A Side Trip into Food History

Do you dream of baking a pudding in a cast iron pan or roasting a goose over hot coals? Do you see in your mind's eye a tall, white-frosted cake scattered with candied violets? So do I.

So have I, in fact, for many years. Long ago I wrote a master's thesis about cooking and eating habits among a group of people in Atlanta, Georgia. Historians give that branchlet of research the name "foodways", among other monikers. Back then it seems most of us relied on written resources to learn about what how people prepared food, how they ate it, and why.

Photo: screen capture of the Bites of Food History blog.

You can't eat paper, though, nor smell a dish through paper, nor know how your arms and hands feel when you have hefted a pot from coals, or tested the temperature of an unreliable gas oven, or kneaded a dough with your fingers.

So I am happy to see that food history has gone concrete and that historians, professional or amateur, are testing the foodways of days long past with their eyes and arms and fingers and tastebuds. Here are two blogs that I find particularly fun and useful. There are many more out there. Do you have favorites you would like to share?

Bites of Food History
Historian Susan McLellan Plaisted's experiments in cheesemaking, brining, baking, ice cream making, chocolate making from cacao seeds (yes, that's right), roasting on a string...

The Old Foodie
"Every weekday I give you a short story on a food history topic, always including a historic recipe, and sometimes a historic menu. And how much fun is that!" From food writer Janet Clarkson.

Photo: screen capture of The Old Foodie blog.

Happy tasting!

Transition Stays: Transposition Exposed

The last few months several evenings per week after the tots have gone to sleep have been devoted to completing a pair of Past Patterns Transition Stays (the heavily boned version circa 1796-1806). They have been, generally speaking, a pleasure to create, for like other Saundra Ros Altman patterns, the product is high quality and superbly documented. Making them has given me a good dose of experience in18th century stitches and construction methods, and the attention to detail required has suited my temperament. Yet...

...those who prefer to examine the needles on the trees, even more than the trees themselves, should beware of the forest.

Small, even stitching isn't worth a pile of pins when part of the stays have been assembled upside down.

Photo: Past Patterns "Transition Stay" Fashionable Circa 1796-1806

A Snippet of Springtime

Dress Diary: Laura's 1795-1797 Robe and Petticoat, Part 1

Background

Part of our group at the Jane Austen Festival. Laura in her
new open robe ensemble is second from left.

This robe has had quite an evolution. At last summer's Jane Austen Festival, Laura picked up a lovely Indienne fabric, a block print on dark red background of stylized tulips, and she dreamed of having a Regency dress made from it, in a tall, columnar style of the 1800s.

As always, please click on each image to see a larger version.

Enter our 1790s project. As most of you know by now, several of the rest of us in the period sewing group have been planning for the 2010 festival, and our project centers on ensembles from the very roots of the Regency, the 1790s. Since Laura's block print was perfect for that era in both pattern style and the mid-weight of the cotton, Jenni and I persuaded her to back up a decade and try a round gown. We decided to use several extant robes and round gowns as the design and construction basis for this gown.

First, a circa 1785 peach-colored open robe and matching petticoat, from the 2007 "The Age of Nudity" exhibit at Kent State.

Second, a circa 1798-1805 brown silk round gown, item 1447, from Karen Augusta. Note: the item is described as silver in the title; I do not know why.

Additional ideas came from a lovely circa 1795-1810 block print round gown in the Colonial Williamsburg collection.

Then followed weeks of mockups, secondary research in all the usual suspects (documented below), a great deal of online searching, and the valued assistance, kindness, and support of costume experts Dawn Luckham and Suzi Clarke.
 
Enter an obstacle: after working out the bodice, Jenni discovered that we might not have enough fabric for the gown. Not a pleasant feeling, after all the work...

Until, and let us complete the theatrical segue to its conclusion, enter a solution. Jenni decided to morph the gown into an open robe and to make a petticoat to go underneath. Here's an example from the Victoria and Albert Museum, a circa 1795-1800 block-printed glazed cotton robe, lined with linen.
 

