Tutorial: Making Stroked Gathers on a Mid-Nineteenth Century Petticoat



Yes, the petticoat needs shortening.

Edited October 29, 2020

As part of a mid-19th century dress project, I recently hand-sewed a muslin petticoat. When well starched, it fluffed the dress out quite well and hid the shape of the hoop steel in the hoop skirt beneath.

The petticoat serves as the top petticoat, and thus is designed sans tucks or flounces, which might mar the skirt surface above.

As always, click on the photos to see them full size.

A plain muslin petticoat does not sound like the most exciting garment, on first blush, and surely, with no whitework embroidery or period rick-rack lace treatment at the bottom, it looks severe. What it does have, however, is beautiful lines, created by the stroked gathers that are whipped to the waistband.

The stroking and process creates the prettiest eensy-weensy, teeny-tiny pleats imaginable, while the whipping process helps to reduce bulk in the waistband.

Photo: the completed petticoat. It's too long; I was making two petticoats and cut one long to add tucks to, to serve as a second, under-petticoat, and believe that I sewed that one up as the top petticoat by mistake.

Plain gathering, stroked gathering, gauging, and pleating are all methods that were used to take in the fullness of skirt panels to make them fit a waistband. The stroked gathering results in a tailored, clean look rather like gauging.

In the rest of this post I want to demonstrate, in pictures, how I made these stroked gathers and completed the waistband.

Photo: detail of the petticoat waistband, showing the stroked gathers whipped to the waistband.

Until recently, it wasn't terribly easy to find out how to do this. While there are descriptions of stroked gathers in a number of period sewing manuals, how they could then be set into a petticoat waistband was not clear at all. I ended up reading and rereading a series of threads on The Sewing Academy board run by Elizabeth Stewart Clark, as other people were having similar questions. Then, I made my petticoat, and checked with the board to see if the process I followed was accurate. Sure enough, some of the expert folks on the board replied that based on their research and examples in their collections, it was. Phew!

While I was making the garment, Elizabeth's rewritten manual, The Dressmaker's Guide: 1840-1865: Second Edition came out, and I ordered a copy. I had just finished my petticoat and found in the book, to my happiness, complete and clear directions, illustrated, for creating the same sort of waistband. The book also detailed several other methods of achieving a low-bulk waistband. Therefore, this little tutorial I consider as a sort of unofficial supplement to the method Elizabeth describes so much better than I can.

Bye the bye, I cannot recommend The Dressmaker's Guide enough. It is beautifully and good-humoredly written, the illustrations are incredibly clear and useful, and while it does not cover outerwear or millinery, it does instruct the reader, step by step, in drafting/draping and making undergarments, including corsets and cage crinolines, and dresses, with several options for each undergarment and a wide array of treatments for dresses. There is also a very long, very detailed section on hand-sewing construction techniques the way that the Original Cast, as she calls them, would have done them. The book has become a favorite adjunct to my sewing, not just for midcentury garments, but for period sewing in general.

The Tutorial: Stroked Gathers
A little background. I used Elizabeth Stewart Clark's free petticoat pattern at http://www.thesewingacademy.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/2010Petti.pdf (PDF file) to make up the basic petticoat. (In the new book, the petticoat section stretches from p. 153 to 184, and includes a myriad of details!) I seamed four 45" wide panels and hemmed the skirt, and got to the point of setting the gathers. The method described in the free pattern is the most basic one that was used, and does not produce stroked gathers.

Here begins the tutorial. 

Step 1
At this point, I measured the raw petticoat top into eight sections by folding it in half, then half again, then half again. I marked the divisions with pins. I decided that rather than try to run two very long gathering threads along 180 inches of fabric, I would take on the task in these eight sections. That way I would have less trouble handling long threads, and I could easily break up the task into parts to be completed over several days' or weeks' (as it proved) time. Elizabeth does the gathering in one step; this is where what I did varies from her method. The potential downside of my method is that you have to be very careful at the ends of sections to make them perfect so that one section's gatherings blend in with the next sections, with no obvious break.

So I ran a gathering thread a quarter inch below the raw top of the petticoat, through the first section, and eighth of the petticoat. I filled a needle with 4-6 little nips of fabric before pulling the thread through. I measured the first stitches with a hem gauge to make sure that they were about 1/8" long, and memorized what that length looked like on the needle.



Then I ran a second row of gathering stitches a quarter inch beneath the first row, matching the stitch length as exactly as I could. (You have to do this or your little gathers won't fold into even pleats.)

