- [Bernadette] I think it's about time that we made something
that's not an undergarment. So allow me, if you
wish, to take you along on a little journey towards making a simple circa 1895 walking skirt. The pattern for the skirt comes from the appropriately 1895
lady's tailoring guide entitled The Keystone Guide to
Jacket and Dress Cutting which is available free online and which I shall link down below. And because skirts are long,
I decided to draft this on a wrapping paper, because
wrapping paper is also long, but probably isn't historically accurate. Just so that you know,
I'm not going to go hugely into detail on the drafting process here since the instructions literally give you a step-by-step guide
for how to draft a skirt as this particular late
19th-century tailor probably did in the period. So all of the information I'm using here is literally right there and I won't bore you with technicalities if you are just here
for the pretty pictures. These particular instructions
were really quite easy to follow as it's just
a lot of straight lines and a couple of curves. So this is definitely
a really good project to start with if you're
not yet hugely comfortable with pattern drafting. The guide gives three
different fullness options: A very slim straight skirt,
a slightly fuller one that he calls the "bell skirt" and a super full one that he
calls the "umbrella skirt". I decided to go with the medium
bell skirt shape for this. (gentle piano music) Ok, so I thought I could get away with just not making a
mockup for this project because it's a skirt. It's a walking skirt. Clearly, I have made these before. However, at the very last minute as I was finishing up this draft I decided maybe it would probably be wise; I'll just do a quick
mockup just just because, just to see, it'll be super quick. It was indeed super quick, it
took like an hour, not even, but I just wanted to check of
course if my waistband curves were sitting right and
I'm super glad I did because when I put it on I realized it would actually look much nicer if I took this much out
of the center front piece just to get the side seams
to sit in the right place. I also took the initiative
to go ahead and try and figure out these back pleats here. The author of this original draft doesn't give you any instructions on any of the back closure bit, so I'm not sure where the pleats are. Historically, I think they
could be either pleats or they could be gathers effectively. I decided to pleat it, I don't know why. I think gathering it
would probably have been the less mathematically involved step; however, this is not really calculated it's just sort of done by eye, because when I put it
on I was able to mark I want the pleating
bit to start here on me and then I just measured from
there to the center back point and to figure out how much space I had, so then I just pleated
into that amount of space. I think it turned out successfully which means hopefully I will avoid this much mathematical
headache later down the road. This is solved, I will
mark the position of these so that I can just transfer
this right to the pattern when I cut up the actual skirt. So yeah, I've figured out how
the back closes, I'm not sure. Again, he doesn't give me any instruction on how the actual thing closes. Somehow this will close
with hooks and eyes and then I may just put a placket
basically on one edge here just to sort of conceal this gap. And then I also, whilst
I had this on myself, I went ahead and I marked
the position for a pocket, because this time we're
not going to forget to put pockets in things, because pockets are very necessary. So I have marked the position
of the pocket opening point that I will go ahead and
transfer to my pattern so that I know to leave
that bit of the seam open. I have saved on my
computer a little diagram of pocket making instructions
from some sewing manual that I screen capped and I have absolutely no clue where I got it from. So I have to do a little bit of research to figure out where I got
that pocket pattern from and if I can't recall then I
will find some other source to find either a pocket pattern or instructions on how to insert a pocket, because I want to try and do this historically
of course as is my method and the present diagram
does not show pockets. We can't have that. I'm fairly confident in
knowing what I'm doing and I am going to, I
think, start cutting out. For the fabric, I'm using
this lightweight wool check I picked up in the garment district which you may recognize if you joined me on that fabric buying adventure
from a couple of weeks ago. I haven't got the full width
of fabric in frame here, but pretty much it's just at the edge of that upper piece there. As you can see, it isn't quite wide enough to accommodate the back panel piece, so I'm just cutting off
a section of the pattern to piece on separately. This is super common in extant skirts to have a sort of horizontalish seam running across the back panels
