Costume Literate

April 24, 2019

White 18th Century Petticoat

I started my first 18^th century petticoat to go over my pocket hoops. I have two immediately planned, both to go over my pocket hoops.

One white one, and one brown/blue shot stuff (which is probably synthetic- I should probably do a burn test).

So this is the white one, which will go underneath. It’s made out of plasticy stuff from my stash (yay for stash busting!) and has a goldish sheen on one side. I’ll use the white side, because the gold side looks more plastic. It doesn’t really bother me all that much that it’s synthetic, because it will most probably never be seen.

I got this fabric a few years ago from remnants from a fabric store that sold upholstery, and because he usually sells fabric in big amounts, his remnants were actually a few meters long. He was trying to get rid of it all, and basically persuaded me to buy all his odds and ends. I walked out of there with four big garbage bags full of fabric, all for 100 shekel. That’s around 30 dollars. I had trouble carrying it homeJ And then I had to try to find space for it all at home…

I bought 2cm cotton twill tape before I started making the petticoat- yay for me for actually buying all the stuff I need before I start the project! That doesn’t usually happen.

I’ll be using the explanation in “The AmericanDuchess Guide to 18th Century Dressmaking” book I just bought.

The fabric is in two strangely shaped pieces, but I will hopefully be able to frankenstein a petticoat out of it.

I cut and (machine) sewed the fabric until I had one long piece of fabric that was slightly over 3 meters long. There was surprisingly little piecing to do. There will be a seam at each side, and a seam at the center back. The back is only very slightly wider than the front, by a few centimeters.

I then measured according to the measurements specified in the book- from waist to ankle (or to floor, and then subtract the height to the ankle) over the pocket hoops, at the sides, front, and back.

And cut out the pieces on the fold, front and back separately. The book does not say to do it on the fold, but I like cutting on the fold. The back here is on the right, and the front on the left.

Now I have to open the pocket slits. The reason I didn’t just leave them open originally was because I wanted to make sure it all measured up while I was frankensteining.

So now I have to open 10 to 12 inch slits. Sorry for working in both centimeters and inches… I usually work in centimeters, because that’s how I learned, but if I have instructions in inches, I’ll work with that. I have tools for both (rulers, measuring tapes, etc.) so sometimes I work with both within the same project, especially if I’m working with more than one set of instructions. (That’s not the case now, but I originally measured in centimeters, and now I’m reading about the length of pocket slits in inches)

So I opened up the slit 10 inches, strengthened the spot where the slit ends with a bit of backstitch, and then folded the ends over at the slits, and machine sewed them open.

And now to pleat it to size

I spent a day or so calculating the pleats- how big they should be, and where to put most of the fabric, but apparently (it says in the book) the depth and placement of the pleats doesn’t really matter, as long as you pleat it all to your waist measurement- or, to be exact- each half of the petticoat to half your waist measurement (or slightly more, so as to have a tiny overlap at the pocket slits.)

So I eventually successfully pleated over 3 meters to around 70 cm (even though my waist in stays is slightly less than that).

And here you can see the gathered skirt-shape;

I then sewed my 2cm white cotton twill tape along the pleats, 1cm from the edge, on the right side.

I then flipped the tape over to the wrong side, and sewed two seams- one very close to the edge of the waistband, and one at the other edge of the twill tape (2cm from the edge), so that it stays in place, and encloses all the raw edges.