A Williamsburg Jacket

A quilted petticoat looks great with a jacket or caraco to go with it, so for my next project, I have decided to make a jacket. This combination would be something a middle class woman in the 18th century would have worn during the day.

I decided to make this jacket, which is in the Colonial Williamsburg collection, and for which there is a pattern on pgs. 39-42 of Costume Close-Up.

Lucky for me, Rebecca from Fashionable Frolick has made several versions of this jacket and very generously posted a tutorial on her blog, where she chronicles, with lots of photos, how she put this jacket together using 18th century methods.

The original jacket is made from linen, but I am making mine from some cotton I had in my fabric stash. I don't know if the fabric pattern is appropriate for the 18th century, but it looks like it could be to me.

I already enlarged the pattern from Costume Close-Up by scanning it into my computer, and then using the measurement grid on the pattern to enlarge it up to it's full size. I then cut this out of some scrap fabric in order to make a "toile", or mock-up to alter to fit me before cutting into my good fabric. 

This is where I usually choke when sewing something - the fitting part. Since I don't have any friends with the same love of historical clothing as I do, I have to fit things on myself, by myself. 

Using my mannequin, which I had tried to pad with batting to better mimic my own measurements, I fitted my mock-up over stays. Perhaps in response to my latest episode of fitting angst, a pin appeared on my Pinterest feed by Cathy Hay of Your Wardrobe Unlock'd featuring the Fabulous Fit system. 

This consists of a series of foam rubber pads and a stetchy cover, which is used to pad out an existing dressmaker's mannequin to more accurately represent an individual's measurements. Fabulous! I had tried doing this with batting with only so-so results, so this should be a vast improvement over what I was using. I immediately ordered it from Amazon. 

It arrived today, and I set to work padding out my mannequin. After struggling with shoving pads under the stretchy cover for 15 minutes, I finally got it to resemble my measurements...ugh...talk about depressing! But, that's a whole 'nother story! 

Next up, cutting the pieces from good fabric and cutting out the lining pieces.

Matlasse, Marseilles and Corded Quilting

Since the Snow Queen and Jack Frost refuse to stop tag-teaming most of the U.S. with their particular idea of "fun", I've been staying inside and hibernating. How on earth did people deal with it in the past? Well, one way was by dressing warmly, even inside, and one of these ways for women was to wear quilted skirts or petticoats.

Most of the extant ones that I have found were made from silk satin.

I wanted to make one of these, but since my silk budget had to be sacrificed for a new gas furnace, and since I've really never done any quilting, I opted for a "cheat" to get the look. 

Matelasse (mat-la-say) is a cotton fabric that is often used for upholstery or bedspreads and is readily available at my local JoAnn fabrics. This fabric was originally made to imitate Broderie de Marseille, which is a form of three-dimensional textile sculpture using plain white cloth and white cotton cording that originated in Marseille, France in the 17th century. 

This is what Matlasse fabric looks like...kind of an embossed, quilted effect...

Real Broderie de Marseille looks like this -

I used the quilted petticoat diagram on page 36 of Costume Close-Up and cut six rectangular panels. The waistband is made of cotton Osnaburg with side ties of linen tape. It's probably not 100% historically accurate, but I did use natural fibers and it is all hand-sewn using cotton thread.

I will probably dye it, although the natural color resembles this petticoat...

Or this one...

Lucy Locket Lost her Pocket...

...Kitty Fisher found it. There was not a penny in it, but a ribbon 'round it...

In th 18th century, women didn't lug around large purses like we do today to store the inevitable amount of junk they needed at their disposal on a daily basis; however, that doesn't mean that they didn't need something to carry around keys, money, handkerchiefs, love letters....Thus the "pocket" was born.

According to the VADS Pockets of History website...

"Just like Lucy Locket in the nursery rhyme, women and girls in the past had tie-on pockets instead of handbags to carry the things they needed. Although life in the past was markedly different from the present, the small possessions that people carried with them in their pockets was just as important to them and just as telling about how they lived their daily lives as they are for us today.

All through the 18th and 19th centuries, capacious and practical tie-on pockets remained a favourite for women. These pockets were not expensive or glamorous objects but they are rich in information and meaning. The ways they were made, decorated, used and even lost and stolen, reveal a lot about life in those times.