of the skirt where, again, the historical fabrics
weren't quite wide enough to accommodate the full skirt panels. So one more seam to sew, but not at all technically
a historical problem here. I should also note that
I'm cutting this, again, as many extant skirts were
cut, where at least one edge of each seam is cut on the straight grain. With gored skirts like this
where the edges flare out to give this skirt some
shape, at least one edge will have to be cut in the slight or true bias of the material, meaning that it will stretch. Anchoring that stretchy edge
to a more sturdy straight grain edge on the next panel
stops it from stretching and making the hem uneven
which is very clever. I've managed to get all
of my seams to do this except for the center back
in which both seams ended up on the bias and this does
become a slight problem anon. The pieces are traced around
with some tailor's chalk, then cut out with roughly half
an inch of seam allowance. whilst I was in the
process of cutting out, Foundations Revealed so kindly decided to conveniently schedule a live workshop in which one of the
mentors, Luca Costigliolo, would show us some of
his extant 1890s skirts from his collection which pretty much informed the entire
remainder of this process. One of the most important
things that I learned was that this stuff called tarlatan was very often used in interlining. It's a stiffened, loosely woven cotton that you can still get nowadays from printing press suppliers
and it works marvels. I was worried at first since
it feels rather suspiciously like a stiff interfacing
that I thought would make the skirt terribly
rigid and uncomfortable, but it actually has the
most wonderful movement and gives the skirt incredible shape. Just don't wash it or the
stiffening will come out and you'll just be left with gauze. So once my fabric and tarlatan
layers have been cut out, I then have to put the two pieces together so that they behave as one. Tarlatan isn't diffusible interfacing. This is 1895 after all. So I'm temporarily securing
the two layers together with large pad stitches
starting from the center and working my way up and out so that the pieces don't shift. Yes, this takes a bit of time. I think it took me about
a day's work to get all of my pieces prepared, but it
is definitely a helpful step. The basting will keep the
layers securely in place and prevent them from shifting
as I stitch along the sides, preventing awkward stretching and bubbling and making the finished skirt much neater. (gentle piano music) now that everything is nice and secure, I can go ahead and start
assembling the skirt. I'm just pinning out the darts here and before I can assemble
the panels I first have to get the piecings together
for those two back panels. (gentle piano music) These two little things are
stitched together real quick using a hand turned 1891 Singer
machine then given a press. (gentle piano music) And before I proceed to
pin together the rest of the skirt panels it is first imperative that I mark out the pocket opening, which Bertha Banner specifies should start three to four inches below the waistband. I'm also marking out
the center back opening and placket which will
arbitrarily be eight inches long. (gentle piano music) I can then go ahead and put
together the skirt panels, stitching the long panel seams, but skipping over the
opening for the pocket on the right-hand side and
starting the center back seam from eight inches down to
allow for the placket opening. (machine clacking) And everything is given a good
press to flatten the seams accommodating for the bit
of hip curve at the top. (gentle piano music) Oh my goodness, so I didn't
even make an effort to try and match the pattern here, but somehow it ended up
matching up near perfectly. Oh my goodness some sewing
god is smiling upon me in this very moment,
because this is incredible. Ok, so before we proceed I
think it is time that we look into the pocket situation,
because as Miss Bertha Banner so wisely says in her book, Household Sewing and Home Dressmaking, "pockets cannot be omitted
from the making and cutting of skirts." A woman of
very sensible thinking. So in her book she outlines
two basic pocket shapes. One is this, she calls it the bag pocket versus the pear-shaped pocket. These are two different ones. This is just the front and the back of the pear-shaped one and
this one's just folded in half. So I haven't decided which shape I'm going to go for for this. I was just reading through it,
looking at the instructions trying to figure out which
one was the least complicated. This one seems the most
straightforward; however, I'm a little bit confused as
to precisely how this attaches, because this one I know it's
got a slit down the front of one side of it so that this slit attaches to the skirt slit and then it's essentially
just a little bag. This one, I'm not sure where
it connects to the skirt. I'm not sure how. I have read through both