Then I ran similar gathering stitches through the rest of the panels. First rows always went fast, about 10 minutes per panel, but second rows were slower. Since I had memorized how much fabric to nip up each time on the needle, I let my muscles keep the stitching regular and regulated, but kept an eye on what I was doing and if the stitches in the second row stopped matching those above in length and position, I pulled them out.

I reckon that the whole gathering stitch process took a half hour per panel, times 8 panels.

Step 2
Next I prepared the waistband. Per the suggestions on the ESC board, I took the waistband fabric and turned up a half inch to one side. I basted it down so it would hold. When period sewing, I am usually far from an iron, so use finger pressing and basting and pins.

Then I measured and marked it into eight sections, leaving extra at the end for the closure per the original directions.

Step 3
Now it was time to attach the petticoat to the waistband. As with the gathering process, I handled this a single panel at a time. So for each panel, I pulled up both gathering threads together, and the material collapsed into even tiny pleats, as you see in the image.



Once the material for that panel was gathered, I pinned it to a section of the waistband, wrong side to wrong side. This means that the right side of the waistband, with the raw edge of the fabric turned under, faces you. The gathered fabric is put up underneath the waistband and pinned. Yes, I used a needle to pin it with: it was what was handy.



Then I fit the gathers in the petticoat to fill the space on the waistband. Almost invariably this resulted in very tightly packed gathers. In this photo below you are looking at the underside of the waistband and the underside of the gathers.



Then I stroked the gathers. I worked on the back, wrong, side of the waistband and gathered petticoat. I stroked the head of the needle in the little valley between each gather, dragging the needle head lightly downwards from the top of the petticoat towards the body of the skirt. Just to reiterate, I used the head of the needle, not the point. If you use the point, you could possibly damage the fabric a bit.

I noted that not every gather needed stroking, because most gathers fell into neat straightness by themselves. Only a few gathers were bent, or caught under another gather, or were poofing out instead of valleying in like they should.



I then turned the petticoat over so that the front of the waistband was on top (with the turned-under edge to the back: you can see the shadow of the edge through the fabric) and the gathers underneath. Not all gathers looked even from this side, but of course the top of all those gathers is underneath the waistband. I knew I needed to do some more stroking further down into the skirt. Yes, that is a needle serving as a pin.



Here I stroke each gather again from the front side. I am using a size 10 needle, which is very small and narrow, so it's hard to see, and the picture is blurry to boot because I was using the camera timer and holding the camera with my chin :) It may look like I am pushing the needle upwards, but no, I am drawing the needle head downwards.

 

Next I turned the petticoat so that the gathers and band were pretty much perpendicular to me, and started to stitch the VALLEY of each gather to the waistband. To do this I first caught a tiny bit of the fabric in the valley of the gather onto the needle, then pushed the needle through the top of the waistband down through it, bringing the needle up through the underside of the next gather's valley. I am left-handed, and for some reason couldn't manipulate the needle any other way.


I followed this process for all eight panels. It was time-consuming, but pleasant work.


Step 4
After attaching all of the panels, I turned over the waistband, and attached it to the other side with small (1/16" to 1/8"), even running stitches, again per the ESC board's advice. I could have achieved an even better result by repeating the whipping process on the back side of the petticoat, but I was out of time and needed the petticoat for an event.

Then it was time to add the closure, and I was done with the petticoat.

Once again, my great appreciation to the ESC board for their warmth and advice.

A Midcentury Chemise: Dress Diary

Just ended, a marathon session to make a mid-nineteenth century style chemise. I am wearing the end result as a nightgown and it's very comfortable. The chemise features tucks on the neckband, soon to be ornamented with tatting, and hand-sewn and stroked gathers and flat-felled seams. It's made of a crisp 200-c0unt cotton muslin. I drafted the pattern using the instructions on Elizabeth Stewart Clark's site, a process which took less than an hour all told, and was very straightforward. Made of only five pieces (front, back, two bias sleeves and a neckband), the basic seams and the tucked neckband were sewn and felled in about two hours. I did make two mistakes:

• I did not sew each sleeve and side seam as a single seam, which means that I have awkward joins in the felled seams at that point.
• Although I added 3/4 of an inch for three quarter-inch tucks to the 2-inch wide neckband, I didn't account for fabric thickness, and although I wanted the tucks to sit right next to each other, there was still a need for perhaps another quarter inch. Then too, I set the lowest tuck too close to the neckband seam. As a result, parts of the lowest tuck were caught in that seam when I handstitched that this afternoon. The error will be hidden by tatting soon.

