Me at that moment, making a beeline… Photo from Grungaloo, Wikimedia Commons |
Singer 28K serial number Y9309795 Made in May 1934 in Kilbowie, Clydebank, Scotland |
Me at that moment, making a beeline… Photo from Grungaloo, Wikimedia Commons |
Singer 28K serial number Y9309795 Made in May 1934 in Kilbowie, Clydebank, Scotland |
Nutmeg is involved in all projects. She’s thinking of coming up on the sofa for a nap, which in the end she did, to my delight. |
Late last spring, on encouragement from my friend Sarah, who is a whiz tablet weaver, I thought to try the method to make a guitar strap for one of the twins, as an alternative game for the brain and something to do in short bursts. Finding an excellent, blow-by-blow tutorial on YouTube by Melissa of Impending Looms, titled “Beginner Tablet Weaving: Getting Started with an Oseberg Variation”, off I went.
All went fairly well with the warp setup, or so I thought, until I began weaving, when I discovered that first, the resulting woven band would be too narrow, and second, that I had missthreaded at least one of the cards, so that the pattern was broken. Unlike regular weaving, the warp threads are interlaced with each turn of the cards, and unless you are experienced, it’s easy to make a mistake.
So, I added warp threads to each side of the originals to make the resulting band wider and with added stripes, and “fixed” the threading. Then laid the project aside in the bad corner for months. Picking up the project today, weaving went merrily along, and I am finding that the pattern is easy to follow, but discovered that not all the missthreadings were corrected. Despite Melissa’s careful explanations, I had still put threads in the wrong order. Plus, the band is still too narrow: there’s a lot of pull-in from the sides as tablet-woven work is dense and very strong, due to the combination of twisted and woven threads.
Oh my. Looking at the short woven bit, I rather liked the pattern, which reminds me of waves or air currents, and so kept on going. There is only one other feature of the tablet pattern that I don’t care for…at the end of each full pattern repeat, a little bump is inserted in the threads, that breaks up the flow a little. Eh.
If this band is ever going to be used as a guitar strap, I will have to mount it to a thick, wide cotton tape. Ah, no big deal. Main thing is, it must be done by Christmas :}
The inkle loom is from TwoPlyFiberArts on Etsy. It is super. While I keep most crafts hidden in closets, this is worth having out as it’s a handsome blend of art and utility. |
The jury is still out on whether I like tablet-weaving or not. It certainly creates beautiful results and moves along at a decent clip. The patterning is brain-bending, though. I still can’t figure out exactly where the goof is :}
In July I introduced you to a circa 1900-1903 Edwardian summer gown. After looking at the dress as a whole, we had a deep, detailed look at the shirtwaist portion of its construction, for this gown was unlined and its bodice not built on a fitted foundation. This time, we are going to examine the skirt in just as much detail. Are you ready?
The dress as a whole is shown above. It has been set over a corset cover and a single trained petticoat, but there is no corset as I have none that fit. Had there been one, the dress would sit differently, with a slightly enhanced dip in the front to emphasize the bodice pouch, and a higher set to the back of the skirt, with again, an enhanced roundness there, especially if a hip pad were worn. Do watch the Sew Through Time YouTube video called “Getting dressed: 1903 summer vs winter” to see how this is achieved, layer by layer, although note that the video author does not purposely dip the skirt in front.
You can tell from the photos above that the skirt is smooth across the front and then gathered tightly in back, with a center back closure.
You will also notice that it has a very tall flounce, which is higher in the back than in the front, an elegant look which elongates the line of the dress and accentuates the train in back.
Finally, you will see from the above as well as photos below that the skirt is trained. In some Edwardian evening wear, the trains are very long, but this is a day dress, and the train is shorter—daywear with a train was popular from the end of the 1890s through the into 1905 or so, unless the skirt was for working or sports, or for a rainy day, in which case it was fashionable to wear a skirt, often wool, above the ankle!
Ideally, the skirt will puddle around the front of the feet, too, as if the wearer were a mature tree rooted to the ground, or as if the bottom of the skirt was the bell of a trumpet. How to get this shape?
You might think that the skirt pattern itself would be cut such that each piece curved outwards on both sides to create a curved flare towards the bottom of the skirt. In the case of heavier winter skirts, this was a popular cut.