of these instructions. They both sound fairly clear enough on how to actually make both pockets, they just don't address how
they go into the skirt really. This is honestly probably
something that was like, I dunno, common knowledge of the period of, oh of course your pocket
attaches like this, because you have pockets
in all of your clothes. Of course you know how a pocket goes in. But given that we don't wear 1890s clothing every
day we don't know that. So I shall have to do a little
bit more research on that. The next dilemma is, I
was going to go ahead and do the pockets out of
the silesia that I was going to use for the waistcoat
and overcoat lining. She does actually confirm
here that the pockets are made from the lining
material, however she does go on to say that "dark-colored
linings ought not to be used, as the dye will rub off onto
the contents of the pocket." Now obviously this is not a problem that we will have nowadays. So now I'm just sort of wondering
if I should just go ahead and use my dark lining
anyway, because it's dye-fast with ye modern chemical dyes, or if I should just
cheekily honor the history and see if I can find a lighter
colored cotton lining-ish type thing to use for the pockets instead. I'm gonna go see what sort of
cabbage I have in my stash. I know I do have light
cotton lining material leftover from my walking skirt; however, that's black,
which is even worse. Maybe I could use muslin or something, if I've got heavier muslin,
yeah, that might work. Anyway, oh I think what I'm gonna do, obviously I'm gonna go have a
look at Janet Arnold and see, because I do know I
have made an 1860s dress from Janet Arnold before
and there was there was a, it was the little pear-shaped pocket piece and it came with a pattern for that. So I do know there's at
least this one in the book and obviously probably
more, because if Miss Banner is correct in saying
that no skirt can be made without a pocket, then
surely Janet Arnold has more than one pocket style
in her pattern books. So let's go see what Janet has to say. Here we go! Here it is. This is the bag pocket shape that Bertha Banner was talking about. And look, it's connected to the waistband with a little bit of tape. She did actually say
that in the instructions that it connects to the
waistband with tape, but I just like couldn't visualize that. I thought it was like, yeah,
you know how the waistband is finished with a bit of tape. It must be something like that. No, this is what she meant. This makes so much sense that this sort of just suspends the pocket
from the waistband and then this is where it
actually joins to the skirt, which I guess makes sense
that it's on this slant if your skirt looks like this. And my skirt probably does
something similar to that too. There is also the
pear-shaped pocket which also is suspended from the waist
with a little bit of tape here. And it's interesting because
Janet's marked the facings for these pockets exactly as Bertha Banner described them to be done. So fancy how that works out! Now I have a much clearer idea on what these pockets look
like, what they are doing, how they are functioning. And now they both seem
perfectly easily doable. I'm not entirely sure
which one I want to go for. Which one, which one? I think what I'm going to do
is I may attempt this one, if only because I feel
like this is the one that I understand the
least and I maybe want to get a handle around this one, also because Miss Banner does say that this gets folded in half. This pocket is just made from
a strip, a 12-inch long strip and then, well 14-inch long strip that just gets folded in half. So that's one less seam to
have to French hem as she says, which I think is the equivalent
of a French seam, which, if you have stuck around for a while, you will know that I
have never done before and I don't know how to do,
otherwise I would probably do that instead of felling
all my seams by hand. It's really interesting
because a lot of these pockets that are here in Janet Arnold actually have this sort of more well
I mean pear-shape to them, actual pear-shape, whereas the one that Bertha banner has drawn
is sort of more oblong shaped and she does specifically
say that the bottom of this should come out to around two inches, down at the bottom here, which Janet Arnold has not depicted in, I don't think, any of the
1890s specifically dresses. So yeah, this doesn't seem
like a hard and fast rule. Then again, is anything
really a hard and fast rule? So yeah, it's just kind
of interesting to know that they don't always have
to be necessarily that shape. I mean is anything written in a book technically really the hard and fast rule? I dunno. Oh my goodness, oh wait! Look, it's a watch pocket. Oh my goodness, we have to put
a watch pocket in this skirt. I mean obviously it looks fairly simple. It's just like a three by
three inch square and it sits in a waistband on the left
