Last time I made an 18th century outfit it was for halloween but I wanted to still make it fairly historically accurate to be able to wear it at events also. Then I seriously under estimated how much time goes into these outfits and made everything: shift, stays, under petticoat, split rump, petticoat and the caraco jacket in a week. I had no time to make a proper pocket so just cut out my fabric pieces, machine sewed it into pocket with raw edges and whipped it onto a bias tape and went with that! It worked for that one night. So making my second 18th century outfit and my first gown, this time hand sewing it I knew I wanted a proper pocket. At first I was looking at extant pieces for inspiration and was thinking of copying one. trrying do deside on the pattern I figured since I don’t actually reenact, it never gets shown to any public as education, my pocket doesn’t actually need to be completely accurate so I went wild with the design. It’s all hand sewn and hand embroidered using stitches that were used at the time though. I used the book 18th century embroidery techniques as my guide for accurate stitches. https://www.amazon.com/18th-Century-Embroidery-Techniques-Marsh/dp/1861084765
Here is a picture of that very first 18th century look for Halloween. All in all I think it turned out quite good though the hair is a bit wild
Since I was doing a historically accurate Belle this time around I thought maybe I could use the movie for inspiration. After musing it over for a few days I settled on the stained glass design of beauty and the beast with some more 18th century flower vines framing it. I ripped out that previous quick and dirty pocket made from an old linen tablecloth I thrifted. I drew the design (with a pencil because I’m lazy) on the back piece that didn’t have the pocket slit cut open and started embroidering.
I drew the picture free hand from this picture on my phone and used it as my guide for the details
The actual embroidering took me 10 days, then sewing the pocket, meaning I took more time making my pocket than I did my quilted petticoat! 😀
I first did the outlines and then filled the people out mostly with a satin stitch it felt like Belle’s dress took forever but Beast’s jacket took longer as it was too big of a space for the satin stitch. I forget the name of this stitch I used here thoughFinally all the embroidery done! You can kind of see the outlines of 2 extra flowers I had drawn out but decided to leave out from the finished work. The bottom rose ofcourse is the one beast received from the enchantress, the rest is just freehand floral design based on what I saw on the original onesThe fabric is doubled for the front so that the back of the embroidery is protected and hopefully to protect my pretty pocket from wear. All layers are sewn together, then the raw edge is folded under bias tape and that whipped on from both sides. The slit is covered with linen bias binding that is sewn on from the right side with a running backtstitch and whipped on in the inside.
All the embroidery is done with silk floss. I’m pretty happy with how it turned out especially since it’s my first time making an actual piece with embroidery. I have done some stitch practices in school and some cross stitching but never anything like this. Now I really want to make another pocket, one that isn’t white, for everyday use! They are just sooo much better than modern pockets or even ladies bags for all the little things we lug around.
And here are the final risque lingerie pictures 18th century style!
Looking at these I’m really happy with how my hair turned out for these. My makeup is all plausible for the time, no modern products! I have to say I am very impressed with 18th century face makeup my skin is currently doing all kinds of wierd things and is far from flawless but this looks good, also the clove brow pencil is one of my all time favorite brow products. Another thing quite obvious is that I see a new stays project in my future, not sure exactly why or how since I don’t think I’ve lost weight these seem now slightly too roomy on me. The shift is made from an old linen table cloth, soooo soft! I do need a lighter weight one some time in the near future…
When I had decided that I was going to do an italian gown for my historically accurate Belle, I started looking through pinterest and museum collection of 18th century gowns to try to figure out how to make mine so that it would have some clear elements from the movie gown but still be accurate. The gown in the movie is actually more like a 19th century dress than 18th century though her other clothes are a bit closer to 18th century.
To me the key of this dress is that scallopped rouching so my idea was to mimic that in some way but still stay faithful to the time period. So looking at pinterest I figured that that the only 2 possibilities was either by embroidery or quilting. I went with quilting since I had wanted to make a quilted petticoat anyways. I already posted several original examples of quilted petties in my previous post so here is only one to show the general idea.