Hand-sewing small tight gathering stitches in two rows took about an hour and a half, and arranging the gathers and stroking them perhaps another half hour, and hand backstitching the neckband to the gathers (1/2 inch seam allowance) another hour. To help each gather remain in place, I stroked most of them a second time right before passing a backstitch over each...almost every gather is backstitched in place; that seam is NOT coming out. Trimming the neckband seam and hemming down the band to the inside of the chemise took another two hours, due to another mistake. That neckband was so narrow due to the tucks that it wasn't wide enough to cover the gathers on the inside. I had to cut a facing strip (straight of grain because I wanted to use the selvage) and hem the top long edge to the band and overhand the bottom long edge to the chemise. Yes, I should have cut a bias facing strip, but the process had already taken a lot of time...perhaps the chemise band doesn't lay flat as it should, but for a first chemise for this period, I am happy. Then I hand-stitched the sleeve seam and hand felled it, and hand-hemmed the sleeve edges (another two hours) and the chemise was complete. The machine you see in the picture at the top? That's what I used for the machined seams in this project. It's a vintage Willcox and Gibbs electric chainstitch machine from the first half of the twentieth century. The machine is so pretty and in pristine, bran-span-new, mint condition and very smooth. One does have to think before seaming, since there is a right side and a wrong side to the stitching, and one MUST match stitch length to thread type and fabric weight, and one has less control of speed of stitching than on a treadle, but still, it was a true pleasure to use. Thank you, Miz Johnny, for loaning it to me while I sojourn at my mother's house this week! I will add more pictures tomorrow, but in the meantime you can see them on my Photobucket account at http://s83.photobucket.com/albums/j306/ZipZIpInkspot/

A Mid-Century Underskirt, Photographed and Measured

My friend Denise picked up what appears to be a mid-century underskirt, as petticoats were known then, and I have examined, measured, and photographed it. It's a lovely thing, the hem being ornamented with hand-sewn eyelet embroidery and scallops.

I took measurements and examined it carefully, and then asked the lovely folks on the Elizabeth Stewart Clark board about it. Sure enough, it's a mid-century underskirt! As Elizabeth explained, the embroidery made it a nice underskirt, but not a high-fashion one; it might even have been worn by a working class woman for Sunday best.

I like the idea that just a few feet from where I sit, lies a petticoat that would have graced the top of a crinoline, and rustled starchily under someone's dress.

Photo: view of mid-century underskirt.

Measurements

Waistband width: 1"


Waistband circumference: 26 3/4"

Depth to the piecing or "yoke":
- left of placket: 2 1/2" to 3" for 3.25" length
- right of placket: 1 3/4" to 2" for 6 1/2" length
- middle: varying width, 3 1/2" to 4" for 16 1/2"

Length front and back: 39"

Bottom circumference: ~154 1/2" (38 1/2 scallops)

Photo: Detail of the eyelet embroidery.

Inside seam width:
- piecing or yoke: 1/4"
- panels: 1/8"

Placket:
- 16 1/2" long
- left side hemmed with 1/8" hem
- right side hemmed with 3/4" hem

Tuck: depth varies from 2 to 2 1/2"

Scallops:
- depth: 1 1/2"
- width: 3 1/2"

Construction


The waistband is folded in half, long ends turned under, and hemmed to the top 1/8" of the skirt. There appears to have been a tape sewn to the placket, but tape is in tatters and partially missing, and one one side of placket it's covered up by a very modern, very poorly sewn waistband patch. I think someone might have worn this for a costume at one point.

The skirt is in four panels. It's tightly gathered at top and each gather is nicely stroked: gathering is even all the way around the skirt. The result is a soft dome shape.

Photo: detail of waistband showing the finely stroked gathers, and wear to the fabric.

The top of the skirt features what I at first thought to be a yoke, and perhaps it is, but the pieces are not even: they vary in depth and length. So perhaps it was pieced...with the piecing being set at the top so it wouldn't be so obvious at the bottom of the skirt or get in the way of the embroidery.

The placket is set into the middle of one panel.

The eyelet work is lovingly down, and appears to be by hand since the positioning of the flowers varies a little and each flower hole varies a little, and the sewing is so very neat by not machine-like.

The hand stitching is even and straight, the waistband hemming nearly invisible, the tuck stitching is more like even tacking.

Condition

The cotton fabric is mostly in strong condition, but the underskirt has seen heavy use. There are several tears in the eyelet at the bottom and a few scallops have torn off. There is a mend at one spot: it looks neat but may be modern, although the thread is cotton. Stresses on the placket resulted in a tear down from the end of the placket to the tuck. The waistband is quite worn and someone added a horrible patch to one end to hold it together. There is no button and the unpatched end is rather shredded.

The stitching is in perfect condition.

You can see more photos on my Photobucket account.