side only of the waistline. Ok, this sounds like something we can do. So we will definitely also be putting a watch pocket into this skirt. Which also means that I
probably have to find a watch. Ok, you know what? Let's proceed before we go
down any other rabbit holes. And thus I proceeded to
draft the pocket pieces following Bertha Banner's instructions starting on page 151 for measurements. If you're new here Bertha Banner's Household Sewing With Home Dressmaking is a late 19th century
sewing instruction guide and is available free online. I shall also put a link to that below. This upper bit here is
to be faced with a bit of actual skirt wool since this part may peek through the pocket slit and this way it will camouflage nicely. I am also drafting the wee
but all-important watch pocket based off of the one I
spotted in Janet Arnold's, Patterns of Fashion 2, the late 19th and early 20th century volume. By the way, I did unearth some
plain white cotton cabbage from my stash, so that is what I decided to use for my pocket material. I'm also cutting out the facing pieces out of some skirt cabbage which
will be seamed together down the center since I
didn't have enough width to do a single piece on the fold. Oh also, I have to make a placket piece, so I'm just cutting two, 8
1/2-inch long by two-inch wide strips that will form the
eight-inch long by one-inch wide placket at the center back opening. I'm then attaching the
facing pieces to the pocket which I have done with the wrong side up. This is incorrect, do not do this. The right side goes up. The facing is stitched around the top edge and whilst I'm here I'm also
stitching the placket together around both short ends and the long edge. The seam allowance is trimmed
so that it turns cleanly. Then it is pressed and let's
get back to that pocket. So I should let it be
known that I put the pocket into this skirt functionally, but in a subsequent
Foundations Revealed workshop, Luca also showed us an actual
late 19th century skirt pocket of this style and I realized I had done it in a completely different way from how it was done on extant garments. The actual method involves
tri-folding it or something. So the method that I've conjectured here is not necessarily historically correct, but something to continue
experimenting with for next time I suppose. Basically the bottom and
side edges are French hemmed and I since I suppose I
should finish the bottom edge of the facing piece I
decided to fell that by hand. So I am just in process of
pinning this pocket bag piece into the seam of the skirt here. First of all let's just take a moment to appreciate the size of this pocket. Look how massive it is
and let's keep in mind this is an actual
historical pocket pattern. Their pockets were actually
presumably this big. Look, I mean you can actually
fit like more than one pair of fabric shears in this pocket, which I think is extremely
practical for a Victorian lady to be able to do don't you think? Anyway ok, so I was
extraordinarily confused when I was looking at the pocket pattern that Bertha Banner has provided for us and she says this top bit
get box pleated somehow and I was extraordinarily
confused as to how that worked. But of course now that I'm pinning this into the skirt seam I see,
look, this makes so much sense. If the slanted edges
both get stitched down into the skirt seam, you do
have this extra little bit at the top, you box pleat it right down to fit over the seam allowance. Ok so at this point you
may be wondering where that little magical waist
suspension pocket tape thing is. It turns out that for
some reason I didn't think that was necessary, because
when you attach the pocket and you box pleat that top
edge it just gets stitched down to the seam allowance
and you don't really need to suspend it from the waist. This is not correct,
because as I have discovered from wearing the skirt, having
the pocket connect directly to the side seam of the skirt actually when you put something in the pocket causes all of the weight to pull down directly
on the seam of the skirt which causes it to hang
a little bit funny. So the purpose of this waist tape as we have now firmly discovered, is that I think you're
supposed to box pleat that top edge directly onto the tape and then hang that tape
from the waist edge so the top of that pocket
doesn't actually connect to the side of the skirt
and much of the weight of the pocket is actually
suspended from the waist rather than a single side of the skirt if that makes any sense at all. So definitely more to experiment. I think I shall have to do another video featuring Victorian pockets that actually makes a
little bit more sense and does things a little
bit more correctly. And of course she also does advise that pockets are best put in by hand. Of course I did cheat a little bit and I machine did these
French hems which may or may not be the historically
accurate thing to do. I mean obviously you can do