Another popular way to achieve the flare was to apply one or more circular flounces to a straight-gored skirt. A circular flounce is cut such that both top and bottom are cut on a curve, with the bottom length being longer than the top. The tighter the curve, the more pronounced the flare.
The circular flounce can be applied to a full length skirt so that the base skirt can be frilled with a dust ruffle, and the flounce sit outside. One or more flounces could be stacked this way. Or, a single circular flounce could be attached to a a shorter main skirt, one only about 2/3 of the length needed.
In the case of this dress, the main skirt’s gores are straight. The flounce is very slightly circular, but it is made by cutting several widths. Each width is wider than the gore it goes with, and each one is set in tiny, not quite even pleats onto its gore. The flounce is so long that the pleats fade out by the bottom and the fabric fans out. The fanning is strengthened by three tiny horizontal tucks taken in the flounce plus an applied frill. Add in the excessive length and you have the trumpet effect.
We will address in part 3 how people were advised to walk (!) with a skirt that long.
Rather than attempt to draw the cut myself, I found an existing diagram of the basic skirt design in a January 1901 issue of Vogue magazine, then a rather new magazine heavily focused on fashion and striving to be both au courant and still court an reader on a budget. Here is the cut for an evening gown, on page xii, near the back of the issue. The pattern pieces marked with the blue arrows are the ones we’re interested in. They show the basic cut of my dress’s skirt fairly well. If you want to know how the gown is constructed, the article that goes along with the pattern describes it well. The magazine included a pattern about every other issue, for a year or two. Oh, how I love them!
Here is the skirt laid flat and turned inside out. You can see the bottom of the flounce serving as the skirt’s hem. Frills are mounted to the outside of it, and the flounce has three tucks above that.
Now, for my skirt’s measurements. Because the garment is delicate, I haven’t poked and prodded it much; measures are approximate.
The waist is 24 3/4” around.
The skirt is cut in 5 gores: 1 front, 2 side, 2 back with the center of the back on a seam, which therefore is necessarily on the bias.
Here are the dimensions of the main, tucked portion of the skirt, without the flounce added:
Vogue, June 13, 1901, p. Xii |
It took years, yet I finally found an extant early Edwardian summer gown (which we would call colloquially an Edwardian dress) that meets all of the criteria I’ve long been looking for: cotton, unlined, trained, and puddling around the feet along the front and sides. Oh, and that was within budget for purchase. Hence the years’ wait.
In this post, part 1, we will look at the gown at large and learn how the bodice was constructed. Part 2 will focus on the skirt; part 3 will explore how the gown fits into what I believe is its time period, via magazine, newspaper, and retailers publications. I thought that people might enjoy seeing a full gown like this in the closest detail possible.
The photos above show the gown over a corset cover and a petticoat of roughly the same length. I had a time settling it safely on the dress form, because the skirt is small…the form is set to a 24” waist, its smallest, and is still too big for the skirt. I have no straight-front corset small enough for the outfit, and hip pads would not have worked without the skirt fitting well. Anyway, I still hope you can imagine what it was like.
Here’s an idea of the ideal gown silhouette from this early part of the Edwardian period in a partial screen capture from The Ladies Home Journal. The models show that the amount of “puddling” (my own term for extra length at front and sides) and training in back varied, from a bare amount to the quite extravagant puddling seen on gowns in La Mode issues of this time. (You will need to look up the magazine: the hosts do not like people copying their pictures.) I usually find that except in high fashion, the bust and derrière positions illustrated in magazines and advertisements are a bit much, but it almost always has been so in that arena.
“Skirts of light weight materials will be more troublesome than usual this summer. The fashionable outline for these garments is exactly that of a reversed lily. The calyx fits as tightly and closely as possible round the hips, and the petals swing out from just above the knees, swirling widely round the feet. This arrangement renders it very troublesome to hold up a skirt effectually; and yet it is impossible to walk in it without lifting it, except by a slow gliding movement, pushing the skirt before one’s feet, as it were. Besides the inconvenience of this sliding manner of progression, considerations of hygiene and cleanliness forbid trailing a wide skirt in the streets or public parks; only on a well-kept lawn or in the house can the newest cut of jupon be worn with any propriety and comfort sweeping its full width around the wearer.” (The Ely Miner. (Ely, Minn.), May 31, 1901: “A Tendency to Crinoline Effect in Light Weight Skirts”)
Early Edwardian antique pink cotton skirt, worn over an antique petticoat with tall flounce and an antique shirtwaist. A teaser of what's to come. |
Heads Up! Long and image-heavy
I have been collecting antique clothes in a small way for decades, starting in the 1990s. Most pieces have been Edwardian, partly because these sometimes are more reasonably priced, but mostly because the era is fascinating in its complexity and in the obvious impacts of a modernizing world on the fashion industry and the women who wore the fashions.
