Tag: Fan skirt

A Spare Butt

To get the look ‘right’, so you sometimes need some unnatural enhancements..

I never thought I had a super small butt, but apparently the ‘fashionable silhouette’ of the turn of the previous century had a much different waist to hips ratio than I possess. This needed to be remedied. The pattern from the purple skirt also included a bustle pad. Effectively a flat-ish pillow that you tie around your waist to make your butt look bigger. So in addition to making a petticoat for the purple skirt, I also made myself a spare butt. I used the same fabric as the petticoat and 2 layers of 1cm padding and 1 half layer of 2 cm padding.

  • Without Pad
  • With Pad

If I look at the images, it really does make a difference to add the pad. It feels a little bulky so I’m wondering if I should make a smaller one too. These pictures where taken way back when I first posted the white shirtwaist. The bustle pad was mostly completed at that time, it just needed eyelets. The pattern calls for metal eyelets to be inserted, but I really didn’t feel like doing that, so I handmade some eyelets after taking literal weeks to get round to it. I think it’ll work perfectly fine like this.

  • Tie
  • Eyelet
  • Bustle Pad

Only the corset cover (and a hat?) to go until I have a full outfit. Maybe socks? Who knows what I’ll end up doing.

Leftovers Petticoat

Using the bits discarded from a previous project to make a quick and easy petticoat turned out to work quite well.

The Edwardian Adventure (previously here, here and here) continues with the petticoat. There is no real reference for this petticoat. It’s literally just the lining that was cut out of the purple skirt, with an added bit along the bottom. The waistband is some made up weird construction of two bits to tape sewn together along the top. There’s a hook and eye at the end, and there’s a little bit of overlap. I think I had a brilliant idea about that at the time, but I have forgotten what it was, so it might not have been that brilliant.

  • Front
  • Side
  • Back

The bottom is finished with a very long strip of the same fabric, gathered down to make a ruffle of sorts. I pressed it, stupidly, which means that it is not nearly as ruffly as I would have liked it to be. However, it does do its job.

  • Waistband
  • Closure
  • Flat gathers

A while ago, I was feeling eccentric and decided to walk to the supermarket while wearing the purple skirt, those low heels from the pictures, my red coat, and the dragon. While walking there, I kept hearing some strange noises. Turns out that the hem was actually hitting the pavement.. With the petticoat underneath, I no longer hear noises when I walk about. I call it a success!

Next up, a blouse to go with it all.

Purple Skirt

The Edwardian outfit is extended by a purple fan skirt.

The next part of my Edwardian outfit was a purple fan skirt. I used another pattern by Black Snail Patterns, #0414 Fan-Skirt about 1890. I felt this was probably similar enough to make do for 1900-1910ish times. It’s basically one front piece and two ENORMOUS back pieces, a waistband, placket and pockets. The instructions say to flatline the outside fabric, so I cut out the giant pieces from a purple/black striped fabric and from a white poly-cotton stuff. Followed the rest of the instructions and sewed it together, wrangling this enormous heap of fabric. After essentially getting winded from sewing a single seam, I decided that it might be time to weigh the whole thing; 1.5 kilos, oof. That was too much. I kept 30 cm of the cotton stuff around the hem, stuck it down with steam-a-seam and cut out all the rest, essentially having to remake my skirt again.

  • Placket and pleat
  • Skirt circumference

It’s got a giant inverted pleat in the back, and closes with a placket and hooks/eyes. I chose to do the subtly pointed waistband (because I love pointed waistbands). This pattern actually includes pockets! As no good skirt is without pockets, I really appreciate that. These ones are a little deep though, I’m not sure I can reach the bottom of the pockets while standing straight. At least that means that I might not need a backpack… The hem is so large that it took me three episodes of Crime Scene Investigation to hand sew it down. I think I may also need to make the bustle pad that is included with the pattern, that would make the back stick out a little more.

  • Front
  • Side

The waistband is based on a corseted waist, which means that it’s not too nice to wear without. However, wearing the corset is nice because it distributes the weight. The one remark I have about the pattern is that I didn’t understand the dart in the front. It looked to me that I was supposed to cut it on the lines. That doesn’t seem to be the case, however, since the waistband didn’t fit when I did that. I tried it on the flatlining fabric first, and then decided not to cut the dart on the outside fabric. I still have the pieces of the flatlining that were cut out, so I think I’ll try to make a petticoat from them – I have been thinking that for a few weeks and still haven’t started on that…

  • Hem
  • Back, so much fabric!