As these extant garments tell you, better than my previous posts showing the history of some 1790s fashions as they were shown in paintings and drawings of the day, the round gown and open robe have their forbears in the closed and open robes of earlier decades. While the round gown, as we discovered in our research, showed a number of structural adaptations and innovations in construction that would result in a few years in later Regency dress construction, the open robe was a much clearer descendent of open robes from previous decades. It could be constructed with a back in one piece, pleated and tacked to a lining, like mantuas from earlier in the century (and see the well-known early Regency open robe in Janet Arnold, p. 43), or with a wholly separate bodice, with the skirts attached to the bottom (see for example the polonaise in Janet Arnold, p. 37).
 
What follows then, is a wonky dress diary, because the photo documentation starts out with our idea for a round gown sporting three drawstrings, from neckline, to underbust and then highish waist circa 1795, and morphs to a robe like the V&A example above. If you get a little confused at times reading it -- mmm-- so did we :}  All a big experiment, another essay. Gee, I do a lot of those, don't I? Laura, we're glad you do not mind playing guinea pig.  
 
Level of Accuracy in Construction
 
The Jane Austin Festival's in ten weeks. Jenni and friends and I have been researching and constructing for months and months now, and Jenni and I have several ensembles to complete for spouses and friends and ourselves. Therefore, while we want to produce a garment whose cut and overall construction could have been used in period, and so we have documented our decisions at every turn, we are mixing handsewing and machine sewing. C'est la vie.
 
Patterning the Gown...Erm...Open Robe
 
We used the Sense and Sensibility Elegant Ladie's Closet pattern back pieces, cut to Laura's size, as a raw base to work from.(Note: We lengthened all the pieces at the bottom so that we could cut the dress with the lower waistline of the mid-1790s.)
 

 
Our goal was to "back up" the pattern to an earlier time period. For this, we used Nancy Bradfield's Costume in Detail: 1730-1930 (pp. 69, 73-75) as our guide. We noted from this book, as well as from extant examples (see especially that brown silk gown link above), that earlier in the century mantuamakers managed an elongated, elegant back by cutting or pleating the back such that it featured a number of long curved seams. By the end of the century, the really high waist made such a look impossible, and the back ended up rather tiny, with center focus on a small to tiny diamond-shaped piece.
 
An aside: If you have the Bradfield book, just for fun do page through the 18th century section and watch the design of the back pieces change. The diamond shape is an outgrowth of what came before. Not that all the experimentation always went the same exact way. In the Karen Augusta brown silk round gown , the narrow panels are retained; the diamond pattern is there but it is stretched downwards, almost like an upside-down spear point. The mantuamaker cleverly used skirt pleating to reverse the elongation, so that viewed as a whole, the effect is like an hour glass, or rays from a central spot at the waist. It's gorgeous.
 
In the 1790s, we were in middling ground, neither very long-waisted nor very high-waisted. Further, Bradfield's book details a number of dresses which had been remade from earlier dresses, and still featured lovely, elongated back pieces. That's the direction we went.
 
Here is the pattern in the process of cutting it to an earlier look. Jenni did all this in Swedith tracing paper. We left the pieces long so that we can fit the bodice to a waist height that suited Laura. Jenni made several mockups this way.
 

 
Jenni next made up a toile. Here I am attempting to fit it to Laura. The little goddess headpiece I've got on? We had a Useful Things Swap that morning, and that's one of the new 1950s treasures that made its home here.
 

 
Here's the bodice on Laura, with the back marked at a waistline she liked. We worked out some of the wrinkles after this. The sides needed pulling in, and the armscyes cutting.
 

 
Here's the front. I had requested of Jenni that she design the toile front pieces like those for a 1780s gown, but elongated, and with the center front angled longer at top than at bottom so that when gathered with drawstrings at top, underbust and waistline, the center front would be vertical.
 