it on a historical machine, so therefore it's not inaccurate; however, I think I will go
ahead and take her advice and hand stitch these bits here just because I'm very much looking forward to not having to wrestle a machine around these tricksy
little corners down here. Now we do our magical little
box pleat just at the top and there we have our pocket. That was actually much
simpler than I thought. Of course, you know, as I
was doing this whole thing I was just like having major anxiety of like, what am I doing? Is this gonna work? I have no idea what my next
step is going to look like. You know, like I can't visualize the next part of the process. I can't visualize how it's
going to work out in the end. But it all worked out just fine. We have a pocket now. It all works. It's so unusual to the pockets that we put into garments nowadays, very different, they were done historically
and I'm really glad that I played around with this method. Next time perhaps I shall try
to the pear-shaped pocket. The pocket seamed onto the
skirt with a strong backstitch. Yes, you might notice
here that I have already done the waistband, no
you have not missed it. My process for putting together this skirt was extremely nonsensically ordered, so I've tried to put things in
a sort of sensible chronology for this video, waistbands anon I promise. (gentle piano music) Then I proceeded to transfer
the pleating situation I'd worked out on the mockup onto the waist edge of my actual skirt. (gentle piano music) And I put it onto my dress form real quick just to make sure that
everything hangs nice once the garment is vertical. At this point I realized
that the center back seam had lengthened quite a
bit as it was on the bias and was causing the back
hem area to sit funny. So I decided now to chop off
the excess and level the hem. And as I was now satisfied
with the pleating arrangement, I went ahead and basted them in place. Now it is time for the waistband. This consists of a one-inch
strip that will fold over into a half-inch waistband
with the length of it at my waist measurement plus one inch for the placket extension and of course seam allowances all around. It was super important
in the late 19th century for waistbands to be as slim as possible so as to reduce bulk
around the waist area. Lots of the waistbands
on extant skirts we saw in Luca's workshop where
a very lightweight silk or even slim ribbon, so my wool, although a very lightweight wool is probably almost a bit much
for historical preferences; however, I do plan to wear
this skirt in real life with the waistband showing
and not with a bodice overtop. So I wanted the waistband
to match the skirt fabric. Oh and whilst I'm at the machine I'm also stitching the placket
onto the left-hand side of the center back at the open edge. I'm sorry placket, I feel like
I just keep glossing over you amidst other things, but
you are very important and very much appreciated. The waistband is folded over
in half over the raw edge of the skirt and the raw edge turned under on the inside and felled into place. (gentle piano music) And yet another useful tip
I learned from the workshop is that in order to super
intensify bulk reduction on waistbands they were often
tightly running stitched along the top edge to hold them very flat. So of course I had to give that a go. Now for the watch pocket. I figured that if this
flimsy little cotton patch is going to have to
potentially hold a heavy watch, I probably ought to
strengthen it with something. So I decided to back it
with a bit of the tarlatan. I then felled down the top
edge of the pocket piece before pressing the rest of
the seam allowances inward and pinning it into
place on the side right instead of the side left
as Janet told me to. I know, 10 points from
Ravenclaw for blatant ignorance. The pocket is felled all
around the bottom edge with wee tiny stitches
and is ready for use. Sadly however, it is not properly sized for our 21st-century time telling devices. It is however perfectly sized for 19th-century time telling devices and I only needed the vaguest
of excuses to obtain one. So I had the great honor of meeting up with my friend Cathy's good friend Alan of Fine Times Watches
in Derby one afternoon to choose a very special
watch friend for myself. The decision was agonizing,
but I finally settled for this beautiful
enamelled circa 1890s watch, along with an equally
necessary late 19th century watch chain and I regret
absolutely nothing. I mean just listen to
it gently whispering, soft sweet tickings into your ear. (faint ticking) I need to stop now. (chuckling) Now it is time to address the hem. In order to give late 19th century skirts that gloriously flared
shape, many extant examples are faced at the hem
edge with a wide strip of stiffening material,
in many cases tarlatan, so that's what I'm planning to do here. Because I couldn't be bothered to trace off new facing pieces I'm just marking eight inches up on my skirt panel pattern pieces, then cutting these off to