Like you can see most quilted petticoats had some more intricate work on the bottom to give them more interest. So my next step was to figure out what that something would be without losing the original disney vision too much. Then I came across these amazing ebroidered gowns and desided that either some embroidery or beadwork would do the trick.
I knew from looking at the museum examples that they were not that full so I used my 114cm width silk fabric as one half of the total width then I counted how big I wanted the design to be and drew it out from there on to paper.
here is my rough sketch and the first straight rows on the bottom
I lay out my inner lining linen, then my cotton batting and the silk satin on top and pinned all layers trying to get them as straight as possible. Here I ran into a bit of a problem since I had opted for the “cheap” thin silk satin. It did not want to stay on grain! Everytime I moved or even breathed the fabric fluttered and shifted but I did my best and after nearly 2 hours of pinning I finally had the layers well enough together and cut to size since both my batting and lining were wider than my silk. Then I basted the top edges together and started quilting from the bottom with running stitches. Now many of the originals I found online had the stitch count somewere between 8 and 12 stitches per inch. Try as I might I could get it only to 7 per inch. I don’t know if that is because my batting, though very thin might still be slightly thicker than many originals or just my lack of experience in quilting. I didn’t want to risk transfer ink staining my satin so I decided on punching holes in my drawing and chalking those dots onto my silk.
I did 4 rows of the scallops on both sides with the back having an extra 8 inches of material at the top. Then when both sides were quilted I took some sequin trimm I had and fashioned it into bows on to the fabric and sewed it on. In my original sketch I had visioned tassels on the ends of every other bow but I ended up making ribbons of sequins instead on all of them. I was still planning on adding a row of sequins on the bottom but ran out of time so maybe I’ll add that on at some point.
Then for the actual making up of the petticoat.
Like I already stated in the previous post I desided to go with this specific way of making up my petticoat because it looked like it was perfect for wearing with a split rump under it, like was fashionable in the late 70s and 80s and that looks so awsome with the italian gown. It is made up from two equal sides, the front being pleated at the waist with very big pleats, the center back being cartridge pleated with big pleats on the sides. The waistband is fitted with hooks and eyes and pocket openings on both sides.
I first stitched up the sides ending several inches before the front top edge to leave pocket slits. Now my initial plan was to use a mantua makers stitch for the seams but because on the sides I had all 3 layers on both sides, the seam would have come out very bulky. I desided to go with a flat felled seam instead. I did a running stitch through all layers, then when the seam was sewn up trimmed the inner layers down and turned the lining ontop of the other and whipped it down with a narrow rolled hem on the raw edge side and just whipping it flat on the selvedge side.
sewing through all 6 layers required me to do one stitch at a time so it was slow going
Here on the finished seams you can see I ran out of steam and my whipping stiches ended up quite messy
After the the sides were finished I undid the basting on the top and trimmed the batting down to the last row of quilting and stitched it to the lining fabric.
Next I needed to cut the back piece to size. I measured 4 iches higher than the front for the center back point and pinned the linen and silk together sloping down towards the same legth as the front on the sides and cut it. Then I eyeballed about the middle 1/3 of the back piece and basted that with two lines of as equal length stitches as I could get them.
Then I pulled them tight together to form the cartridge pleats and knotted the threads to keep them in place and basted the remaining top edge. Then I secured the pleats down with grouping them into 3 pleats together and sewing together. I have no idea if this stitch has a name, I just did what it looked like in the original picture.
fabric lint really stitcks under my nails 😀
With the cartridge pleats done I just winged the big pleats making sure the end result ended up half of my waist measurement in the back and ever so slightly more than half in the front to allow for a tiny overlap at the waistband to make the pocket slits hang nicer. Now I turned the pocket slit edges inward and running stitched shut to give the pocket slits a clean edge
Time to make the waistband. I took the piece I had cut off the back and straightened the curved edge and cut it to 2 inches longer than my waist measurement in my stays. This is to allow for a bit of overlap at the side were the hooks and eyes go and to allow for me to do a tiny turn to stitch the ends neatly shut. Then I removed the basting from the top and took the batting out and folded it in half legthwise so that the silk is both the outer and inner with the linen doubled as the interlining.