I cannot tell you how many Nancy Bradfield drawings, Norah Waugh diagrams (The Cut of Women's Clothes), Costume Close-Up diagrams, plus every other diagram I could find, even from early 20th century books, and photos of extant garments, I examined trying to figure out how to work this.
 
Our intent at the time was to produce a very lightly gathered front, as in the Karen Augusta brown silk gown; since the fabric is midweight, too many gathers might look heavier than Laura might like, methought. I knew from a 1770s extant gown and reconfigured 1790s gowns in Nancy Bradfield, that some robes in the 1770s and 80s used drawstrings as fitting aids, so that the angled front would be necessary.
 
Further, since the brown silk gown is fully lined in the bodice, we decided to do the same here, and run the the drawstrings in channels between the lining and fashion fabric, as I saw in a Antique Dress Gallery 1770s polonaise (item 5092), in Bradfield, and per Dawn Luckham.
 

 
Showing the drawstring at work. More details on the sewing method in a later post.
 

 
In the event, that idea only worked mezzo-mezzo.
 

 
Mmmm. Hmmm.
 

 
Reworking the fit.
 

 
The toile, with the bodice fronts trimmed away a bit.
 

 
After Jenni and Laura and I were happy with the fit, Laura cut out the lining pieces. Here they are, lined up in the order in which they will be sewn. They include seam allowances of 5/8". Ordinarily I would use less, but it's good to have width to work with when you will be doing at least one more fitting. Note, because we found it more accurate, we ended up cutting off the straps (that means cutting the uppermost projections from the pieces to the far left and right), and attaching them separately.
 

 
Cutting the Actual Robe

As always, we started with the bodice. Jenni used the fitted lining as the master template from which to cut the fashion fabric.

Here is the bodice cut out in the fashion fabric. Jenni is very precise in her cutting, which is a must for this sort of dress. Fudging will affect your fit in really frustrating ways.

A Bit About Eighteenth Century Seam-Sewing Conventions

It was a common practice for eighteenth century mantuamakers to construct their bodices by treating the fashion fabric and the lining fabric as a unit, sewing each to the other in a single operation. Here, though, is the kicker: the seams were turned in during the sewing so that when a seam was sewn, not only would two fashion fabric pieces be attached to one another, but the lining would be attached as well, and get this: the seams would be finished, too. No raw edges to finish.

Very clever, I think. Saves massive amounts of time and energy, which for a woman sewing all by hand, would have been critical. Think of this. In Fanny Burney's Evelina, if I am not mistaken, Evelina is fitted for and receives a complete new "suit" of clothes in just a few days. I understand from other sources that this sort of speed has been documented in extant records.

Methought actually doing seams this way might be quite simple. Indeed, once we got the hang of it, Jenni and I did not find it too difficult, but it could be fiddly. If I were to keep constructing clothes this way, I am sure I could speed up a good bit, but to date these fingers still are a bit slow.

There are quite a number of variations on this seam sewing method. For my money, the best descriptions and illustrations are offered in Linda Baumgartner's Costume Close-Up, right in the first chapter.

After reading and sketching, Jenni and I settled on one of the Costume Close-Up methods, as illustrated by Jenni below:

Constructing the Bodice Back

First thing to note: Jenni constructed this dress by machine. While she used the seam technique described above, she did not sew each piece to its neighbor individually. Instead, she pinned all the pieces together, and then sewed them on the machine at once.

She started by constructing the back of the bodice first. As you can see from the pictures above, each side of the back is a mirror image of the other. Each side of the back is composed of a back piece, an inner back piece, and a side back piece.

For each seam, Jenni

• folded in the raw edges of the first lining piece to the depth of the seam allowance
• folded in the raw edges of the first fashion fabric to the depth of the seam allowance
• Did the same for the second lining and fashion fabric pieces
• Nested the pieces together as in the drawing above, so that all the seam allowances lined up
• Pinned the pieces together on the seam line.

