On Hand Sewing - Lessons Learned, Part 1

Clearly, I enjoy making life hard for myself.

I have absolutely no doubt that there are plenty of beginning sewing guides equivalent to The Retard’s Guide to Sewing, or online forums, etc., that I could and probably should be perusing at this point in my career as a seamstress (or tailoress…or mantua maker…or modiste. The old words were so fun! Yay for historical romance novels that have taught me all of them!). But because none of the stupid itsy bitsy should-be-self-evident-but-apparently-aren’t-because-I’m-“special”-like-this pieces of information are on the surfaces of such sites/forums/books that I’ve perused, I’m basically reinventing the wheel and figuring out what generations of tailors learned long ago about things like how to stitch more quickly, and how to sew in straight lines, and how long to make your sewing thread, and how to tie off ends. (I’m still working on some of these.)

Over the last 10 days or so, I have been hand-sewing at my chemise. I learned how to make basting stitches super-fast by popping the thread in and out of the fabric like a sine wave and then pulling it through and pulling it tight. Voila! I can cover 10 inches in about five minutes.

Then I read a statistic from history-girl that said the shifts she examined had about 18-20 stitches per inch…my basting stitches had about 8. WAY too long! I tried making the movements in and out smaller, but in order to get them at that 18-20/inch scale I was working as slowly as I would be to just pull the thread in and out every time. So then I started doing about 6 short running stitches (which, like basting stitches, are just in and out of the fabric…a bit of the ole in-and-out, as Anthony Burgess might put it) at a time before pulling the thread tight. It pulls the fabric a bit, but for an underdress or completely hidden seam that’s okay—and it’s not a whole lot worse than putting in stitches one by one, anyway. The multi-stitch, then pull, method isn’t as fast the basting, but still faster than pulling the thread on every stitch.

So that took care of getting my stitches the right size and a reasonable work rate.

Then I noticed how atrociously out of alignment my seam was. In a general way, at a macro level I mean, it was fine—but up close…totally schizophrenic! Up and down, some at angles, some straight, and none of them consistent in size. Utter mess! So I wondered, what would happen if I drew myself a line and sewed along that? I tried it, and, boom! Even line! No more angles (for the most part). It even made my stitch lengths more even, and what the fuck difference would a line make to that? Note on this: Use a pencil! The thinnest-leaded pencil you can find! (1) Even a thin guideline can make an uneven row of stitches if you're drifting from the top of it to the bottom of it. (2) Pen will bleed into your thread after repeated pulls through it, and you don't want gray thread in a white fabric!

I was very proud of myself for thinking of this draw-a-line thing for about 10 seconds. Then I realized that it was probably the method of choice even for peasant housewives sewing their own shapeless sacks, and felt kind of dumb for not bothering to track down that information somewhere before starting. In many ways I’m still sewing like a child—literally, as someone who understands only the most basic of the mechanics but not the whys, the hows, and certainly not the means to refine them.

Like I said. I’m reinventing the wheel. And being hard-headed and enjoying making this as difficult for myself as I possibly can, instead of just reading a lot of what I already do know in order to find out what I don't. Sewing for Retards, indeed….

(No) Commercial Patterns

Apparently the 18th-century "rococo" period is not really all that popular among amatuer/hobby-costumers. I say this because there are very few commercial patterns for the time period, and those that do exist are either full-on courtly formal sack dresses (pictured at right) or American Revolution styles that aren't at all what the French fashionistas were wearing. Or fashionistos, for that matter--I have yet to find a single men's costume that even remotely approaches what I need for his. This dearth of variety in women's costume is in English only...there is one German site that offers a wider variety of styles including the one I am making. But since I don't speak German, for my robe a la polonaise I instead have 3 different costume patterns that may or may not in the end contribute to my dress (one for the petticoat, one for the split skirt, one for the bodice and sleeves).


Essentially, then, I am designing my own. Okay, far, far, FAR from really, because I have 2 different books for each of us and a fabulous website that goes into a lot of detail about how to make the clothing of the time. It will be more useful for his, because the women's robe on that website is the sack dress most typical of the time, which is not what I'm making. But the site is where I'm getting my chemise and stays patterns, and taking her construction advice if not the pattern shapes for my dress. Her patterns are developed from old tailoring guides and museum pieces--which is pretty much the same (in the sense of equivalent, not the actual same) source material as the books I have are pulling from.


I'm both excited and terrified at the prospect of creating my own designs. Terrified because, going back to the whole, I'm a beginner and likely to have enough trouble putting real patterns together thing: what the fuck am I thinking?! Excited because, my dress will be completely and entirely customized to my figure, which is not at all in the standard way (broad shoulders, high waist, large-boned and heavy-muscled, long-limbed without the attendent lankiness), and because when I've daydreamed about making costumes it's designing my own fanciful shit and then realizing it, not just placidly recreating someone else's daydream.