Ornate Mid-Nineteenth-Century Chemise with Front Flap

A month or two ago, when winter still gripped us hard, for solace I browsed a favorite antique shop that sometimes carries vintage and antique clothing. I hadn't looked about for more than a minute when this garment caught my eye. It was listed as a pinafore, and very reasonably priced.

Right: chemise front

It's hardly a pinafore: to my middling understanding those usually fastened at the back and at this length, were worn by children. This garment is clearly sized for an adult.

It is actually a woman's chemise, but of a variant type because it features a front flap. Until very late in the Edwardian era, fashion historians generally write that chemises were worn, along with drawers, as the undermost garments. The chemise absorbed body oils and perspiration and protected the corset, which was worn over it. Over the corset a woman would often add a corset cover/camisole. This protected the dress and corset from each other and might also keep the corset from view if the main dress or waist (blouse) was at all sheer. At times, I have read that the chemise and corset cover were made in one: the chemise would feature a flap that could be pulled out and over the top of the corset. That that is how this garment is meant to be worn.

Very curious as to what I had, and wanting to share pictures of it with others who love antique clothing, I posted information and questions about it on my beloved Sense and Sensibility board. To my delight, other members enjoyed seeing it, and were curious about it or had information to share about it. The garment description that follows is immeasurably improved by their contributions.

Materials

The garment is made of an opaque, tightly woven, mid-weight fabric that hasn't any sheen at all. I thought it to be cotton, then wondered if it might be linen. It's of a plain weave, with occasional very, very small slubs in the thread. The fabric as a whole is the color of high-quality cream from the top of the milk bottle. Not dead white. On the inside of the garment there is a little yellowing , but very little, and there are a few pinpoint rust stains and one or two droplet size stains.

Suzi Clarke, costumier in London (http://www.suziclarke.co.uk/), wrote in a post of the fabric: "It is possible that it was made from "Horrocks's Longcloth", a firm washable cotton made and sold in England by, of course, Horrocks. This was a suitable fabric for underclothes, and was used for, and can be seen in, many still surviving garments."

Carolann Schmitt of the Genteel Arts Academy (http://www.genteelarts.com/) thought it longcloth too, and described the fabric thus: "a tightly-woven cotton with a smooth "hard" finish. The fabric was produced in England and the US and is very common for this period."

Longcloth has an interesting history, and while my antique sewing manuals and fashion history books mention it with frequency, none of them expound on either its nature or its roots. Finally, here is its story, courtesy Carolann:

"The name "longcloth" derives from how it was manufactured. Prior to the industrial revolution, weavers would produce fabric in lengths just sufficient to make a particular garment. Why weave more fabric than you need? It's why so many early 19th century garments (and before) have a "squares and rectangles" cut - virtually no waste. If you look at some of the cutting diagrams for chemises in The Workwoman's Guide (published in 1838) you can see how careful planning uses virtually every inch of fabric.

When commerical textile production is established, it's no longer cost effective to weave short lengths of fabric. A cotton fabric made from tightly-spun fibers woven with a tight weave suitable for undergarments and shirts was one of the first textiles woven in long pieces, hence the name "longcloth". A "piece" of longcloth averaged 62-67 yards; even today, textile production is measured in "pieces" - each averaging 62-65 yards.

One of my primary sources, in an "advice to young wives" article, advises purchasing two full pieces of longcloth when the new wife establishes her household. The first piece will provide enough fabric to make the minimum number of undergarments they should have on hand, including a dozen chemises, 4-6 petticoats, 2-3 underskirts, 2 nightdresses and 2 robes. (Notice they don't mention drawers!). Then, as these garments wear out, they should be replaced with new items cut from the second piece of longcloth. A very practical recommendation."

Right: chemise back

Construction and Measurements

The neckline is wide and shallow, and it is trimmed with a single ruffle edged with tatting. The neckline is shaped by the yoke, which gives the entire garment its shape. The yoke is quite narrow, measuring only an inch wide over each shoulder, and is identical front and back. It is trimmed with a band of broderie anglaise.

The front and back pieces are lightly gored: they are of trapezoidal shape, in the fashion that goes back centuries. Very similar to the pattern shape Elizabeth Stewart Clark uses in her chemise pattern on her site. The top of each panelis lightly gathered and stroked into place. In spots you can see the tiny gathering stitches.

The sleeves are short, plain pieces, carefully gathered and stroked into the armscyes, and trimmed like the neckline.

This chemise has a gusset inset under each arm; they are surrounded by a double layer of fabric, presumably to take strains. I understand that gussets under the arms were less and less used as the nineteenth century went on.

