1809 riding habit in the style of Königin Luise von Preußen

This riding habit was heavily influenced by the two portraits Wilhelm Ternite painted of Queen Louise of Prussia in 1808-1810. I followed the portraits closely but once again didn't set out to do an exact copy. The original is in a museum and, having seen photos of it, I knew it was closer in color to the second of those portraits but I loved the way it looked in the darker portrait so I chose an almost navy blue wool. It's lined with white silk taffeta and trimmed in Hussar fashion with gold military lace, vintage buttons and two different widths of russia braid. Interlining consists of linen canvas and horse hair. Every stitch is hand sewn with linen and silk threads. 

I'm wearing it over my shift and stays, a chemisette and a high waisted petticoat. Accessories include my riding gloves and a ready made wool top hat I trimmed with a tussle I made from ostrich feathers. Shoes and stockings (not visible) are purchased.

Clothing layers:

With only the spencer removed. The wool skirt has shoulder straps to keep it in place.

The cotton petticoat.

The chemisette.

Construction:

The skirt is patterned after the 1795-1810 riding habit skirt in Janet Arnold's Patterns of Fashion but instead of leaving it long all the way round, I cut the hem floor length in front and left a little train. That seemed to be common with riding habits in fashion plates from around 1810.

I drafted the pattern for the spencer using the portrait and photos of museum spencers as guide. 

Friedrich Wilhelm Ternite, Königin Luise, 1808/09

I sewed the spencer and it's lining together separately. I pad stitched the fronts and collar with two layers of linen canvas with horsehair interlining in between. I needed it to be extra stiff to hold the braiding and the buttons. I braided the spencer before joining it with the lining.

The spencer ready for the lining.

The lining in place.

I'm very grateful to Sabine for sharing all details from her 1806 Paradeuniformkleid Königin Luise -project because otherwise I would have most likely assumed she would have worn a high collar shirt underneath her spencer. Following her example I was able to do a quick and simple version of my own.

There is a base of sturdier cotton.

Which I covered with gathered a layer of sheer cotton.

Shift and stays for 1810

The stays are hand sewn from cotton twill and cotton sateen with linen thread. They are bound with cotton tape and have a wooden busk and spiral steel center back bones. They are made using J.S. Bernhardt's Schnürleib Fig.C -diagram in Sabine's excellent 'Short Stays' Studies.

The shift is made from handkerchief weight linen and hand sewn with linen thread.

I had made the shift in 2009 during my (then) short lived desire to make a regency outfit. I had made the sleeves accidentally too tight and I had to figure out a quick fix to that problem. My solution was slashing open the underarm gusset and inserting a gore.

Stays details:

The neckline has a drawstring to adjust the fit.

Busk is held in place by lacing it through two eyelets on the bottom of the busk pocket.

Underside:

Why you should always make a mock-up:

Making these stays wasn't my brightest moment in this hobby. I was under a tight schedule and because the pattern is so simple, I thought I could get away with just measuring everything carefully to determine the right size for the gores. I took 2 cm off of both sides at the CF edge (4 cm in total) to prevent it being too loose and trusting my math, begun sewing it together. The finished stays fit in their own way but the shape was completely wrong for 1810.

I tried to fix it by adding two more gussets on both sides of the original bust gussets and changing the shape of them all to more U-shaped. Then I was able to wear it higher and tighten the shoulder straps more to keep it there. Because of that, the waist of the stays doesn't hit my natural waist anymore meaning the hip gores are now cut too high. And I'm not perfectly happy with the shape of the neckline now either. But they do provide the necessary support and worked well under my new riding habit. So even if they are not as pretty as they could have been, they are perfectly functional and that's the main thing.

Gusseted 1870's corset

Because I have previously tried only the corset types with shaped panels or with a hip basque I have been very curious to give a proper gusseted Victorian corset a try. And because in my opinion 1870's was the last decade before the colorful and luxurious corsets really took over, I wanted this one to look practical and utilitarian. I chose drab coutil because that was one of the most common colors of it's day for an everyday corset. It's a single layer corset with seams sewn as shown here on the right.

source: De Gracieuse archives, year 1872

Basically not sewing the seams together and then felling them, but by first folding part of the seam allowance up on the underside and down on the top side, then pinning the layers together and then sewing them down at the edge of both folds. The gussets are inserted in a similar manner as shown on the top illustration.