The pockets were tied around the waist usually underneath skirts or aprons. They had a special usefulness at this time because women of all social classes had little or no private space and few if any rights to own property. But they had significant roles and varied responsibilities within households, as employers or as servants, and many were involved in their families’ trades and businesses and it made sense to be prepared for all kinds of practicalities. Whether the contents of these pockets were utilitarian or precious, for daily use or private consumption, keeping them in a tie-on pocket was an efficient way of ensuring they were accessible and secure."

These tie-on pockets were sort of like an early form of the familiar "fanny pack" that we know of today, although worn underneath the clothes, not on top of.

They are a fairly simple design and an excellent way to practice or show off one's skill at embroidery.


There is a very nice template for an embroidered pocket on Page 68 of "Costume Close-Up", so I used that to embroider my own pocket.


It was a bit time consuming, but I worked on it in the evenings.


The finished pocket...

Location:2nd St,Ilion,United States

Dresses I Must Make

Waiting rooms are not conducive to witty blog posts, as they usually involve one's nerves being on edge. So here are some fabulous frocks that are on my fantasy to do list...

ZOMG! Zone front!

I like the zone front on this and the fabric colors. I wish I could find more pictures of this gown from different angles.

This one because it's butter yellow and lavender...one of my favorite color combinations.

I like the belt and the stripes. It kind of resembles this gown from "The Duchess", except that this one is a zone front.

I like the pink and the flowers on this one.

I'm not sure why I like this one...something about the subtle color combination and the trim, although not particularly crazy about the straight across bottom on the stomacher - I think I would bring it to a point...

I like everything about this dress...the trim, the color combination, the style...

This dress mostly because it is my two favorite colors of blue and purple, but it has some interesting trim and texture as well...

I'm not generally interested in the Baroque period, but having watched a couple of movies set in the time of Charles II, and read about another seamstresses adventure in making a dress from this period, I can say I was a bit intrigued...If I was ever to make a dress from this era, I like the one in this painting of Catherine of Braganza, wife of Charles II, mostly I think because it's pink...

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Georgie Girl

I finally received my "Georgiana" 18th century shoes from American Duchess the other day in the mail! Yay! They will join such illustrious historical shoes in my closet as my red "Titanic" boots, my mid-19th century side-scallop boots and my hand-made leather ghillies! Mr. T thoroughly approved of them!

I got the round buckles, but I think I may get some square ones too, just for a different look...Or I'll try the "ribbon lappet" thing.

I had a hard time deciding what color to dye them! Pink? Blue? Green? I decided on blue, with green grosgrain trim around them, so I fearlessly jumped into the whole dyeing thing with reckless abandon! Was I afraid of ruining them? You bet! But I figured the worst I would have to do is make them some sort of darker color or maybe try dye remover. At any rate, I decided to try the tutorial on dyeing shoes by The Dreamstress I picked up some royal blue dye at Walmart - it was Tulip brand - less than a buck - and I wasn't sure how well it would work, but it was either that or Rit and I wasn't really sure there was that much of a difference except price.

I heated up some water on the stove, poured it into my stainless steel sink, added the dye and stirred it up. I then took a paint brush - all I had was a 1" wide paintbrush, not the wide one that is used in the tutorial, and I crossed my fingers that it would work. First, I tried it out on the swatch that was included with the shoes (what a freakin' awesome idea! Thanks, Lauren!), I let it dry and it didn't look half bad, so I dove into the shoes. Here is one shoe after one coat....Not too shabby! I was definitely impressed with both the dye and the ease and results of the technique of "painting" the dye on as opposed to "immersing" something in dye.

The lighting was a little dark in my kitchen, and the shoe was a bit damp, so it looks a little darker in this picture than it actually is after one coat. It looks a little closer to this picture:

I'm really excited about this! I think I'll give it one more coat after it dries good and call it a day! I've never dyed shoes before - I've been in weddings and had the shoes dyed, but this is so easy and SOOO much cheaper, that I would recommend this method to anyone who wants to dye a pair of silk shoes!

Here are a couple more photos of the finished product with different looks to the shoe. After I finished the dyeing process, I hand sewed green grosgrain ribbon around the edges. I also made a green and blue cockade and tried both the round buckles and square buckles.

The lighting was a little different on the last two pictures, so they look lighter blue than they actually are - The color is closer to the blue in the first picture with the round buckles.