You can see an example below. Jenni has already pinned together one inner back and back piece (for the left side of the back of the bodice) and is in the process of folding in the fabric for the inner back piece of the other side.

Here is a picture, taken from the side, of a seam prepared and pinned. All the raw edges are turned in, and the pieces are nested together as they will be sewn, and pinned. Do, please click on the image, to see each layer of fabric identified.

Here is another photo, below, of the fashion fabric and lining nested. You are looking at an armscye (armhole), and Jenni is getting ready to sew the side seam underneath it. You can see how the lining and fashion fabric for the front piece (towards the right of the photo) are nested with the lining and fashion fabric of the side back piece (towards the left of the photo).

Once all the pieces of the back of the bodice were pinned together, she pinned the fronts together and their straps together, pinned the fronts to the backs, and set the entire bodice on the stand and checked the result.

Then she sewed all the seams down. She told me later that for some seams this went well, while for others she found she had issues with all four layers staying together properly, and ended up sewing or resewing several seams, with just three layers, hemming down the innermost lining layer. Here is an example:

Do you see the center back opening in the image above? She could have machine sewed it, right sides together, so that no one side would have overlapped the other. Instead, she chose to do some handwork here. She whipstitched the seam, as you see below. She placed right sides together, and set the whipstitching quite close to the edge.

In the museum images of garments that I have looked at, the central back seam was often whipstitched. Once the seam was sewn, the pieces were carefully opened out, like the pages in a spiral-bound notebook, until the seam laid flat. There is no ridge. Just to double-check, I consulted Nancy Bradfield's Costume in Detail and Linda Baumgartner's Costume Close-Up to make sure.

Here is how it looks from the outside:

...and the inside.

Constructing the Bodice: Front

Remember how at the beginning of this post I wrote that the design changed midstream? Due to a shortage of fabric, Jenni could not give the open robe the longer waistline and multiple rows of gathering found on early 1790s open robes. She opted for a very simple gathered front, quite high-waisted, with both the neckline and waistline gathered.

The front is in three pieces, then. Side front, shoulder strap, and the gathered front part.

Also remember that we altered the basic S&S pattern, in which the shoulder straps are integral to the front piece...a development which became popular, I understand, right near the end of the century. Because we were backing up the design a few years, we opted to lop off the shoulder straps and add them back separately, so that you'd have the expected seams that sit above the bust on each side. Here is that seam pinned in place:

Oop, a bit of a problem. you'll see that the strap and the side front didn't quite match with the front. Mmm. Look very carefully at the photo below...she had to fudge a bit, like we often do, and the Original Cast did too. By the way, you can see the tripartite front construction very clearly here.

Here it is from the front, sewn. Looks very nice. A reminder not to freak at little issues like this.

And from the back. You can see that three layers were stitched, then she photographed the below, with the seam allowance on the lining ready to be hemmed down.

Once the straps were sewn on, the garment looked like the below, all laid out,  fronts, which look like short wings spread out at the sides.

On each front piece, between the lining and the fashion fabric, she sewed a drawstring right into the shoulder seam, nesting it between the lining and fashion fabric layers. It's made of 1/8" twill tape. This is used to gather the neckline. Another is at the bottom.

The fronts were finished by turning in the raw edges down the center front closures, and ditto for the front bottom, and sewing them together. As I did not participate in this part of the construction design, I cannot recall whether she handstitched or machine stitched these seams, and if she did them right sides together or top-stitched them, as would have been period.

She also overcast the neckline seam, all the way around. The rights sides of lining and fashion fabric facing out, per usual, she turned in the seam allowance for fashion fabric and lining inwards. Then she whipstitched the neckline all the way around, per the below.

Once pretty much sewn up, here is what she had:

and...

The basic bodice, once constructed. You can see the twill tape tie that holds the bodice bottom closed. The bodice may be pinned shut along the center front, too, if desired.