The pattern is from 1876. I found it from one of my favorite resources, De Gracieuse archives. It's the bottom left corset here and the pattern pieces can be found here.

It also has several additional bone casings made by sewing strips of coutil inside the corset. The flossing is made with graphite grey silk. It's boned with spiral steel.

For the first time I'm happy with the shape with no complaints. It looks quite small waisted, but in fact it isn't any smaller than any of my previous corsets. It's just an illusion created by having enough flare for bust and hips.

 

A masquerade dress and a truly scary mask

I'm currently awfully busy trying to make my ambitiously planned Costume College wardrobe happen and when the accomplished people of Tampere announced that they were going to be hosting an 18th century masquerade, I knew I couldn't even think about making anything new to wear. Or even re-trim an old one. But I didn't want to pass an opportunity to do some period dancing. And, more importantly, to see friends who are scattered so far all around Finland that they might as well be living abroad. 

So the dress had to come from my existing wardrobe. I chose the black round gown because the severity of the color makes it one of my most unusual 18th century gowns and so, perhaps, most masquerade-like. 

I also struggled with coming up with an idea for a mask. A thought of a fancy, flirty and decorative mask didn't sound tempting at all to me this time. So I turned to 18th century portraits for inspiration and I chose a simple black moretta mask. I bought a cheap leather version and cut it a little smaller and the eye holes larger to look more like the ones seen in the portraits. Then I tried it on and it looked so freaky and scary that I almost chickened out of wearing it. But with no plan B, it had to do. 

And here it is, 18th century minimalism with a touch of spookiness. 

And now, brace yourselves.

Luckily the other guests had had more time to get ready and make costumes and there were many detailed, cute, exotic, alluring and funny ones for us to admire. And I did get to dance. And met friends. Heard all kinds of wonderful things. And got to talk all the piled up costume things with Sanna (Rococo Atelier, you all know her for sure) whom I hadn't seen in ages. And the food was excellent. 

I tried taking a few pictures, but low lighting and dancing people made them too blurry.

Big thanks to everyone who made the event happen. And apologies for not "concealing my identity" for the entire evening. The mask was a bit impractical for eating, drinking and socializing. 

This was the first wearing for my new rump and now I have pictures to demonstrate how it looks on me. I'm wearing it with one linen petticoat under the gown in the pictures above. And here it is with just the petticoat.

1660's shift

This project required a little guesswork. All the surviving shifts I've seen are from an earlier or later date and neither seem to fit the shifts seen in artwork of the era. I can only hope the garments in the paintings have true likeness for the shifts they wore and are not just something artistic designed for the portrait. 

Full body, slit in front, narrow neckband or drawstring.

Nell Gwyn by Simon Verelst c. 1680

Full body, body and sleeves gathered in to a neckband, slit in front.

Nell Gwyn, anonymous, date unknown

Full body, drawstring neckline.

Nell Gwyn by Simon Verelst c. 1680

Narrower body, sleeves and body gathered in to a neckband.

Hortense Mancini by Jacob Ferdinend Voet c.1675

But there was one that I liked the best. And, depending on source, could be dated to 1660's.

Body and sleeves gathered in to a neckband.

Portrait of Charlotte Fitzroy with her Indian page by Peter Ley, 1664-1679

Neckline detail

I wanted to make the body with gores but I wanted to do something different that I had already made with my 18th century shifts. I chose one of those one piece gore smocks from 1620-1630 in Patterns of Fashion 4. 

Since the shift is going to be worn under a dress inspired by a painting by Gabriël Metsu, I tried to achieve a similar sleeve length and ruffle on the cuff that can be seen peeking under her gown sleeves.

It's made from linen and hand sewn with linen thread. All seams are flat felled and sleeves and neckline are gathered in to bands. The cuffs have eyelets to tie them closed with ribbons and they are trimmed with ruffles.

They seem to have these pearl bands around their arms in several of those portraits. I have no idea what that's about, but I tried it with mine too.

Construction:

The main pieces.

First I cut slits to the gores and inserted the sleeve gussets. Then I did the sleeve seams and the attached the sleeves to the gussets. Then I did the four long side seams. After hemming, the main body was done.

Then I gathered the neckline and made a neckband.

Lastly I finished the sleeves.

