September 25, 2019 Bev Hulme Leave a comment
Our ‘Underpinnings’ module at Uni started with the corset, but we were also tasked to make a chemise and bloomers. We were shown another students work where everything they had made was beautifully co-ordinated and that really struck me as a great way to present my work. First things first, as always our first task was to research the garment styles and decide which one we would attempt to make.
I really enjoyed the research for the chemise – finding really old books and magazines on-line with examples of different shapes and trimmings. The first chemise pattern I chose was a small diagram I found online from ‘Petersons’ dated 1860, but I couldn’t work out how to fit the yoke with the sleeves. I made a small trial but I just wasn’t comfortable with how it looked.
So back to google again and I found a lot of different designs featured in the ‘National Garment Cutter book of Diagrams’ from 1888 on archive.org which is a book well worth checking out if you like 19th Century clothes.
My final choice was an actual chemise from 1870 on the Met Museum website. It has a simple pin tuck panel in the front which I thought I could re-create and small sleeves with lace edges.
To make the pin tucks I worked out how much extra fabric I needed by creating a paper ‘grid’ which was the correct size for each side of the centre opening.
I then created my chemise pattern using a bodice block as my basic top shape then sketching over it, firstly to work out the shape of the yoke and then to add width to the front of the garment to fit around the pin tuck panel using the ‘slash and spread technique. I trialled it using an old cotton sheet to ensure it all fitted together before moving onto the final garment.
I was thinking about sticking to a standard white cotton for my chemise but this would have been quite a strong contrast against the gold/wine coloured corset I was making. One of my Uni-mates suggested making the chemise in a wine colour to complement my corset, although this was not a traditional look. Luckily Dunelm had a sale of wine coloured cotton sheets so I decided it was worth giving it a try!
Originally the plan was also to make some lace myself but after starting to knit some (yep I’m a total geek) I realised it would take a long, long time to make enough for the whole project and it might look quite heavy, so … I took myself on a shopping spree! If anyone is in London there is an amazing haberdashery and fabric shop called McCullough and Wallis on Poland Street in Soho – ‘sewists’ heaven – and I found some perfect creamy/gold lace trim and wine coloured ribbon there. (Oh, and they give you a lovely M&W carrier bag as an added bonus!)
Once I had the basic design for the garment I started to work out the design for the embellishments. Embroidery would look nice but this is for college (those dreaded deadlines!) so I didn’t have time to do a lot of hand-stitching. I had a small piece of white lace which had a pretty design of triangle stitching and little 3-petal flowers and I thought it might be possible to use this design. The straight stitching worked nicely on the machine and was very fast – then I simply had to hand stitch the flowers in afterwards .
The student who designed the chemise and corset set we’d been shown at the start of the module had used smocking and it occurred to me I could use that instead of normal gathers to add another element to the garment. My smocking design echoed the machine/hand embroidery I was doing. It was my first attempt at smocking (I do remember my Mum showing me how to do it when I was very small) and it’s quite a skill to get right!
Here you can see the finished chemise front with the embroidery on the yoke and the smocking below the centre pin-tucked panel. I can’t say this is perfect but I was pretty pleased for a first go!
The buttons are handmade and I loved creating them – check out the blog ‘Making my Own Buttons’ for details on how I made these.
Here is the finished Chemise. I have to say I’m more than happy with the result!
On to the bloomers…
The history of ‘bloomers’ is quite fun to research – `Emilia Bloomer’ and all! You know there are many times I think I almost enjoy the research trawl a tiny bit more than the sewing! I wont give you the history here but you’ll have lot of fun researching…. but one proviso – be careful! Researching ‘bloomers’ on the ‘net’ might lead you to websites that would make your search history quite ummm ‘interesting’… it’s not for the faint hearted..
To give us some help and a little head start we did a lesson at college on the slash and spread technique taking a trouser block in size 12 and then working out how to increase the size to make a gathered pair of bloomers on a waistband. The type of bloomers I chose to make were ‘crotchless’. These were popular because ladies in voluminous skirts needed to be able to ‘relieve’ themselves without removing all their clothes.
I decided not to make them too ‘full’ so took some of the fullness out of my pattern. Bad decision Bev! When I made them up they really seemed too narrow. Don’t panic!Not a moment to panic, I realised the best way to get around this without remaking them was to add a ‘panel’ in at both sides. This panel also allowed my to place some more smocking to match the chemise. Nothing if not resourceful, right?? As they are made in two separate pieces the final decision is how to hold them together at the waist. I could have used some tapes made from the fabric but using the wine coloured ribbon at the waist and around the legs matched so beautifully, I decided to choose that. Ok if you were wearing them there’s a chance the slippy ribbon might come undone but I’m not about to head off to Tesco in them (or any other available supermarket..)…
So here are the finished bloomers (again ‘scuse the messy bookshelves..!)
These final photos are the set of chemise and bloomers together and with the corset on top. Not bad for a first try and a good mark from Uni – what else could I ask for… Thanks for reading… and remember..be careful what you google for!!!
