1890s petticoat (or ruffles and laces and pleats.. oh my!)

Now that the waistcoat was done, my next project to complete was the petticoat for my Victorian Undergarments class.  I'd made the pattern (TV 170) before, but it was on the class syllabus and a girl cannot have too many petticoats.  Some people find undergarments boring, but I rather like making lacy detailed underthings even knowing they'll be hidden under everything else.

It was actually a nice restful project (much needed after all the drama of the waistcoat) and I spent my evenings this week making tucks, and ruffles...  and ruffles and a few more ruffles....

I'd been planning to make it out of a pretty black and white pinstripe that I'd gotten from Denver Fabrics in January, but when I was out picking up fabric for my 1880s hat class, I ran across this delicious pink and white striped seersucker.  Normally, I am an anti-pink sort of girl, but this was too fun not to buy.

Since this already screamed "Girly" I decided to keep the girly-girl feel with lots of trim.  I'd been meaning to experiment with ribbon flowers since last fall, just hadn't found a project where they were suitable until now.

They were easier than I expected:  each flower I did was 12" of ribbon with a machine gathering stitch down one side. I rolled one end a bit to start the center and then gathered the ribbon and started wrapping it in a circle around the center and tacking the gathered end down with thread.  I like this technique because it produces a very three dimensional flower, but I can see that the uses for this style would be somewhat limited.  Still it's awfully pretty.

 

I am pretty sure that these sort of flowers probably aren't historically accurate, but it was a good excuse to make a few.

It was a nice interlude project before I delve into my hat and my fairy tale project for HSF #6.