For the last several years the collecting focus largely has been on the early Edwardian years -- which actually covered the end of Queen Victoria's reign -- of approximately 1900-1905. Read about them in some detail on the Fashion Institute of Technology's Fashion History Timeline 1900-1909 article.
I've long wanted to share some of these garments with the historical costuming community, focusing on construction details that aren't often easily available in photographs, and with brief commentary on how they may have looked when worn. So, one sunny afternoon in early May I spent 3-4 hours photographing petticoats, shirtwaists, and skirts -- a portion of the collection.
Here below are a series of skirts. Each is shown paired with a shirtwaist* over a corset cover, and with one of several extant petticoats underneath to help fill out the garment.
*The shirtwaist is "bloused", a in-period term for the pigeon-breast effect, and set in a dip, not a straight line, with the blousing held in place by a handy peplum for tucking into the skirt. The sleeves have been shortened: I believe it originally had long, probably narrow cuffs. The alteration could have been back then, for elbow sleeves came in pretty quickly for daytime -- I recall a 1902 magazine saying that they were now permissible for daywear. The lace is a composite of several types, all machine-made, and the flowery 3-D effect lace mimics Irish crochet lace. High-necked, bloused shirtwaists had a long vogue in the 1900s and 1910s, but this one, with its decently long back, feels in the cut and the lace types and placement more like before 1907 than some of my clearly later examples. However, I am not certain.
This skirt feels mid-Edwardian, based on its fullness and ground-grazing length, but it's so plain it could span most of the period. It would have been an easy everyday summer skirt.
The linen is strong, fairly closely woven, but lightweight. You could estimate the yarn count using some of the detailed photographs.
The applied blossoms are tacked on. This is a sturdy skirt and I have it ready to wear for a few hours at a summertime Edwardian-inspired afternoon tea. |
Here is how such a skirt might look when worn, as shown on The Delineator June 1901 cover. The skirt is pooling out at the front and sides, and trained in the back. The wearer is holding her skirt to emphasize what may well be a drop skirt attached to -- or separate from -- the outer skirt, that functioned as a sometimes-visible lining. It would clear the ground and might include a finely tucked or ruffled tall flounce. The wearer would hold up the outer skirt with one hand in the back to draw it up, revealing the underskirt but maintaining modesty. A petticoat was often worn underneath, although in 1900 and 1901 there was a fad for abandoning the petticoat or even wearing little "garter petticoats" around each leg, so that the skirt could cling very tightly to the person.
Source: Internet Archive |
Another, rather well-known photo from a 1901 edition of Les Modes, a Parisienne fashion magazine known for its high fashion, world-weary attitudes, and attention to royalty and nobility. The leftmost figure's gown just barely puddles in front.
Source: Mark Hartley, Pinterest |
Commentary on trailing skirts appeared in a New Zealand paper in January 1901. It was called “The Trail of the Skirt: Expert Opinions in Favor of Trailing Fashions”. Here is a portion, showing that some trailing skirts were designed to be held when walking.
Source: Wanganui Chronicle (New Zealand),January 7, 1901, p.1 |
The skirt is very small waisted, under 24 inches, and so wouldn't fit my dress form. That makes it feel even fuller than it really is. The ruffles, cut of straight lengths of fabric, tucked and hemmed and "gathered" with what are actually minute pleats, give lots of body to the skirt base.
Whenever I get around to it, there are more skirts, a shirtwaist suit, petticoats with different styles and characteristics, and shirtwaists of different types, to be posted about. I've posted about some others in the past. I gave quite a number to Cassidy Percoco of A Most Beguiling Accomplishment some years ago, when I was quite ill for a few years, and thought at one point I'd have to give up costuming, and alas, never took pictures of most of them.