New Atelieri O. Haapala pictures

The day we took the pictures of my latest corset I was actually coming home from having been in front of the camera of my favorite photographers in the world, Saara Salmi and Marco Melander. Or Onyxei Haapala and Helmut Schweinstein as they are known in the Neo-Victorian portraiture project Atelieri O. Haapala. 

http://www.ohaapala.com

https://www.facebook.com/atelieriohaapala

Again they did such a wonderful job. And I now have three lovely new pictures as keepsakes of the fun day. I wore the natural form princess line dress from last year and I wore it over the new corset. It worked surprisingly well although the slightly different shape created some extra wrinkling in the unboned satin. But believe it or not, I kind of like a little wrinkling here and there. I like it when dresses I make have natural easiness in them instead of looking like stiff armor. 

1880's corset and a chemise with ball gown neckline

My previous 1880's corset has been too tight around bust and hips from the beginning, but I've always liked it, so I kept using it by lacing it unevenly. Now I was ready to try to make a better fitting corset. The shape didn't come out quite as I envisioned, but at least it can be laced evenly now. One day I'm going to try to make a corset with same fit but rounder curves. 

It's made from black cotton coutil and iridescent duchess silk satin treated as one layer, stitched with light blue silk thread. The seams are flat felled and act as boning channels. The front boning channels are sewn from the outside and made from silk strips and the back channels are strips of coutil sewn from the underside. 

The pattern is the same I used in the previous corset, the 1880's corset from Corsets and Crinolines, but this time I changed the proportions to fit my shape better.

I also needed to make a new chemise with a low back and front neckline to be worn with a ball gown I'm in a process of making. It's made from light weight cotton. The straps and trim is made from three different laces attached to each other to form a wider piece. The pattern came from one of the chemises in Fashions of the Gilded Age. It's machine sewn and hand finished.

To me the best thing about this corset is it's color that changes from purple to fuchsia depending on the direction of light. It was very hard to capture but here are a few more pictures of it in a different lighting.

The chemise:

Chemise pattern:

1780's stays, 2012

My favorite surviving 18th century stays can be found in the Victoria & Albert museums collections. As my previous stays were starting to show signs of wear, I thought it was a good time to make my version of them. The top layer is light brown cotton, the next two layers underneath are linen canvas and the lining is of fine white linen. They are completely hand stitched, mainly with pale blue linen thread, but I also used white linen occasionally and silk twist for the back lacing holes. The pattern is my own and, as I was drawing it, I tried to achieve a close resemblance to the original stays but also to achieve a better fit than in all my previous stays. I have an x body type, and my previous stays have been too tubular to fit me well. I used cane for boning. I was planning on experimenting with high land cattle horn for durability, but as I haven't had problem with snapping in my previous stays and these were to become almost fully boned, I chose 1/4 inch wide flat caning that I narrowed down to an almost tooth pick width of 2-3 mm. The front and back bones are narrowed down from a sturdier 1/2 inch wide flat cane. The seams are covered with narrow silk ribbon and the stays are bound with straight cut self fabric strips as it looks like it was done that way in the original stays too. Armholes are bound with ivory chamois leather.

Close-ups

The construction:

First I outlined the pieces by stitching around the edges through all three layers. After they were outlined, I stitched the boning channels.

Then I boned the channels.

I turned under the center front and center back edges and made the lacing holes. 

Then I turned under the seam allowances and whip stitched them down.

I joined the pieces by whip stitching, covered the seams and started binding the stays.

I finished the binding an added shoulder traps.

The last step was adding the lining.

Late 18th century shift

My new shift is based Garsault's L'art de la lingère as found from the site La Couturière Parisienne. Several years ago I was very lucky to find a few meters of very narrow linen with nice traditional kind of selvages that I've been saving for a project like this. I looked at the Garsault diagram on the bottom of this page, and I thought the fabric would be perfect for the variation C. I wanted to make the shift in a later period (1780's and 1790's) style, so I made narrow elbow length sleeves. The shift is hand sewn with linen thread and constructed with felled seams except for the side gores that I whip stitched together to achieve a nice selvage join. Hem, neckline and sleeves are finished with a plain hem, no drawstrings. The gores are almost invisible, but they are on the right side in the picture.

Cutting the fabric. 

Natural form princess line dress

A month ago I saw a victorian portrait of a young lady sitting and holding a book, painted by Gabriel Schachinger. I loved it so much, that I spent the very evening patterning the dress. I had always overlooked the princess line as boring, but now I have changed my mind completely. The simplicity can be very dramatic.

