1830's Day Dress: Corded Petticoat

Corded petticoat time!

I've got to be honest with you guys, the Black Snail instructions of a corded petticoat are super confusing.

Don't get me wrong, I think that they make great patterns but for this one, I'd probably use a different pattern. American Duchess has a great video on their Youtube channel about how to make one. 

Their instructions for cutting out the panels and what the panels are for is confusing because the information which needs to be two sentences long is jumbled in between a bunch of other important information and is told in bits and pieces. Honestly, it took me like a day of sewing and unpick and sewing and unpicking then reading and rereading the instructions before I finally understood what they were wanting me to do. 

Once I was sure that I was on the right track, I started sewing the cording. They don't give you any instruction on cording layouts. I measured how long I wanted the petticoat to be and added a bit more to take into account the shrinkage of adding cording. I turned in the facing and took that measurement. I then took the layout Abby Cox uses in the American Duchess video on making a corded petticoat and adjusted it to my measurement. 

Now it's time to actually sew cording. I sewed the first eight rows before measured up the 10.3cm that I had mathed in my template. I draw a circle around the whole interior so I knew that when I was sewing the cording that it was straight. I did this each time I came to a new block of cording. It took me roughly 16 minutes to sew each row of cording so, in total it took me 9.6 hours... or roughly one season of Sex and the City.

I gathered the top edge before sewing on the waistband and adding two strips of twill tape for ties. I did end up taking the ties off and replacing them with a hook and bar as the petticoat was too big around my waist with the ties and kept falling down.

Now, to starch. These petticoats were heavily starched to create the bell shape of the decade. The crinoline cage hadn't been invented yet so this is what they did to hold their dresses and skirts out.

 I couldn't find any fabric starching products in my local area so I went to the internet. I found quite a few articles on how to heavily starch garments with corn starch. Apparently in New Zealand, corn starch and corn flour are the same things which I didn't know until after my adventure to the supermarket came up empty-handed. Anyway, I tried one of the methods I'd seen, but once my petticoat had dried, there wasn't really any difference in stiffness. I was feeling a bit bummed at this point as I was worried that I was going to have to starch this multiple times. 

Luckily, after some late-night internet searching, I came across a youtube video by Lee-am on how to starch historical petticoats. This video was a lifesaver. Her method worked so well! I highly recommend it for anyone needing to heavily starch any garment. Just make sure to iron it afterward as starching it will make the fibers not feel very nice. Ironing it just makes it feel nicer.

With that, it's done! Honestly, this garment was a lot of trial and error. I thought it would be easier than it was. I think it's one of those things where after you do it once, it'll be much easier the next time. Sewing the cording will always take a long while but I think I could make the basic skirt and starch it much faster now that I've already done it and know how to do it.

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

-Maysie