Robe à la Française: Under-Petticoat

The Basic Under-Petticoat,
The one thing that I never made but knew I needed. 

The Basic Under-Petticoat is the first thing to make in 'The American Duchess Guide to 18th Century Dressmaking'. It has been sitting there, staring at me for almost a year now, begging to be made. I've made petticoats for 1950's dresses before, but for some reason, I could never bring myself to make this one. The only conclusion I could really come to for not making it sooner was that I was rather intimidated by the fabric. 

Cotton Matlassé is not something that I've been able to find in NZ and from the photos online, it has always looked rather stiff. Also, shipping prices to not only NZ but rural NZ are awful! However, I knew I needed to make a petticoat so on some late-night perusing of fabric stores, I decided to bite the bullet and do it. I ordered three yards (3m) of cotton matlassé from Renaissance Fabrics.

It actually arrived a lot sooner than I expected it to. It was a very nice surprise when the postie dropped it off. I very quickly put away all other projects that I was working on to focus on this. I measured myself and cut out one panel of fabric. This was my first mistake. I had only cut ONE panel. Imagine my confusion when I continued with the steps and it was saying things such as "With the petticoat out flat" and "Find the center of the front panel." Now, you can't really do these things with just one panel sewed together. At first, I thought that the instructions were just done in a very odd order. It wasn't until I started trying to pleat the panel that I realised I had done something very very wrong. It was only now that I thought to have a look at American Duchess's videos on getting dressed in 18th-century clothes. I did a mental facepalm as I realised that I was meant to have two panels instead of one. I very reluctantly ripped out all of my stitches and cut out a matching back panel.

I put the project down for a couple of days and worked on some others. I couldn't quite bring myself to redo all the work I had done as well as do twice as much as last time. After finishing my other projects, it was all I had left. I knew I couldn't move on until I made this petticoat, so I got down and did it. I redid all the hand sewing. It took me about eight hours to redo sewing the panel sides together and all the hemming. I definitely found myself getting faster at hand sewing and I am a little bit in love with the way the seams look once hemmed. 

My next biggest obstacle was the pleats. Unlike when I was pleating one panel which I couldn't get to fit around my waist, now I couldn't get it to shrink down to my waist. I tried about six different attempts of pleating to get it to fit. When I was finally happy with the pleats, I sewed on the waistbands to the front and back. I thought I was done until I put it on. Still too big! I undid my stitching and decided to take one knife pleat on each side and made them an extra inch deep and hide an extra pleat in it. I basted it on the machine and tried it on before committing to the waistband. I was finally happy with it. I then sewed the waistband back on and was done. 

In review, it's not a hard project to do, you just have to make sure you know your math and cut out two panels because the book doesn't tell you that. It only took me about three full days, even with the setbacks. I'm very happy with the final result. It's like walking around with a duvet on your legs which is a win in my books. 

I'll talk to you soon. Have a swell day!

-Maysie