The dress is made of dark ivory duchess silk satin and silk brocade. It's lined with cotton sateen and trimmed with marabou feathers. It is machine sewn and hand finished. The dress pattern is based on the 1878 afternoon dress from The Cut of Women's Clothes. 

The dress is a very simple without the short vest. Maybe even a little too simple for my taste.

Much better:

I wore it over my combination underwear and 1880's corset, a trained cotton petticoat and a corset cover.

The construction:

As it's a simple style so the construction is very straight forward. Each piece was flatlined with the cotton and after sewing the seams, the seam allowances were whip stitched to the lining. Then the hem was faced with the same cotton. The collar is the bias binding type that you see often in this and the previous era. The lacing holes are hand sewn by whip stitching. I decided to leave it unboned as it is meant to be just a house dress and because I've gotten an impression that leaving a bodice unboned was sometimes encouraged to get a natural, conforming look from some victorian writings.

For the little vest, I cut the top part of my dress mock-up in to two pieces an used them as a pattern.

The vest was also flatlined with cotton. I faced the edges with bias cut cotton, made the fabric covered buttons, stitched the button holes using button hole stitch and trimmed it with the feathers. The feather boa is whip stitched on the edges.

And the portrait. My dress ended up being quite modest compared to the one in the portrait. And somehow it has a completely different feel, but I don't care.

Gabriel Schachinger, Das Vergissmeinnicht, 1886

Late 18th century garters

I have always wanted to make the early type of elastic garters which get their elasticity from metal tension coil springs. These were made of ivory silk taffeta embroidered with silk thread and silk ribbon. They are padded with cotton fiber. They have four metal springs each sewn between the taffeta. The motto was taken from a surviving pair of 18th century garters and the embroidery design is a combination of several others.

Finished embroidery and spring channels:

Late 18th century stockings

These were sewn from 100% silk knit fabric that I cut in to panels shaped like the frame knitted panels that silk stockings were frequently constructed from in the 18th century. The frame knitted stockings were whip stitched together and I wanted to use the same technique. Luckily it worked well as the fabric didn't ravel easily and the whip stitching finished the raw edges even with just a few millimeters seam allowance. I chose all white coloring, because that seems to have been the most fashionable in the later century. I decorated the stockings with simple silk embroidery.

I drafted the stocking pattern myself based on my leg measurements.

Late bustle underwear

The combination underwear is made of thin cotton. The seams are machine sewn and hand finished with flat felled seams. It's trimmed with cotton lace and silk ribbon, also hand applied. The corset is almost unaltered version on the late 1880's corset pattern in Corsets and Crinolines by Norah Waugh. It's made of black cotton coutil. I added some cotton cording in the bust area like in the original, trimmed it with lace over silk ribbon and added flossing. It's boned only with spiral steel. The bustle is made after a Laughing Moon pattern. It's made of striped cotton and boned with steel wire. The petticoat is made of regular cotton, stiffened with horizontal tucks.

1860's corset

This corset is an unaltered version of the Corsets and Crinolines (Norah Waugh) 1860's corset. It's very short, but I wanted to try it in an unaltered size and it actually works but it couldn't be any shorter. Because it's short it's easy to lace tightly. I can get a 22" waist in it when I usually don't go under 23". It's made of duchess silk satin flatlined with cotton coutil, treating the two layers as one. Sewing technique is the same I always use in Victorian corsets, illustrated in the bottom picture. I really like it, because it forms a very thin seam if you don't overlap the seam allowances. The flossing is also white so it's hard to see it, but it's there.

Early bustle underwear

I drafted the chemise pattern after looking a lot of museum examples online. I tried to make it in a style that would fit both 1860's and 1870's. It's made of thin cotton and the trimmed with cotton lace. The drawers are also drafted by me, trimmed with the same lace and pintucks.

The is a one layer cotton coutil corset, sewn with machine using period techniques described in The Fashions Of The Gilded Age by Frances Grimble. The pattern is based on the c. 1873 corset from Corsets and Crinolines by Norah Waugh. The corset is heavily corded with cotton cord, which stiffens the corset wonderfully.

The bustle pattern is based on the one in Corsets and Crinolines, only drafted a little lager. 

The petticoats are stiffened with flounces and cotton cording.

The layers.