The seams and trim inside and out are exquisitely, precisely, almost invisibly sewn. The tatting, for instance, is made of single threads, and the thread used to whip it to the edge of the neckline and sleeves is so fine that it can hardly be seen. I do not know if I could find thread that fine now. The broderie anglaise trim is similarly fine. The main seams and bottom hem are machine sewn with a lockstitch machine, using similar or the same fine thread. These main seams are flat felled and the stitch count is very high, some 16 stitches to the inch. The ruffles are hand whipped to the neckline, and the reinforcement fabric at the underarm gussets is so finely hand-hemmed that it took awhile to find any stitching.

Measurements were taken on a dress form, but loosely:

• front and back neckline, shoulder to shoulder: 19 1/2 inches
• yoke width at shoulder: 1 inch
• sleeve diameter: 5 1/2 inches
• front flap width: 12 1/2 inches at top, 7 1/4 inches at bottom
• front flap length: 7 inches
• front and back panel width measured at arm gusset bottom, each: 27 inches
• front and back panel width measured at garment hem: 34 inches
• garment length, shoulder to hem: 32 inches

Its Date and Context in Fashion History

Much of the posting back and forth today concerned the chemise date. Portions of the posts are included here, and offer not only a date for this garment, but give a sense for how a decision was arrived at.

• Emma Ruth: You're right, it is a chemise. I would date it to the 1850s or 1860s because of the horizontal band yoke. That was the style of chemise worn while dropped shoulder seams were used on dresses. Once shoulder seams moved up to a more modern position by the early 1870s chemises with straight horizontal yokes could no longer be worn and chemises with shaped yokes came into fashion instead.
  

• Elizabeth Stewart Clark: "I'd ditto a mid-century date, due to the shape and "set" of the yoke. How are the seams in the chemise body handled? Is the body gored, or straight panels?"

• Acacia: "Perhaps more of us will join in here: I've done "surface study" of mid century but certainly not in depth. My first impulse was 1840's. I suspect it's the style of the white work that will help date it. It looks to be entirely hand sewn - is that right? It possibly could go one decade earlier into the 1830's - as you say the wide neckline hints at that, but this style neckline was still worn later - especially for ball gowns, which retained that style of open, wide neck. (After this, I detail its construction as a mix of machine and handsewing.)
  

• Suzi Clarke: "If it is machine sewn, it is highly unlikely to have been sewn before the 1850's when sewing machines were first commercially available for domestic sewing. Also, I can't remember the date when lock stitch, as opposed to chain stitch became the regular stitch, but chain stitch was the earlier."

• Carolann Schmitt: Mid-19th century chemises are one of my "specialties". I have 25+ in my collection.
  
  I'd date this chemise c.1855-early 1860s.
  - The neckline is starting to transition from the straight band of the early-mid1850s to the deeper shaped yokes c.1860-1865.
  - It still has the square cut sleeves, gussets and reinforcements typical of this period, before the transition to sleeves cut with a bias seam and no gussets.
  - This is the same period when the cut of the body of the chemise transitions from the full width of the fabric with inset triangular gores to add width at the lower edge (look carefully - the seams can be almos invisible!) to a body cut with gored seams. In the mid1860s this cut will transition again to one with some slight shaping at the waist.
  - The fabric does appear to be longcloth - a tightly-woven cotton with a smooth "hard" finish. The fabric was produced in England and the US and is very common for this period. Cotton had pretty much replaced linen for undergarments in the late 1840s-1850s.
  - Chemises from the 1840s are square cut, with a wide 'scoop' neckline, longer and fuller sleeves, and are much longer in length. The length of this one indicates it could have been worn tucked or untucked.
  - The flap protects the inside of the dress from wear and crocking from the corset. It's a characteristic feature of late 1850s chemises. I have two chemises with a flap in the front and the back. You'll also find flaps on nursing chemises - covering the slits in the fabric.
  - The trimming at the neckline - corded tucks, whitework band, tatted edging - is very common. I have two or three chemises with almost identical trim.
  
  Chemises like this were available ready-made at very affordable prices from merchants across the country in towns and cities of any size.
  
  It's a lovely piece, Natalie.

Additional Pictures

Side view

Yoke and neckline detail showing tatting, piping, broderie anglaise trim and stroked gathers on sleeves. Note: if you view the large version of this image by clicking on it, please be aware that I used telephoto to approximately twice the actual size: it blurred the image a little but also made the tatting look coarse. In actuality, the tatting threads are fine as sewing thread. Each picot is an eighth of an inch tall. The yoke is but one inch wide at the shoulder, and the ruffle but 3/8 of an inch wide.

Detail showing gusset with reinforcement fabric under arm