount of fabric. It is based on this one, and very similar to the one on Yesterdays Thimble:

I made mine with a longer train, to support and protect the train of my skirt. I decided I did not need the versatility of a floor-length petticoat with a separate button-on  train.

Limitations of this work

I have not read any text sources, only looked at photographs and pictures of structured supports and petticoats. This means that I have no period information on how thay were actually worn and which combination of support and petticoats that would have been common, only own conclusions. Also, I have never handled a petticoat properly made to give lots of support (for example a starched one with lots of ruffles and cording). Thus, I do not know for sure how much support they actually gives - I might be underestimating them.

In next post, there will be pictures of my bustle and petticoat!