If you wish to see more images, see Jenni's Photobucket album to see things rather in order of construction. Start at page 4 and work your way back to page 1.

The Rest of the Story, and More...

• See Part 2 for the completion of this garment.
• See 1790s: Costumes and Research Documentation
  I've done a number of costumes, Jenni has done many more, and I've posted reams of documentation, including looks at portrait miniatures, translations from a German fashion magazine, looks at Gallery of Fashion, and so on.

We're having a blast with this era :}

Inaugurating the Pizza Oven at Sunwise Farm and Sanctuary

Last Saturday, heavy clouds and drizzle parted for a few hours as our sewing circle gathered at Kathleen and Greg's farm to celebrate spring and the new outdoor oven they had built.

The evening before Kathleen and Greg and home-ground grain and prepared dough for four pizzas, and more for six loaves of bread and lots of rolls. It's likely they prepared the fixings for homemade yogurt, too. Then, as the morning light dribbled in, Greg stepped out and lit the oven with wood culled from the farm, so that by 8:30 it was well started, and would be ready about noon, some 800-900 degrees hot.

We made our way there by ten, and stepped out of our vehicles into, as Jenni put it, a place out of time. The gardens are lush with lavender, and melissa, varieties of thymes and others I cannot name at sight, countless perennials, a happy fig tree, spinach and vegetables intermixed. The wall at the edge of the drive is made of lilac in full, gorgeous scented bloom, barely-blue iris, grown for orris root as much as for their beauty, beneath. There are standing stones, honeysuckle at the end of a walk through the minute valley, views of distant hills beyond, a cozy house that they built full of air and light and Kathleen's gentle paintings and artwork, smelling like tincture of heaven and also of coffee and toasted grain.

The bees are hard at work in their boxes: they caught four swarms last week. We tasted last year's honey, and I grew greedy for it, because it tastes like every happy herb and flower you can name plus the love of bees, but alas, it's saved for bee tea.

We watched as Greg prepared the oven he had built, that they had painted and Kathleen had smoothed with slaked lime, an oven so sturdy it might easily last until our grandchildren's children are adults.

We gathered round to watch as coals were swept back, peels brought out, the heat radiating around us, and Greg placed the first pizza in. It sizzles, and flames licked the coals far back in the oven. Two minutes later, and he pulled it out, and there it was, the first pizza, and we ate that and most of three more out under the trees, new mown grass scent in the air, with birdsong and distant mooing and a cockadoodle-dooing as serenade.

The tots rambled the gardens and porch, rested their bare little feet on Cai, who is so Corgi-cute that I could just hug him about twenty times an hour, we talked about fresco-painting and bread and what the stars tell and prayer and gardens.

We planned more Regency gown details in Kathleen's studio. The boys hugged whatever person seemed most convenient at the moment, Cai had his ears scratched, no one worried about gathering clouds, knowing by instinct that they'd come in good time, after we had visited bee boxes and were ready to wend our way back to time.

Alas that not all of us could be there, but thank you Kathleen, and Greg, for the most blessed day one could ask for.

A Tutorial: Sense and Sensibility Bodiced Petticoat - Part 4

This is the fourth part of a multi-part tutorial about making a bodiced petticoat using the bodice portion of the basic Sense and Sensibility Regency dress pattern. The tips are designed to supplement Jennie Chancey's online directions for a bodiced petticoat. If you missed the first sections, you can read parts 1, 2, and 3 here.


As always, please click on each image for a larger version.

In this post, we assemble the bodice. Please refer to Jennie's directions for this portion of the project, under the header "Making the Final Bodice".

Photo: My sewing corner in the guest room. These days little Christopher has my old sewing room for his bedroom, so I do my work mostly here. It may be hard on the knees after awhile, but it works :}

Adding the Neckline Drawstring Casing and Drawstrings

Our next task was to add the drawstring casing and drawstrings to the neckline of the bodice lining. It is sewn to the right side of the fabric, the side that will be next to the body. If we sewed it to the side with the bones in it, when finished the casing would be inside the garment where we couldn't use it :} We used the same Wright's single-fold bias tape for the casing that Jennie Chancey recommended.