I've taken as many screen-shots off Stanze's dress as I can to see how they seamed it, and I'm planning to draw out a to-scale view of my own body and use my math skillz to measure out each seam relative to my size. I never thought I'd be combining both my Art I class with arithmetic, but trust me to find a way, lol. At least I have experience blowing things up from a small scale to a large on a grid, thanks to a couple different Art I projects, and I have enough skill with a pencil to draw the lines right. I'll have to do it blowing up the patterns from the book(s)/website for his, anyway, so it's not actually that far a stretch to staring at how the costumer for the movie put Stanze's bodice together and then copying it onto paper.


...Right?

Chemise - Part 1

The chemise (shift) is the most basic and most under of undergarments for women of the time period. (And a lot of others. They get taken off a lot in historical romance novels, lol.) It is worn underneath the stays, against the skin, to both absorb sweat so the stays don't need to be washed--only aired--and to prevent the possibly rougher fabric of the stays from chafing the skin.

I am using for my chemise a basic pattern, and sewing it completely by hand in order to practice stitches and get a feel for how long things take. Material is white cotton broadcloth, very thin and frays ridiculously, but also--very thin. If my nipples object after a practice wear I might swap out the bodice for a softer fabric, but I was mostly going for expediency and affordability in case I had to start over from scratch because I irretrievably fucked something up. In terms of material length, it is coming to my knees; I bought 3 yards of fabric, which was really about a yard too much, so now I've got extra patterning material.

What I have learned so far: sewing is not intuitive for me. I have managed, in the process of attaching the sleeves (and thus far only the sleeves!) to:

• sew one sleeve completely shut whilst trying to affix the underarm gusset
• sew one sleeve into the shoulder inside out
• Fail to sew the opposite sleeve onto the shoulder in the same way despite attempting to do so
• Not realize when I had sewed the sleeve on as I wanted to

Clearly I will have to pay strict attention to rules and not try to visualize things, because that doesn't work for me. Clearly.

I am undaunted by this fact. There are a lot of things in life that are counterintuitive until you really understand how they work. Also, knowing is half the battle--and now I know. It's much better for me to make this kind of mistake on the garment no one will see than on my actual dress, for so many reasons. Well, okay, just two--no one will see it, and this material is cheap enough and readily available enough that if it wasn't fixable I could buy more, unlike my silks. Thus why I'm starting with my chemise.

I just got my deadline for it today, too: the materials I am still lacking for sewing my stays and hoops--basically, the boning--are en route via UPS with an ETA of Monday July 26. Good thing I can hand sew in front of the TV!

Note: I will post pictures of each stage of the process once I've finished it, so keep an eye out for "Chemise - Part 2" hopefully by the end of the weekend!

Hand Sewing

I am not exactly an ace with a sewing machine. I have had one for at most six months—less if you count from the time I actually took it out of the box. I have yet to complete a garment using it. (Although, I have started a simple dress. And actually now that I say that, I remember I have sewn one thing, a basic slip of 2 pieces of cloth that I literally put two seams in and hemmed. Added the button—and buttonhole—by hand.)

Using my machine isn’t hard, exactly; but I find that my level of precision is, well, vague, at best.

So when I saw on the main website I am using as my resource guide for this project a page about hand sewing that amounted to a challenge—Why not try it? It’s more authentic and it might be easier than you think!—I didn’t take it as a challenge. I took it as a safety net. “Why NOT try it?” I thought. I mean, I’m not planning to be stupid-dedicated to hand sewing for the sake of hand sewing. I don’t expect that I’ll actually be willing to, say, blind-hem stitch a 6-yard hem on my petticoat. (Note: I will if the blind-hem stitch feature on my machine sucks. I am that much of a perfectionist. But I’m trying the machine first on that hem!)

But. I’m not going to force myself to machine everything but the most complex of seams, either. In fact, I’m likely going to sew more by hand than with my Brother.

Why? Because, frankly, I’m more confident sewing by hand. It's the only way I've ever sewn, what little sewing I've actually done (mending and buttonholes, and the occasional replacement hem). But I am comfortable doing it, which is apparently more than many people who learn by machine-sewing. My hand-sewn stitches may not be the prettiest, but they are sturdy—and most of the time they won’t be seen, anyway. More importantly—well, equally importantly with the fact that not too many of them will be seen, because there is a serious aesthetic consideration in all of this—I know they will be right. I can be precise with my hands in a way that I am not sure I can be yet with my machine.

It’s kind of a vicious overlap: I’ll never get precise enough with my machine if I don’t practice, and yet I’m not willing to risk a costume of this level of importance to practice. Perhaps if I make it to the Renaissance Festival this year, with enough advance planning to make costume(s). I could do some simple dress(es) for that, and use only the machine except for the things not even experts would machine, and learn.

And in the meantime, I’m just planning to hand sew everything but the longest, most simple of the seams and hems. I’m starting by making my chemise entirely by hand, to get my stitching in top form and to get a time estimate for how long each piece will take…but that’s another post!