Now at this point when I started pinning the waistband on to the petticoat a realized I gooffed earlyer and did my cartridge pleating onto a raw edge. I should have finished the edge BEFORE the cartridge pleats! So I stitched the edge with the ends turned inward now though it took me many times the time it would have if I would have done it before the pleating.
Now finally it was time to sew on the waistband! I did a running back stitch over all the regular pleated parts and whipped the fronts of the cartridge pleats onto the waistband after sewing the waistband shut with a running back stitch and then continuing with a running back stitch for the rest of the waistband. Then I went back and whipped the front ofthe waistband also to the cartridge pleats for extra strength.
Now all that was left to do was pick out the bits of basting stitches that ended up visible, attaching the hooks and eyes and hemming the bottom. I used the lower line of straight stitches I had on the bottom as my guide and trimmed down my lining and batting about halfway between it and the silk fabric’s edge. Then I just rolled and hemmed the silk on top.
Finally all done!
It took me a little under a week to quilt this and 3 days to sew up, no clue as to how many hours.
Many times during this project I did question my life choises not only for doing this but in general :D. In the end I am so happy that I did it. All in all it wasn’t that bad though and now after finishing it I am planning on making another at some point but in a more strictly historically accurate motif. Now this post has already ended up very very long but I can’t resist the temptation of adding quite few pictures of the end result. I think this in one of the makes I’m most proud of that I have ever made. This and my italian gown are the first completely hand sewn garments I’ve ever made and this is my second 18th century outfit. The stays, the shift and the split rump are from that previous and first 18th century outfit.
Hi! Maybe I should have done an actual introduction post first but I’m just way too excited about my latest project, the reason why I decided to start this blog. So I’ll do a shortish intro here. If you’d rather get straight to the dress feel free to skip the first 3 paragraphs and get straight to the good stuff. 🙂
This is my second 18th-century outfit and the first one to be made completely with historically accurate techniques all sewn by hand of course since the sewing machine wasn’t invented yet. Making it I relied a lot on other blogs, facebook historical sewing groups and the American duchess guide to 18th-century book. I found so many useful detailed blog posts but reading them I felt that there weren’t that many to find and as someone with fairly severe dyslexia figuring out written instructions isn’t always my strong suit. So looking at those posts I felt like maybe I write my own to share my personal points of struggling and the light bulb moments I had when making this, maybe others would find it useful too. So here it goes! I’ll get to the actual making of stuff later, soon I hope since I’ve already finished the project I thought I’d start by showing it off and telling you a bit about the idea and inspiration behind it first.
I’ve always loved historical silhouettes and at least since my teens daydreamed of making historical clothing, late 19th-century bustle gowns and frilly 18th-century gowns, medieval gowns and the like. For some reason, I never actually made any. As a little girl, I always dreamed of my very own proper Disney princess dresses. Back in the early 90s, most of us had dress up clothes but they were mostly just old pretty dresses from charity shops not the look-alike princess dresses of today. Going forward to my early 20s I started wearing retro and repro vintage 40s, 50s and 60s but because my job back then involved a uniform in everyday life I was mostly in sweat pants and only dressed up for special occasions. When I had my first child and became a stay at home mom that changed. I wanted to feel pretty and keep a bit of myself through my clothing so I started to shift towards wearing vintage or vintage inspired on a daily basis. After the first few years and after having my second kid with my changed body I just didn’t feel at home anymore in the new look hourglass shape. I felt much bigger than I was and just not that pretty in general, and since I’m a strong believer in wearing clothing that makes you feel good I needed a change, so further back in time I went. So now my everyday style is mostly late 30s to early 40s. It seems to be my sweet spot in time, clothes have all the interesting details I love as a sewist and in a style that is flattering on my body. I’ve always been one who loves to dress outside the norms and have a flashy style but I’m most definitely a comfort dresser. I want my clothing to be easy to wear and live in, styles that look good on me even without shapewear. that being said I don’t mind corsets or stays, it’s mostly the more modern girdles and the like that are really not my cup of tea.