We constructed it as Jennie recommended. Her directions are quite clear, so I will not repeat them here. (Again, these directions are a supplement to hers, not a replacement for them.)

The only tip I offer is to baste the drawstring casing to the bodice before stitching it down. Since it will be against your skin, you want to apply it very flat, without creases or bumps.

Here is a photo of the casing of drawstring casing after being applied and sewn:

Then we threaded the drawstrings through the casing. We cut two pieces of poly ribbon, one for each side of the front of the bodice, making each ribbon long enough to not only thread through its portion of casing, but to tie at center front, and to stick out a wee bit at the shoulder edge so it can be sewn into the shoulder seam.

We used poly ribbon for the drawstring simply because that is what we had. I have often thought that it would make good sense to use 1/8" wide linen twill tape, since that is not slippery and will hold better when the garment is gathered.

Also, Fitting and Proper (Sharon Burnston) has documented a shift (dating anywhere from 1790 to 1810) that closes with a very narrow 3/16" hem instead of a casing, and that is threaded not with ribbon, but with heavy linen thread. (pp. 44-46). Next time I would be tempted to do the same, because the hem and string would be far less bulky than what we have here.

Let us forge on.
Assembling the Bodice Pieces: Lining

At last we were ready to assemble the pieces of the bodice together. Remember that we have pieces for both lining and for the exterior, "fashion fabric" side that shows when the petticoat is worn. Each side will be constructed separately. We started by constructing the lining.

First, we sewed one back piece to its side back piece, and then the other back piece to its back piece. Remember how tricky it was to work with this curved seam when we fit the toile? Well, here we go again. Please refer to part 1 of this tutorial if you need a refresher.

Here is a photo of the pinning in process:

Next, here is where I freely admit I goofed. I sewed the side back pieces next to the fronts...so that I had all the pieces of the lining sewn together. Bad idea. If you do this it becomes very hard to deal with the shoulder straps.

At this point, this is what I had, below. You are viewing it from the right side of the lining...the side that will be next to your skin. Please click on the image to read my warning notes again in blue text :}

The step we should have taken next was to sew the shoulder pieces together. Here are the seams for one shoulder of the bodice below, pinned.

Then sewn (on my handcrank Singer machine). Notice the end of the drawstring sticking out from the allowances. When sewing the shoulder seams, we wanted to make sure that each drawstring was securely sewn into each seam.

Now we had the bodice lining pieces assembled, and we set them aside to await a later step.

Assembling the Bodice Pieces: the Outer Bodice

Now it was time to follow the same process for the outer bodice pieces...the fashion fabric pieces that would show when the bodice is worn.

Completing the Bodice Assemblage

It was late in the evening when I put together the bodice for Polly, and I rather felt like I had been working on this project forever, which was, with a stretch of imagination, true. We had begun back in the fall, but holidays intervened, and then research. Perhaps at this point you're feeling a little bodice-bored yourself. Persevere, I say!

Affixing Lining to Outer Bodice

It was now time to affix the lining to the outer bodice.

Per Jennie's directions, I laid the bodice lining down flat, right side facing up. Then I laid the outer bodice atop it, right side down. Now the right sides were together.

I commenced to pinning the lining to the outer bodice at the neckline, all the way from the center back one side to center front, then again on the other side, from center back to center front.

In the photo below you see once side pinned.

Notice how there are more pins at the curves than there are on the straight stretches. These extra pins will help hold the pieces in the proper position, with less likelihood of puckering, when they are sewn together. Sewing machines are more apt to have this issue than handsewn pieces, but it's best to be safe, unless you are an accomplished seamstress.

Jennie's directions require you to sew a 5/8-inch seam at the center back edge, narrowing down to 1/8 inch at the beginning of the front neckline, that is, at the shoulder seams. Or that's at least how I understood it.

