20 years ago, my mom and I started small embroideries to be sewn into two quilts. The idea came from a magazine, with the goal of creating one embroidered rectangle for each month of the year. I was about to turn 9, and during that summer I embroidered 11 of the 12 months. And then summer came to an end, and the project sat in a box for a very long time. Early this year when I visited my family my mom gave me my completed blocks as well as the materials and instructions to finish the final block.
I traced and stitched the December block (in January, ironically) to finish the embroidery for the quilt.
The original quilt is designed to be an art quilt rather than a functional quilt, and it’s quite a small size. I love the idea of making items functional items, rather than just decorative, but I’m not it sure will be possible to make this quilt functional (for me) due to the embroidery and the small size. I need to evaluate my options to determine how this will be finished and with what fabrics.
Historybounding is all the rage this year, and I am here for this trend! I love the Edwardian era, which is specifically fueled by my love for Anne of Green Gables and other works by L. M. Montgomery. Growing up I desperately wanted to be Anne, and it turns out that my personality is very similar to hers (This similarity is positive in terms of creativity, but negative in terms of feather-brained-ness).
Earlier this year I made an Edwardian blouse out of wool shirting (Wool shirting is lovely, but requires some extra care to avoid shrinkage. I learned this the hard way). Next I needed a long skirt to go with it. I considered several options of various difficulty levels when making this skirt: drafting a skirt using instructions from the Keystone Jacket and Dress Cutter, using the Fantail Skirt from Scroop Patterns, or being really simple about it and lengthening the half-circle skirt pattern in Gertie Sews Vintage Casual (Again, I know. I did warn you I would be using these patterns a lot!). In the end I chose the half-circle skirt because it was the easiest option, because I already had the pattern, and also because I like the more modern fit and silhouette of this over the Fantail skirt (plus, it uses less fabric!). The Keystone and Fantail skirts have an extremely Edwardian silhouette, but there is some evidence that skirts in period may have also been cut similarly to our modern half-circle skirts (photo from Petit Echo de la Mode in this blog post).
I used a beautiful light green wool suiting from Denver Fabrics. The fabric is a nice medium weight with a cream warp and green weft (or vice versa) – this creates a lovely heathered look in the fabric. I pre-washed and dried my fabric, then cut out the (identical) front and back pieces on the fold. I wanted the skirt to end just above the floor, but this made my pattern piece a few inches wider than my fabric. Rather than narrowing the skirt I pieced the bottom corners on both front and back. I created pocket and pocket facing pieces based on the pieces from Gertie’s cigarette pants. Then I assembled the pockets and seamed or basted everything in place.
Next I sewed up the side seams. I tried to align the piecing perfectly at the bottom of the skirt, but failed on both seams. Oh well, c’est la vie. I then inserted an invisible zipper on one side of the skirt. To finish of the top of the skirt I cut a straight waistband 3 inches wide and a little longer than my waist measurement. The 3 inch waistband was folded and seamed into a 1 inch finished waistband that fit my waist exactly with a 1 inch underlap.
At this point I could no longer avoid the hem, and I set the skirt aside for a while. On one hand I wanted to make the finishing simple – which would usually mean a double-turn hem, sewn by machine. But the rest of the skirt was so beautifully sewn to avoid the appearance of machine stitches, and I didn’t want to spoil that with sloppy finishing. What I ended up doing (after much dithering) was creating an 8 inch facing using a coordinating quilting cotton, and inserting some cotton crinoline into the hem for stiffness. I was surprised to find cotton crinoline at my local JoAnn’s, and it was exactly what I needed. Crinoline is a starched open-weave fabric. Using it in this application helps keep the skirt hem out and away from the legs, but does limit washability (washing in water would remove the starch, and the fabric would no longer be stiff). I cut shaped panels of both the crinoline and the quilting cotton that were seamed together before being applied to the hem. My husband helped me mark the skirt hem so I could then do the finishing.
I do not recommend the method I used to apply the hem facing. After piecing the hem facing in quilting cotton I aligned it with the skirt hem, and sewed it on by machine with right sides together. I then turned this right side out, inserted the crinoline, folded the facing edge over top of the crinoline, and whipped this down by hand. Turning the facing right side out while maintaining the hemline, and then inserting the crinoline was frustratingly difficult. If I was doing this again I would apply the facing to the crinoline using basting stitches, then fold up the skirt hem allowance and apply the facing + crinoline to the skirt using whip stitches. This would result in having to hand-stitch the entire hem (rather than only the top half), but it would be so much easier to move around and make sure the hem is kept smooth. Please, if you try this yourself, don’t do it the way I did.
Once the hem was done all that was left was to make a buttonhole and sew on a button. I had just bought my new sewing machine, and this was my first chance to use the buttonhole and button sewing functions. I selected a plain brass button, and tested the buttonhole before sewing into the final garment. After the buttonhole was sewn I cut the opening using a chisel, rather than scissors, as I feel this gives a cleaner cut edge. I did not finish the side seams, since these are cut on the bias with a 5/8 inch seam allowance and are unlikely to fray significantly.
With that the skirt was done! There is a lot of hem to wrangle when getting into the car, and these skirts were definitely made for an era before rolling office chairs had been invented. Despite these niggling complaints, I am very happy with what I made. I find this skirt to be comfortable and glamorous. It’s not fully historical, but still gives a nod to the past, especially when styled for the Edwardian era. I am looking forward to continuing to build out my Edwardian-ish wardrobe. Next I need to make a petticoat and fix/remake my Edwardian blouse.
Some ideas keep coming back around. The particular idea I’m referring to is that of a rectangle of cloth with a hole cut for the head, that wraps and ties both front and back to make a lovely top. I found at least 3 different Pinterest entries (here, here, and here) and 2 YouTube videos (here and here) showing how this can be done, and the idea has been around since the 30s. I had maybe a yard of cotton shirting left over from a previous make, so I decided to give it a go.
The front and back are shaped identically with the neck line being the only thing that differentiates one from the other. To avoid a mistake that would waste my lovely shirting I started with a mock-up made from an old bed sheet. Once I had my final pattern piece I cut into my fashion fabric. I had a very long strip of fabric left over, so I decided to make this into a peplum to extend the length of the shirt – filling the roles of both form and function! One thing I’m very glad I did was add darts to the front. Darts make such a huge difference to the overall fit and look of the garment!
This really was quite a simple make: after cutting out the overall shape I sewed the darts, then pleated the peplum and seamed it on front and back. These seams were finished with a finishing stitch on my sewing machine. Then I cut the neckline. My next step was to make a belt for the front (I used twill tape for the back ties). I hemmed the outer edges of the top and attached the back ties, then hemmed the belt and sewed it on at either side. I was down to scraps at this point, and I was lucky that 2 of my scraps fit the neck hole quite well, so I seamed these together and trimmed them up to become a neck facing. I finished the outer edge of the facing and seamed the facing onto the neck hole.
I did the final bits by hand: I used a herringbone stitch to (almost) invisibly tack the neck facing down on the inside, and I caught the upper edge of the belt to the bodice just above the peplum to keep it permanently in place.
This is one of the simpler tops I’ve made, but I really like it. It’s quite light and breezy while still giving good coverage. It’s also nice to know that if my weight fluctuates I can still wear this by adjusting the ties as needed. I want to adjust the curve of the sleeve a little, but other than that small detail I have no changes to make.
Dramatic Lyric 