use as facing patterns. This probably is not good practice, so maybe don't be like me. The tarlatan pieces are cut
out then pinned together to form a continuous
circumference of facing which are all stitched
together on the machine. (metal clacking) Back on the actual skirt,
I'm basting up the raw edge of the hem at half an inch. (gentle piano music) This is given a good press to ensure that the hem is nice and crisp. The facing is attached by lining it up to the corresponding panels
folding under the raw edge of the tarlatan and pinning it just about a quarter of an inch up from the edge of the wool. The same folding under
is done on the top edge of the facing as well
and since the facings are some curvy bias shapes,
I'm just quickly basting them in place with long pad stitches to stop them from moving around
when I stitch them for real. (gentle piano music) Both facing edges are hemmed in place. I should note that I was
making a very complex effort to only catch the tarlatan
layer here and not go through to the outer fabric in order
to avoid the facing line showing on the outside of the skirt, a task which proved very elaborate as even the slightest
catch of a wool fiber would show through to
the outside of the skirt. So I ended up pretty much holding
the work entirely vertical to float the tarlatan away
from the wool to stitch. This took ages and as it turns out Victorians ain't got time for that, because most of the extant
skirts I've seen since feature unashamedly
facing lines on the front, so definitely noted for next time. But the hem isn't quite finished yet. I'm going to be attaching
a bit of wool hem braid to the edge which is folded in
half over the edge of the hem and felled into place on both
the front and back sides. This was super common
on 19th century skirts to protect the edge of the
hem from wear and shredding, after all, it is much easier to rip off and replace a damaged piece of braid, but if the skirt fabric itself is worn you sort of need to
recut the entire skirt. Some skirt hems are guarded
with this flat wool braid, but Luca also showed us some brush braid which is essentially this wool braid, but with a little bristly broom
fringe coming off the bottom to peek out from under the hem and keep the actual fabric off the floor. It was super cool and I
desperately wanted to try and find some, but alas, for some reason people don't have a use
for it anymore nowadays. Oh yeah and to those inside
seams. This is precisely, it seems, the mentality of
the Victorian skirt maker because very often the skirt
seams are just left raw, strengthened and held flat
with a bit of overcasting which is basically felling,
but done over raw seams to stabilize them, so this is
what I've done here as well. Finally the waistband
closes with a hook and eye and the skirt is complete. Now let me tell you why this
project is so important. Yes, technically the project
was instigated as part of my Lady Sherlock Series, but there's a very thrilling
sort of magic in knowing that a costume garment
you're making is something that you'll actually get lots of practical wear out of in real life. By the time this video goes up I will already be wearing it regularly and in fact insisted on
starting to wear it whilst there was definitely still
a lot of basting in the hem. Making unique and I guess "on
brand" pieces for my wardrobe is so intrinsically satisfying to me, especially when I take the
time to do them carefully and durably and as they may
have been done historically. So on many levels a
wholly satisfying project. Incidentally, it turns out
that my good friend Cathy Hay used the very same Keystone
draft for her own walking skirt, which she documented the
making process of on her blog which I shall link down below
if you care to have a look. She decided to go for
the very fullest option and so she's got much more volume in the pleats, just the back. Her wool is a bit heavier than mine though and hers does not have
a tarlatan interlining which actually makes an
extraordinary difference in the shape of the
skirt as we discovered. They almost look like two
entirely different patterns, which is really interesting. But most importantly of
all they both have pockets, always an absolute essential as we know. I should also note here that
we are both wearing our skirts over small bustle pads
to shape the pleating, support the weight of
the skirt and, you know, to make the hips wider so that
the waist appears smaller, but that is a topic I have
already ranted profusely upon. So meanwhile, stay tuned for
some bustle pad adventures which are still to come anon. (gentle piano music) - (Muggle commenting from afar). (giggling) - Don't mind us! - We're making sewing videos, it's fine.
AAAAAAAAAAAAA I LOVE BERNADETTE BANNER SO MUCH
oh god i love her lmao. i watch her videos and then fantasize about having that amount of dedication to sewing, or literally anything else in life, and then slowly come back to reality