In order to create a nice, smooth transition from 5/8" to 1/8", I used the principle of halving:

• At the center back edge I marked, in pencil, 5/8 inch from the raw neckline edge.
• At the shoulder seam I made a second mark, 1/8 inch away from the raw neckline edge.
• Then I found the center of the space in between the two marks, and measured a little more than 3/8 in from the edge.
• Now I had two sections.
• I found the center of the section closest to the center back, and measured approximately a quarter inch (2/8") from the edge. Then I eyeballed further marks, to create a smooth transition.
• I did the same for the other side.
• I made plenty of marks. Unless you're really sure of yourself, it's really easy to let your line of stitching wander...it's good to have marks to sew by. This is especially true of handstitching, because you cannot see as far ahead of you as you can on a machine. Trust me on this. 

The photos below capture the process.

Then I sewed the neckline edge, being careful not to sew over that drawstring ribbon at any point. You can sew in one operation like Jennie did, or sew from center back to center front, then stop and sew from center back to center front on the other side. Because I do not like to have so many pins sitting around, I did the latter.

Jennie writes: "When you reach the "neckline,"just stich a scant 1/8" away from the top edge. When you get to the bodice front, you'll be stitching right on top of the stitches you made when you sewed the drawstring casing on."

Sewing the Armscyes

Remember how, like a dork, I had sewn up the side seams under the armscyes? Well, now that's where that mistake began to show itself. That is because the next step is to sew around the armsyce. If the side seam is sewn, as in the leftmost portion of the image below, how do you easily turn the shoulder straps right side out?  Jennie explains that her method is a simple way to deal with shoulder straps and sleeveless garments, and she's right. Once I figured out how it worked, I realized how nice a method it is.

So, as you can see in the rightmost portion of the image below, I have ripped out the side seam. Now that side of the bodice is only attached at the shoulder seams.

So, our step is to stitch all the way around the armscye...around the U shape, if you will.
  

Here is the seam, sewn.

You will want to clip the seam allowances at the curves a little bit so that the resulting shoulder strap, when turned right side out, will lay well.

Turning the Shoulder Straps Right Side Out

Now for a bit of work I never enjoy much: turning the shoulder straps right side out. Because the space is so narrow, and the enter bodice must go through that narrow channel (!), it's helpful to have a bodkin or the end of a wooden spoon to help pull and push the fabric through.

In the image below, I have started to pull back the fabric on one side of the bodice. I will keep going, turning the fabric right side out.

As here:

And here, where we are at the narrowest part of the process.

Here is what we ended up with, below, when both armscyes were sewn and turned right side out. As you can see, both side seams beneath the armscyes are open. It's these seams that we will close up next.

Sewing Up the Side Seams

Lay the bodice out flat, right side out. Under one armscye, where the seam is open, turn the fabric that's lying on top inside out, per the below.

In the image below I am turning up one side again for the camera, while the other side is already turned up.

Here below both sides are pulled out. What we could have done was to match the top halves of the side seams, and sew them, then match the bottom halves of the side seams and sew them.

However, it is easier to match both top and bottom, making sure that the seam you see in the middle (image below) matches at the horizontal seam at the center.

Here below I am pulled the fabric together to form a seam.

Then I pinned the seam together. I started at that middle seam, pinned the fabric together there, set another pin at the left outer edge, and then, using the principle of halves again, pinned in the middle to make two sections, pinned in the middle of those to make now four sections, and so on. This method of pinning ensured that if one side was a wee longer than the other, that the extra length would get eased gently in, without puckers or skewing the final seam.

Below you see the pinning process started.

Then I used the same pinning process for the right half of the seam, from the middle seam out to the right edge.
Voila: completed seam! See Jennie's photo for an example.

Next Steps

Now the bodice was all sewn up, except for the back seam. Next steps are to have Polly try the bodice on one last time, and to make up the skirt and waistband and complete the petticoat at last.