All posts tagged: Historical Sew-Fortnightly

The Panier-Along: Materials List

With the Under-it-All challenge coming up on the Historical Sew Fortnightly  I offered to write a tutorial on how to make paniers, and the idea was met with much enthusiasm.  So, from Jan 30th to Feb 8th I’ll be leading a Panier-Along, providing a simple pattern and walking you through the steps of making your own set of paniers. My panier pattern is based on information in Norah Waugh’s Corsets & Crinolines, and on the panier pattern at Tidens Tøj.  It creates a set of separate basket hoops that give a modestly wide silhouette, suitable for informal dress (e.g. not court wear) in the 1760s and 70s. The tutorial will focus on being easy and simple (I’ll probably be sewing by machine), with an accurate silhouette, rather than strictly historical accurate, but it shouldn’t be too hard to adapt to be perfectly accurate if you would prefer. The challenge doesn’t start until the 29th, but we need time to assemble our materials.  If you want to participate you will need: 1 yard/95cm  of mid to …

The 1813 Kashmiri dress: skirt construction details

I know the 1813 Kashmiri dress is done, but I wanted to share some of the construction details to explain how I did it (and as a reference for anyone trying to make a similar dress). Today I’ll focus on the skirt construction. My skirt is based on two rectangles, each 136cm/55″ wide and 135cm/54″long as they were cut.  The skirt lost barely any width in the sewing, but has a very large hem and top turning, so the finished measurement is 133cm/52″ wide and Kashmiri shawls of the early 19th century are usually between 100-110″ long & 50-55″ wide, so my finished dress dimensions are an almost exact match to what a period seamstress would have been working with. The major change in design/fabric area is that I have an extra area of patterned fabric to construct the bodice out of, and don’t have the lovely narrow side borders to use as trim. Skirts based entirely on rectangles were very common in the first decade of the 19th century, but in the early 1810s …

Finished! 1813 Kashmiri dress

After pulling apart and reworking the 1813 Kashmiri gown to considerable degrees, I’m now pleased to announce that it is finished! Or within an hour of finished.  I still need to decide if I prefer the sleeve swags on the shoulder or dropped, and if I want trim on the shoulders as in my fashion plate, and if I want the button trim you can see in the plate where the bust meets the sleeve swags. So what do you think?  Sleeve swags on the shoulders: Or dropped: I forgot to pin on the cameo brooch for the photos, so you’ll just have to imagine it in and tell me if I should do gold clips or buttons or something at the join of bodice and sleeve swag. And what about the ruffles/puffs you can see around the neckline in the fashion plate.  Should I have those? The important thing though, is that the dress is done, and done properly, and that all the issues I had with it are fixed.  The back, while still …