One step forward...

Well crap...it's been a while, hasn't it?

I've had to take a small break in working on my Outlander dress due to waiting on some supplies to arrive. I decided to alter the Simplicity pattern according to some of the American Duchess hacks to make it more historically accurate, but the large paper I have doesn't lend itself to tracing very well. So, I turned to my good friend Amazon to see what I could find, and ended up ordering a roll of tracing paper. I expected it last week but there was a delay at Amazon so I'm stuck waiting.

In the meantime I decided not to idle (surprise!) and got to work on drafting my underwear for my 19teens dress. Normally, I'm not very comfortable drafting my own patterns, but I decided to wing it since this will be underwear and no one will see it but me. I mean that in a manner of speaking of course because I will obviously share it with you.

I had a lovely 3-day weekend and quickly got to work drafting my pattern. I decided to make things difficult for myself because, let's be honest, who doesn't love a challenge? I wanted my Edwardian underwear to be simple and delicate, but have some unique features as well. I've always loved the tiny little pin tucks in Edwardian shirts and decided to do some on the shirt front.

I designed the combinations to be a one piece that buttons up the front, with eyelet lace at the top and the waist with ribbon inserts to cinch each section a bit. It will have ribbon shoulder straps that can be untied and tucked in if needed.

I got my bust, waist, top of bust to waist, and waist to groin measurements for everything. Figuring out how to draw it out was fairly simple for the top. I simply halved my bust measurement and added seam allowance to figure out how long each rectangle of fabric needed to be (front & back). Things got a little tricky for the front piece as I knew I wanted it to button up the front and there would have to be some extra seam allowance for the button and buttonhole placement, and then allowance for some overlap when buttoned. Also, since I was adding pin tucks I needed extra length to account for the folds in the fabric. Because I have a visual brain I drew the pattern out on paper, folded it up so it would look like the finished product, match it against my design and then unfolded everything, measured the paper and VIOLA! measurements for the front sections.

After that things came together pretty easily. Since everything was straight lines I just measured and drew out all the lines with water soluble pen and then folded and sewed until I couldn't any more. It looked great but it all really started to come together when I added the lace trim to the top.

Adding eyelet lace trim to top of bodice, buttons and pin tucks visible!

Since the raw edges would be covered by the lace I simply folded the raw edges toward the right side of the fabric about 1/4" and then matched the folded edge with the bottom edge of the ribbon channel in the lace. I used the handy designs in the lace as a guide when sewing on my machine. And yes, it is machine sewn. Technically we're talking about the 1910s so sewing machines were most definitely in use and period appropriate. I always say that even before sewing machines were household appliances, our ancestors would have used them had they had access.

Things got much trickier when I started patterning the legs. I knew I wanted a bit of a flare to the leg, but I also wanted to be pretty accurate to extant combinations and have the open crotch pattern. I had to sketch out what I was thinking they should look like on small scraps of fabric and then pin it together to make sure the larger pattern would be functional. They are oddly shaped and not at all on any sort of grain line that would make sense in this universe, but they work.

Tada! Done-ish

I'm not quite finished with them yet. I have some eyelet lace ruffle to sew on the legs, but they are a bit long already so I've got to take them up a bit, and then add the ruffle. And my shoulder straps need added as well. So, stay tuned. An actually, truly, 100% finished photo is still to come.