Anyways to get my ramblings back on track what really sparked my interest in historical dress to the idea of actually making one was a combination of two things. I had read the first 2 Outlander books in my early twenties but since having kids I hadn’t read much. One big reason for not really reading any was that I had rekindled my love for knitting and with the modern world of Facebook groups, Instagram and Ravelry it opened a whole new world of knitting that I hadn’t known before. Since I was always knitting in the evenings after kids went to bed it was easier to just tune into Netflix, until I found the magical world of audiobooks. Yes I know they have been around for a long time but I’m very much not tech savvy and very slow to find new things. This time listening to the Outlander series it really sparked my imagination, what if you really could go back in time, could I live in those previous times. Then on insta through some lovely vintage dressing ladies, I found that there is such a thing as historical costuming and that I wasn’t the only silly person who wanted to make historical clothes. But still, I felt that why would I make one since I really have nowhere to wear one. Then hubby suggested that what if he went as an 18th-century vampire to a burlesque Halloween party he was playing at. Well, I didn’t actually get around to making his outfit but I did start my research into 18th-century dress and make my own first outfit.
After making that first dress I wanted to make more! Not only make more but find more occasions to actually wear them, so I went on the hunt for local events and found that there are indeed a few historical balls around. The first one that I could actually go to was this springs masquerade ball were the theme was literature, as a mom that instantly made me think Disney! Well of course Disney is all modern 20th or 21st century but most of the stories have older roots and are set into history. 18th century and Disney really brings just one princess to mind, Belle. The original story is from 1740 so it fitted well with the theme. The first thing I did was google to see what others have done with the subject. Most historically accurate Belle dresses I found were robe ala Francaise, which makes sense since that was the fashionable style of the time, but I knew I wanted to do something different. My first idea was that I’d make it in an earlier beginning of the century mantua style as that would be most like her hairstyle in the movie. With that I ran into 2 problems, first patterns of that era gowns are much harder to find that later in the decade ones and second that style really needed a good brocade to give the proper Belle look but good brocades are very expensive and hard to find. As I was going through hours of looking at 18th-century gown and coming up with ideas of what I wasn’t to do I really got my heart set on making an italian gown, with those gorgeous back pleats and making a quilted petticoat. When looking at quilted petticoats I saw that many of them had these great scallop patterns of them that really reminded me of Belle’s dress. So the two ideas morphed into one and so the idea of Belle in the late 1770s early 1780s was born.
Here are some of the quilted petticoats that I used as inspiration:
Since I had settled on an italian gown and the quilted petticoat my first problem was that I really liked the italian gown with a split rump but all the petticoats I had seen looked like they were either worn without any kind of support underneath or just a small hip roll or the earlier wider style ones to be worn with panniers. So my solution was to ignore the problem and go ahead and make the pocket, finish up my stays that the last time around a wore unbound as I ran out of time and make the gown. I drew up the design for the petticoat and ordered my silk satin for it bought the cotton batting and found an old linen plain table cloth from a charity shop to use as the lining fabric. Then when I googled to see how others had made their quilted petticoat I ran into this amazing blog post http://stay-ingalive.blogspot.com/2018/01/a-quick-green-silk-quilted-petticoat.html about an unusual quilted petticoat in the Nordiska museum. It has cartridge pleats in the back and the hem is clearly longer in the back, rump room y’all!
So there you have it, how the 1780s Belle came to be and the thought process behind it. I’ll make a separate post on the actual finished project and more detailed making of posts on each individual piece later but for now just a small preview of the finished look that I wore to the masquerade ball this last weekend.
Sew through time 