Ciao, beautiful Hive Sew-ers!
I've had the most glorious and inspirational week in my needlework, and I'm very enthused about wearing this newly-rejuvenated petticoat, which I bought for like 1 Euro or suchlike in the market... It was already a very beautiful garment, and partially functional, but the straps were worn through and couldn't be fixed, and the poppers/ snaps were too open at the front, which made it less wear-able than I wanted it to be...
So I set about repairing it extensively: I wore it to an event all day yesterday , and it felt wonderful!
I began with taking off the poppers: they were all stretched out of position by the previous wearer, and were ripping both their threads and the front of the petticoat, where it should have been sitting nicely closed.
This was messy! I did my best to avoid damaging the cotton further, but in the end it left holes where the closures had been.
(Very nice old-school poppers, though - which I'll use for a different project!)
So then, appraising what I wanted the front of the pettitocat to do, I saw that there was a small fault in the connection of the bodice to the skirt: one part of the edging reached out too far, and looked less-than-perfect. I wanted to perfect it.
It was also clearly very thin in fabric, all over the petticoat, and I had originally hoped to wear it as a summer dress, but realised that I'd need to wear another petticoat under this one, if I did! Hahah!
First, I sewed the sticking out imperfection neatly into the edging... but this was too clunky a detail, and I still had multiple holes up and down the edges of the closures: I decided after much rumination to reinforce it all, with cotton from another project.
This was a successful decision: here are some photos of how I did this; it was all done by hand and took a full day. I loved every minute of it!
Again, I used cotton from another project - I'm collecting quite a lot of cotton vintage items, to mix and match in new garments! - and played around with various options, before settling on the reinforcement strips that you see above.
Once they were in place, I had to think about buttons and button-holes.
I do buttons fairly intuitively: just sewing them - by eye-measuring - in place, then cutting a hole opposite each one, and sewing around it until it looks secure enough.
I was really pleased with the resulting whole effect: the reinforced strip with the buttons closes really nicely. I had to do a popper at the top; above where you can see the pins at the top of this photo above.
I had to reinforce in a quite particular way, the specific shapes of the lacey part - so that they wouldn't get forced out of shape by the poppers opening and closing. I found a very small, cute old popper from my collection, which I think came from my mum's sewing supplies that she bought in Canada in the early 1990s.
Then I began on the straps, which I'd cut off entirely in the beginning...
This was very satisfying: taking off an old strip from the edge of another piece of material that I adore, which the lace really didn't look good on (another project I had laid out to complete - above you can see the lumpy lace section I salvaged... I'm very excited about that next project - you can see the red stitching of it in the background, below):
It was a joy to iron this lace! If you know me, you know that I used to never use an iron, but in my sewing - especially in salvaging old materials - it is so very useful!
The new straps were very simple: I still might reinforce them more - but they are comfortable and beautiful, functional and precise...
The attaching was straightforward too: just sewing it neatly with an overlap, into the bodice top edge.
Some finished close-ups... I love the front of it, and feel like I learned a great deal from doing such painstakingly effortful sewing, so slowly and so calmly and precisely!
This overall was a profoundly inspiring garment to work on: EXACTLY the kind of underwear I LOVE to wear, and perfectly fitting for under my skirt-made-from-a-cross-stitched-tablecloth (which I blogged about here last wee) and a nice blouse... The feeling of really old, but fresh and new, cotton against my skin is just bliss.
And the handstitching is a very particular form of magic that holds the clothing in place so beautifully, and creates alchemical protection and power in my clothes! I didn't realise that I had been missing this so much!
Wishing you all beauty and magic, bliss and inspiration, in your needlework today and this week!
