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.

White spats

Pattern: Improvised

Fabric: Cotton, leftover from my 1915 suit

Haberdasheries: Black elastic

I made a pair of beige spats before. Since I already had a pattern, it wasn’t that much effort to make a pair in another colour. Some of the pictures of spats boots I found had white and black ones, which I thought looked really cool, too:

So here’s my version!

More information on how I made these in the post about the beige pair.

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!

Edwardian hat

Pattern: none

Fabric: mauve satin cotton from an Ikea Gäspa fitted sheet; light pink tulle

Haberdasheries: cherry blossoms

I started making this hat last year, for my second civilian World War I event at Huis Doorn. But I didn’t finish it, because I couldn’t find any decorations for it that matched the brown fabric. (I find hat decoration the hardest part of making historical outfits! There are several more hats that I haven’t posted here yet because I’m not yet happy about them. My 1915 hat turned out exceptionally well!) So I wore it undecorated, looking like this:

But most Edwardian hats were very lavish, so I didn’t want mine to remain minimalist! Also, the brown fabric was a bit too artificial, although it doesn’t show in the photo. So I decided to start over with new fabric, and just choose a nice colour rather than one that matched the straw base. I realised I should see the straw similarly to jeans: as a neutral that matches pretty much anything.

This was what the hat originally looked like:

I removed the ribbon and threaded metal wire through the rim to stop it being floppy, which was of course too modern:

I put some fibrefill around the crown of the hat, and sewed the fabric on over it, to create a wide crown:

And finally, I added tulle and lots of cherry blossoms:

From the side and top:

My inspiration for the flower arrangement, and also for the bow-like piece of fabric on the side of the hat (bottom row, second from right):