Edwardian petticoat

Pattern: improvised

Fabric: cotton lawn

Haberdasheries:

A confession – I haven’t made many underskirts yet. I think wearing the right, authentic undergarments under historical clothes is important both for the right silhouette and posture, and for the right experience. But whereas the effect of a corset is substantial, you can’t really tell whether there’s an underskirt underneath a dress or not. And that’s why I’ve never managed to give them priority. But I always had ‘need to make a WWI underskirt’ at the back of my mind (and a WW2 one, for that matter!), and now I’ve made one.

Sorry, I can’t really get the skirt photographed properly, with this dark winter weather going on! And I did iron it; I always do, it just never shows :P.

I improvised this pattern. It is a very simple two panel skirt, with four darts in the back and a drawstring in a tunnel to make the waist adjustable. Also, I sewed on two hooks and worked two loops.

For the bottom hem I sewed together two kinds of lace, one gathered, both with a leafy pattern, and added a green ribbon to keep with the theme.

World War I QAIMNS nurse hat

In 2014 I made a World War I QAIMNS nurse uniform, and I’ve worn it a lot since, at several memorable World War I events. My group has, for instance, portrayed a hospital stationed inside a country house, at Museum Huis Doorn.

Now, we’ve added the ‘walking out’ or parade version of the uniform to our repertoire. This means: no apron, no cuffs, a hat instead of a veil, and white gloves.

The hats, naturally, we had to fashion ourselves. Here’s a QAIMNS hat from the collection of the Imperial War Museum, which I used as my main example:

We ordered a number of grey wool felt hats, but they had a pretty weird shape, with a round rather than an oval crown. This made it hard for me to get the hat to fit properly, because the brim would get wavy when I put it on, but some steam pressing did improve it.

Unfortunately we could not buy the same ribbon that was used at the time. We could have had some made, but only by the roll of 200 metres or so, and we needed about 10. But as the colours were similar to Iron Cross ribbon, we used that, and sewed grey ribbon onto it.

To make the ribbon fit around the crown without all too much puckering, I eased the different ribbons onto each other. First I eased the Iron Cross ribbon onto the top grey ribbon, and then I did the opposite, easing the bottom grey ribbon onto the Iron Cross ribbon. It’s quite amazing how big an effect this had on the shape of the ribbon, as you can see below (the left part of the ribbon was sewn normally, without easing on).

I made the flat bow out of three different pieces of ribbon, since actually tying the ribbon into a bow would have made it bulkier than the bow on the IWM hat.

And here’s the hat sewn up:

We first wore the walking out uniform at the recent Passchendaele event at Zonnebeke in Belgium. It was particularly suitable to wear to the remembrance church service.

Even our hairstyles were uniform here! =)

VAD veil

Pattern: Improvised, based on measurements mentioned in an ad from the period

Fabric: Cotton lawn

Haberdasheries: none

It’s 1916 this year, and this means that instead of the adorable Sister Dora caps my fellow WW1 nurse re-enactresses and I used to wear, we will start wearing the veil that was introduced in late 1915.

Because the 'Army veil' looked more professional than the Sister Dora cap, some auxiliary hospitals decided that their VAD staff could wear them as well. This step found disfavour among trained military nurses!
A Matron-in-Chief in France reported: "Found some of the VADs with Army caps on at Etaples, and was informed they were permitted to wear them. Instructed them to wear Sister Dora cap until I gave them other instructions and wrote to the Matron-in-Chief on the subject on 23rd inst." (War Diary of Matron-in-Chief, The National Archives, WO95/3988, 27 October 2015
At about this time the VAD headwear was officially changed by order of the Joint War Committee. The Sister Dora cap was phased out, and substituted with a style that became iconic for the Great War VAD.

This style of veil is different from the QAIMNS one. (Of course, it would have been too easy for us if we could have used the QAIMNS veils we already had!) This one is made of lawn, and rectangular in shape, about 47 by 70 cm.

I thought it would be very hard to put on properly, but we practised with it during a recent nurses’ sewing and training weekend, and it wasn’t actually that hard. And I don’t think it actually looks that much worse than the Dora cap, either.

My 2015 projects

Here's an overview of what I made this year! Click on the images to see more about each project.

Historical clothing and accessories

Historical knitting and crochet projects

 

 

 

 

 

 Contemporary clothing

 

Contemporary knitting projects

Montse hat

Contemporary accessories

Amigurumi

Leafy sea dragon

Happy new year everyone!

Hope to see you here again next year!