Monday, October 31, 2011

Early Victorian

This post contains a free pattern!! very exciting. :)

So... Early Victorian.... in my mind this spans the time when the young queen took over, and some smarty pants figured out that if you put steel wire in a corded petticoat instead of rope, chicks would dig it. So 1840 ish to 1850 ish. :)

If any paragraph that I have written would clue you in that I'm NOT a reenactor but am a costumer... I'm not sure I could write a more blasphemous one. :) for reals.


But this is actually really accurate. Hand to god. I swear. During this time period... Early Victorian. women liked big skirts... :) but it was hard to get skirts super big. So methods were devised. I guess this started with the romantic era 1825-1830 ish?... but corded petticoats (if not heavy and hot) solved the bigger skirt problem, a little bit. Corded petticoats and heavily starched petticoats (heavily starched in so heavy a starch that the skirts could stand on their own) used together would hold a skirt out pretty well. I didn't mention petticoats made of horsehair or crin... crin is french for hair??... and yes, that would be a crinoline. :) (dropping knowledge like a bomb)


I'm not sure when this particular pattern was published... I'm assuming sometime late in this era. But this corded petticoat calls for 3 rows of reed. Yah... reed, that grows... in like a river... and you can make wicker chairs out of it. Yah. REED.


So this corded petticoat is super BIG. and for the most part is strong, and can support a heavy starched petticoat, and dress.




Did you know... I wrote this post super long ago, and was going to edit it, and add something. I don't remember what it was... I think a tutorial on double piping. Well, it's been too long and if I haven't written that tutorial yet, I might as well post this without it. At least the pattern is there. :)

1 comment:

  1. Ok, that petticoat is way too intimidating to attempt. Mine will only have cording going halfway up.
    Val

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