Tag: Combinations

Second Combinations

Always good to finish a project that has been hanging out in the sewing box since last year.

In my first post about Edwardian combinations, I talked about a pattern drafted from the American System of Dressmaking that I hadn’t gotten to work for me. It’s been hiding in my box of projects since that time and I recently decided to finally get it done. Main reason being that I want to empty the project box, with added benefit of ending up with combinations with wider straps. The other combinations have straps that keep slipping off my shoulders which is quite annoying. So I set to work.

  • Front
  • Back

I had the top mostly finished and was mainly stuck with attaching the leg pieces. To start, I added some buttons and buttonholes to the top.Then I sewed down the facings that I’d already made for the legs. I grabbed Tropical and started pinning some pleats into the legs that I already had. In the end, I cut a 15 cm high triangle of the top of the back leg pieces because it just wouldn’t work as drafted. Then I needed to finish the bottom of the legs and decided to grab all the cut offs from the first set of combinations and a bit of lace. I wouldn’t be able to use those for anything else and I didn’t want to throw them away. The length of the bottom ruffle was determined by the length of the bottom lace. The transitions between different sections of fabric were made using some more of the triangle insertion lace.

  • Lace insertion in the bottom ruffle
  • Top lace

This thing was effectively one big problem solving mess. I needed to add insertion lace to the top because it was just too small, so that’s why there is some on an angle and in the back. The original pattern for the drawers created such a weird shape that I couldn’t get it to do what I wanted at all, so I had to cut bits off. I would normally gather those legs to the top, but it was easier to do pleating as I wasn’t sure where the end of the legs would even go. It took some head scratching, but I’m very glad I finally got it finished and my project box that little bit more empty.

Edwardian-esque Combinations

A pair of Edwardian-esque combinations with lace and blue ribbon.

I became somewhat obsessed with early-ish Edwardian underwear lately. I’m not sure how it happened, but I did decide that I wanted to make an S-Bend corset. Now, what I’ve learned from following all kinds of historical and costume sewists in blogs and on YouTube, is that one does not wear a corset on bare skin. So off I went to make a pair of combinations. A pair of combinations, in this case, is a set of open-crotch drawers connected at the waist to a top of some sort. I’d been googling and reading a lot of projects from other people including Sew Historically and Amelia Marie. Next to that, looking at images on Pinterest, collected here.

Eventually I got to work using the book Amelia Marie recommened, The American System of Dressmaking. I had a lot of attempts, first to try and draft the top (which did not work as planned as it was too small), then I drafted a pattern from a few pages earlier which I haven’t gotten to work yet (still working on it). Next I did use the drawers pattern from page 502, but increased it along the back and raised the ‘crotch point’ up by a decent amount. I cut out my original top draft from about armpit level down and added more width to the sides. Once it was mostly sewn together, with some ladder lace along the waist, and a lace with holes along the top and insertion in center back, I needed to decide on the legs. I chopped off about 10 centimeters and added a ruffle of about 10 cm with lace at the bottom and ladder lace at the top. The center front has a facing and then hand worked buttonholes and mother of pearl buttons. The majority of the project was sewn on my treadle sewing machine (I love that thing!).

  • Open crotch
  • Open crotch

Normally one of these would be worn directly on the skin, but with the sheerness of the fabric, I did not want to expose the internet to that.. So I wore a black camisole and underwear underneath it. It’s really quite comfortable to walk around in and I do understand why ladies wanted to wear open crotch underwear under their corsets now. Still the overlap ‘covers’ enough that it’s ok to sort of wear it. Not outside by itself mind you. I also used blue ribbon in most of the lace with holes so that it could theoretically also count for ‘blue things’.

Next, the corset.