18th century jacket – Sew through time

With the current corona lock down I’ve been enjoying wearing my 18th century middle class jacket and petticoat for walks much more than my normal clothes. So that got me thinking that maybe I should make an upper class or more fashionable ladies walking attire also to have more variety. That sent me down a pinterest rabbit hole of riding habits and redingotes, so that now I’m pretty much bursting with 18th century sewing ideas when I really should be sewing 1890s and edwarian! Well this ended with me deciding that I just had to make one now! I have a lovely white cotton velvet I found a few months ago when thrifting so I wanted to make something out of it first but I will have to visit this subject more later with other styles. So these ended up being my inspiration images:

I knew I wouldn’t want it full length because it being white that would take away quite a bit of the practicalaty aspect, atleast for forest walks. As I searched pattern ideas I came across this lovely hybrid polonaise thing and since I love the polonaise and think this is what the black velvet jacket in the painting is I went for it.

My version has a straight edge on the collar and is based off the collar in the pattern of fashion 1 1780s van dyked round gown. Also my sleeves are my own creation that changed along the way to a cuffed style. Starting out I had no idea what I’d use for the petticoat but looking at those pinterest pictures I liked the combo of white and purple though I normally steer clear of anything purple. I had a bolt of new old stock purple wool that I’m also using for my son’s new 18th c suit so I desided to use that for the petticoat. The collar needed to be lined as the underside of velvet is not so nice looking so I went for a contrasting collar lined with the velvet and covered buttons so that lead to it being logical to have contrasting cuffs too. I’m not sure at all if they are constructed in any accurate way because I still kept the slits from the sleeves in the painting along with the cuffs.

All in all I’m happy with how it came out other than that collar. The patterns of fashion one has a drawstring to pull in the edge in and then it is pinned to the top of the gown. I liked the idea of it but probably because the velvet underside is a bit stiff it doesn’t draw in as smooth as I’d like and the pins work their way out of it easily so I think I’ll go back and whip in on in the front gathering it to fit the neck. The other thing is I’ll need to find a ribbon for looping onto the buttons as with the forward thrust of the style the hooks and eyes gape a bit at the top despite the boning at the the center front seams.

and now for the goodies! guts pictures (sorry for the quality I forgot to charge the proper camera):

The Lining is my basic italian gown pattern, I still need to turn and hem the center back pieces and fell the velvet down to the pleats. sleeves are lined with kids old bedsheets, the bodice with an old linen towel

here you can see the pleats at the sides that are just top stitched down

All seams are felled down separately to reduce bulk and the back pleats are whipped together at the top to keep the velvet from shedding

I Think I need to still make the lace tucker from the portrait for this at some point and my hat still needs work, this was just quickly done the morning of our walk. Now I’ll leave you with the picture galore!

Till next time!

xxx

I really like how my hair turned out for these

Most of my historical clothing tends to be more high fashion fancy looks, mostly beacause I do costuming not really historical renacting. Or atleast I haven’t done any renacting but who knows what the future will bring… but I have no current plans on doing it. The thing that really got me originally hooked on 18th centure though is how wearable the clothes are even in modern life, were as my teenage fantasy of a gothic bustle gown is’t very practical. So I have wanted for sometime to do a easy to wear more lower class outfit, something that could transition into my everyday closet aswell. I started this project during the christmas holidays as a quick sew but then the fit was off and other projects that were on a deadline pushed this one to the side. Then corona came along and all of a sudden there were no deadlines, so great time to finish this project!

The jacket is is wool lined in blue linen and the petticoat a wool twill that I didn’t quite have enough of so the back is pieced at the top with the linen I used for the jacket lining. It actually adds a nice bit of fullness and along with my natural lower body shape gives me a great siluette without any padding.

the fabrics are connected with a mantua makers seam

the linen piece is about 4 inches long and the fabric was slightly more narrow that the wool so there is also a bit of width pieced

The front of the petticoat is pleated regularly and on both pieces the linen waist tapes are sewn to the underside of the petticoat. The side seams being selvage edges are just running backstitched together untill the pocket slits.

For the jacket I thought I’d take the easy lazy route and used the jp ryan jackets pattern instead of drafting my own. I made the 1760s version as I liked the legth and the stomacker but omitted the cuffs to make it work better with the slimmer sleeve fashions of the 70s.

Well it turned out once again to actually not be any quicker as the pattern is made for machine sewing and has built in seam allowance that is just way too wide when you hand sew with the english stitch. If you aren’t familiar with this stitch I highly recommend it for any seams were there is a lining and fashion fabric as it seams and finishes the edges on of all layers in one go. Since I was being lazy I didn’t bother with a mock up, I mean it was a stomacer in the front, it’s easy to adjust, what could go wrong!? Well turns out that the one thing since I already had cut the straps separate to avoid fit issues the only thing that could really go badly wrong was the back fit and waist. They both did go wrong. So after ripping my seams at the correct places, cutting it down and resewing it finally was done!

I love the amount of skirt flare in this pattern

the sleeve edges are left raw as was typical for the era

I did two photoshoots with this outfit, one Outlander inspired as the jacket wool reminds me of Claire’s style and the books really inspired me to actually make an 18th century outfit in the first place. In the other pictures I tried for an authentic look but I’ll leave it to you to judge how well I succeeded in that. The apron was a true seed sewing project done in an hour and a half just before the photoshoot and is made out of the same linen as the lining and the top bit of the petticoat. In both pictures I’m wearing my 1770’s to 80’s stays, shift, stockings, garters and one underpetticoat underneath the outfit, no extra padding, though in the outlander ones I’m wering my thicker flannel under petti as it was near freezing that day and in the more authentic ones a thinner though still rather hefty linen one as it was a wamer spring day.

p.s. if you spot the shoes in either pictures ignore them, I was planning on ordering a more practical everyday pair of 18th century shoes this spring before this happened as my only pair are white but now it’ll have to wait for things to get back to normal.

Here are the middling sort or what we would call today middle class pictures: