Category Archives: General

1890´s Jacket with puff sleeves

Another illustrated tutorial for my newest sewing pattern #0120, showing some steps a bit different than I explained in the sewing instruction´s, just because you can make things different.

A bit about the jacket: It is a typical double breasted jacket from around 1890, with puffed sleeves and large lapels and cut narrow at the waist to emphasize the 1890´s hourglass shape. As this jacket is mentioned to be made from a lightweight fabric like silk taffeta (shame over me, I used polyester taffeta – but it served well for the event I made it for) I flatlined the entire jacket with a midweight cotton fabric. The fabric was quite hard to take good pictures from, especially with artificial light. I do not have a picture of every step described in the sewing instructions, but from all more complicated ones. Let´s start!

Here you can see the back, flatlined and sewn together, with the self-made piping from my fashion fabric lined up with the bottom edge until reaching the mark (5). I did not make pics from the piping making process, as there are so many great video tutorials on the internet. Just search for PIPING and choose your favorite one.

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1890´s Fan-Skirt Tutorial

The Fan-Skirt pattern (#0414) still is my best selling pattern, so I´ll show you how I made my new skirt with that sewing pattern.

But what happened to the old one, why do I need a new one, or what´s the difference? I made my old skirt a few years ago from a single layer of a midweight dark brown woolen fabric, the sewing pattern was one of the first I published under my pattern label. I have worn this skirt frequently for cycling and winter activities like walking and skating. After all this years, the skirt looks well-worn, with several marks of a bicycle chain and srubbed up at the hem.

Plannig my first visit at the Wave Gothic Festival 2019 in Leipzig, I decided to make a new skirt and jacket, inspired by the motion picture Crimson Peak. As the skirt was thought to be worn on a festival I choosed a polyester taffeta, lined with glazed cotton. (That was a wise decision, as my husband emptied a glass of prosecco all over my skirt).

You´ll see pictures of two different skirts, made from different fabrics in this blogpost, as I forgot to take all pictures needed for this tutorial while sewing the Fan-Skirt.

After cutting all pattern pieces from fashion and lining fabric, I prepared the hem interfacing, cutting about 8″ (20cm) wide hem-shaped strips from a stiff, but lightweight canvas. For a hemline of several meters , I needed to piece the strips of interfacing, joining them with a simple overlapping seam.

Placing the lining pieces on top of a table with the wrong side up, I marked the hem line and lined up the interfacing with this line.

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1790´s Men´s Waistcoat sew-along Part 3

Part 2

Next day I started to prepare the fronts from fashion fabric and marked the pocket opening on the right fabric side with basting threads. For reinforcement I basted a rectangular piece of interfacing to the wrong fabric side, covering the pocket opening.

This was a quick and dirty pocket, this sloppy opening will be covered by the welt later.

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1790´s Men´s Waistcoat sew-along Part 1

A few years ago, I started this waistcoat project for my husband for a visit of the Castle of Delitzsch (Germany). It was summer and I decided to sew the waistcoat completely by hand outdoors, enjoying my garden while sewing. However, the best thing was that I did not forget to make as many pictures of the sewing process as possible. And here we go!

I prepared all pieces from fashion fabric and lining in my sewing room and moved then on my terrace, where I lined up the backs, right sides together, and stitched along the center back seam, starting at the top until reaching the top of the vent. To make a flat felled seam, I trimmed back the seam allowance of the right back to ¼” (5mm) from top to the vent and notched the seam allowance of the left back to fold over the trimmed back seam allowance of the right back. Without an iron available in the garden, I folded the edges with the nail of my thumb. I felled down the edge with small stitches, barely visible on the right fabric side.

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