Author Archives: Rotraut

1870´s Wrapper dress sew-along Part 3 (Collar)

It´s time to prepare the collar! The collar is piped along the outside edges, the width of the piping is about 3mm. To achieve a regular piping, take a bias strip, about 3cm wide, and fold in half all the way along, wrong sides together, and press. Baste all the way along the folded edge with an even spacing of 3mm to mark your sewing line.

Mark the stitching line on the right side of the outer collar. As you can see, it was a bit of try and error to mark the correct line.

Place the collar piping on top, with the folded edge towards the collar, lining up the stitching lines. Clip the piping at the corners to give some extra width and baste along the stitching line through all layers. The basting stitches seen on the wrong side of the collar indicates the stitching line.

Line up inner and outer collar, right sides together, and sew just next to the basting threads, indicating your stitching line, with the outer collar up.

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1870´s Wrapper dress sew-along Part 2

Today let´s start with sewing! The fabric from stock is a lightweight wool with a very small diamond pattern, flatlined with a lightweight cotton fabric.

The front pattern with it´s two darts is quite a large pattern piece. With modern fabrics you can cut the whole thing in one, the extant dress is pieced to be cut from a fabric with a width of about 90cm.

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1780´s Redingote for WGT 2019 /

Preparing for the WGT 2019 I bought some meters of a brown striped taffeta fabric. It was mentioned to become a coat and trousers for my husband. But when I was finished, I still had 6m of that fabric left. First I was thinking of a steampunk inspired bustle dress, but reflecting this idea several days I decided to make a 1780´s Redingote dress matching with my husband´s 1780´s suit.

As usual I tried to make lots of pics during the sewing process and as I really love the dress, it became the first sewing pattern for a series of 18th century patterns. Please don’t be impatient, I´ll try to launch some of the new patterns this year (including some men´s patterns).

This tutorial should help to facilitate the sewing process of the Redingote, some things will be slightly different as described in the sewing pattern. Pictures and a tutorial for the petticoat are missing.

Here you see the bodice from lining, all parts sewn together and the seam allowances pressed open. Every seam is covered with a boning channel, I made mine from twill tape. The side seams are curved, filling that channels with plastic boning serves, but with a stronger bend I´ll recommend not to follow the seams anymore. Let the channel run straight towards the shoulder seam.

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How to get small, regular pleats on 17th or 18th century skirts

For small folds (minimum ¼” (5mm)), measure the distance of the waistband or bodice section, where you want to attach the skirt.

Let´s say 35cm for an 18th century robe a l´Anglaise. Determine the width of folds and therefore the number of folds – with a width of 5mm there would be 70 folds each side (that makes a total of 140! folds).

Measure along the top edge of the skirt, from center back to the front edge, subtract about 1” from this measurement (e.g. 138cm-2cm=136cm). Divide this measurement by the number of folds (136cm/70=1,9cm). This is how much fabric each folds contains. Transfer that measurements to the wrong side of the top edge of the skirt. Mark the fold´s width (5mm) beside. As a rule, the skirt width has to be minimum three times the distance at the bodice/waistband.

In this sample I wanted to gather 45cm into 10cm, with pleats of 5mm. That means I divided 45cm by 20, that is 2,25cm for each fold. On the picture above I marked this 2,25cm at the wrong fabric side along the top edge. On the picture below, I marked the fold´s width of 5mm beside.

Sew two rows of gathering stitches with a thicker thread on both sides of the seamline. Above you see the wrong side, below the right fabric side of the skirt with the gathering threads already stitched.

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