Bustle!

Since I decided that a photo blog is kind of a stupid idea, this has become kind of abandoned, but it feels like a good place to post stuff I want to be public, but not on LJ. Like my efforts to sew a 19th century dress! Last weekend, I spent two days at the sewing machine making a bustle petticoat - Truly Victorian's Grand Bustle, to be exact. It's not the exact bustle I need, as it's supposed to have hoops in the bottom seams, which is more appropriate for early bustle fashion (I'm doing something from the mid-1880s), but unfortunately I only realized that after buying it. (It was the only bustle pattern the German vendor had, and I assumed the hoops were optional)

Anyway. I'm still pretty much a total n00b when it comes to sewing, so I was a bit intimidated by all the ruffles and tunnels and tons and tons of fabric. Turns out it's not half as hard as I thought! The worst part was getting all the fabric ironed and cut. It's a LOT of fabric, this image doesn't do it justice:

While I have aspirations of being as historically correct as humanly possible, my limited budget sadly doesn't allow for correct fabric at all. The fabric used for the bustle is all cotton, at least, a cheap one from IKEA.

I started out by washing and ironing the fabric, of course. Turns out, ironing several yards of fabric without an ironing board is a total pain in the ass, and at some point I gave up and decided that some minor creases won't matter. Mistake #1! Then I figured that considering the amounts of transfering and cutting the pattern required, it would save time to fold the fabric in half and cut the fronts and ruffles two at a time. Mistake #2! Turns out that just because the upper layer of fabric has only mild creases, the same isn't necessarily true for the bottom layer, so I ended up with fronts that were not matching up in length at all. Oops?

However, this didn't end up being a problem when sewing, since they fit otherwise and I needed to shorten the whole petticoat a bit, anyway. Sewing the fronts was quick and easy, then came the tunnels for the boning. The instructions didn't say how exactly you were supposed to sew on the bias tape - folded inwards or folded out? I decided to go for the latter, since it seemed less pretty, but more sensible, as sewing along the folds would make it easy to sew the tunnels on straight and would prevent me from accidentally making them too tight.

As you can tell, by that point it was beginning to get dark. *g* Sewing the outside tunnels was no problem, but then came the tunnels on the inside. The instructions have a big fat warning telling you to watch out and not sew over the other tunnels. What do I do? ... Exactly. Hello Nahttrenner, my trusty friend (whose English name I can't find right now).

After that minor screw-up, it all went nicely, though. Unless you were to turn the skirt upside down and look at where the ruffles are attached, because I'm an idiot and only hemmed them on one side, only realizing why that was a bad idea after attaching them to the skirt:

Oh well. You can't see it from the outside, and since I won't wear it that often I hope the fraying is not going to be too bad. I made the same mistake with the back brace, although I vaguely remember that the instruction said to hem only one side. Maybe I misread it... either way, now I know for the next time I try this.

After the ruffles were all attached came the challenging parts: first, sewing back and front together. Masses of fabric! Everywhere! Once I'd figured out how to move them to keep them out of the way it was fairly easy, though. The biggest problem was not catching too much of the ruffles in the seam.

Next came sewing the waistband, the part I had dreaded the most, as it required fitting the small band to the much larger circumference of the skirt. It required a few tries to find the best way of pleating it, but considering that this was the first time I did a fitted waist and that I had to fit it on myself, I did a pretty good job.

The only thing left was to do the hems and clean up the inside seams...

... and I was done! Except not really, because now I needed to insert the boning. Revelation of the day: you can not cut flat steel with pliers. Or scissors. Or that thing you thought was a metal cutter, but isn't. So the boning will have to wait until the next time I can go to the hardware store (i.e. tomorrow). So will the closures, because I want to check how the boning affects the fit first. Still, so far the petticoat fits perfectly, and now I have much more confidence in my ability to make the other skirts. (The bodice is another matter...)


As you can see, I ran out of fabric and only attached four ruffles, but since the under- and overskirts will both have significant bustling of their own, I figured it would be fine. I might add more by hand later, should it be necessary. (P.S. Just ignore how the skirt isn't ironed yet and how I didn't adjust the top ruffle the way it should be.)

Next up: the Four-Gore Underskirt!

(All of this probably makes it seem a bit quicker than it really was - I spent most of Saturday and Sunday on the sewing machine and some time before and after that cutting or cleaning up seams. But for my very first sewing project that is bigger than a super-simple skirt with an elastic band at the waist, I'm pretty proud of myself.)