Recreating a Victorian Theatre Costume ǁ May Day Ballet Girl

Today I'm taking you on a trip to Galtog Road, London's fabric district, where I bought the fabrics for my Mayday costume. Of course, this video was filmed months ago before lockdown and everything, so it's not really today, but you get the point. Editing this made me a bit nostalgic, because who knows when I'll return to this place. Not as a student, that's for sure. Galtog Road isn't the cheapest place to get fabrics in London, but there are a ton of fabric shops and most of them have at least decent prices. My favourites are Universal Textiles and Tony Textiles, because I always banter with the staff, and you can try haggling with them if that's your thing. I've gone to two different shops now, and I could have gone to a lot more, but I kind of got what I wanted, so I think I'm going to just do some charity shopping, because I know there's a really nice charity shop around here, and then head back home and see how this goes later. Hi! Now, what project is this? Earlier this year, my course was asked to make costumes for the V&A's Dance Festival in May, where dancers would perform in those outfits that were related to things in the V&A's collection. The event was cancelled for obvious reasons, however, I still had to make my costume. The design I picked was this drawing of a Mayday Ballet Girl by the Victorian theatre designer Wilhelm for the pantomime Dick Whittington that was presented in Crystal Palace in 1819. As far as I could find out, this is a fictional costume based on a broad idea of what Mayday looks like from a British perspective. I have, however, noticed some Scandinavian design influences, especially Swedish folk costume. I'm not an expert on traditional costume by any means, so if you have any ideas of what else might have inspired Wilhelm, I would love to hear it. But for now, let's get into the making! All patterns were made through a mixture of measuring, calculating, and draping on the stand. So for the first setting, I had this. Unfortunately, the timing overlapped with the final week of making the Furbank dress, so due to lack of sleep, I forgot the corset belt while at home. It was no bad though, because I was able to bribe my lovely model Ottie to come over at a later date with baked treats, so I was ultimately able to fit everything. The pattern for the skirt is really simple. It's just a rectangle, 2.8 meters wide and about a meter long. I had two meters, which I cut in half widthwise, and that gave me two 1.4 meters wide panels I could set together at the sides. It was zero waste cutting at its finest. To avoid having a seam in the center front, I halved one of the panels lengthwise, that would be the center back. I marked the hem with pins, then ironed it. Conveniently, I was able to hide the hem seam under the lowest stripe, because my hem allowance was quite big. So the edges of the stripes were ironed inwards and stitched on, and the last seam in the center back was closed, leaving a gap for the placket at the top. I felt like I could add more decoration, even if that wasn't in the picture. After deciding on the arrangement through an Instagram poll, I sewed on this cotton lace and I think it came out looking really cute. I made sure to stitch it on both sides, so it is super secure. Due to the thickness and sheer mass of the fabric, I decided to cartridge pleat the fabric into the waistband. This is a technique where the top edge is folded inwards and two rows of gathering stitches are ran along the edges. This must be done by hand, as it is essential for the stitches to be on exactly the same level. The threads are pulled so that the fabric forms fine pleats, which are hand stitched down to the waistband individually. I really like this technique, because it allows to gather huge amounts of thick fabric into a small waistband, and the result is always super neat. The bodice was a bit more tricky, because I had to account for the smocking. It consists of five pieces, the front on the fold, the raglan sleeves and the back pieces. Once I had the correct shape down, I pinned it on a dress form and marked where I wanted the smocking lines to go, then took it off and transferred that onto my pattern. I wasn't fussed about leaving pencil marks here, as this was just the mock-up stage, and I recut the pieces from a finer calico after finalising the pattern. Now onto the smocking. Some of the pieces were getting wider towards the bottom, so I had to find a way to mark the same number of stitches on the top and bottom lines. What I did was marking lines about 1.5cm apart, that got just slightly wider towards the bottom. Subdivided by 5 stitches per increment, that meant each stitch was about 3mm long. This had the advantage that I didn't have to mark every single stitch, I'm sure you can imagine what a mess that would have been, and I just had to make sure I stuck to the 5 even stitches per increment rule. The panels were already sewn together when I gathered it, but I used a separate double thread for each panel in case one broke, and I'd have to do the whole line again. The threads were pulled taut on a dress form, knotted and left like that for the time being. The smocking itself will come later. The bodice and ruffle are cut in one piece, so the bodice hem was left longer to accommodate for that. A fold was made 5cm below the waistline, and the line 5cm below that fold is brought up to meet the waistline, then stitched to it like a tuck. Next, I did the placket in the centre back, not much to say about that, it's a basic placket I guess. Okay, this part is a bit more interesting. Theatre costumes often need to account for ease of dressing, so I attached the skirt and bodice together. This also has the advantage that the weight of the skirt pulls down the ruffle's seam allowance and therefore pushes it up and out. As you can see here, I pinned the skirt waistband onto the seam allowance, so it sits directly below the ruffle. It was kind of an awkward place, so I decided to sew it down by hand. I also folded the seam allowance down and stitched it to the skirt to clean the inside up a little. And finally, the closures. I added a heavy du- And finally, the closures. I added a heavy duty hook and bar to the waistband. I don't actually know what to call them, but they're the ones used in trousers, so they're nice and flat and also very easy to use. The bodice placket was finished off too, I didn't fully film this process, but what you can see here is me stitching down the facing on the bodice centre back, where the regular hooks went later. This is the corset belt. I still don't have a better name for it because it isn't really either of those, but it is a boned thing that goes just above the waist, so I think corset belt is fine. The pattern was really simple, it consists of four shaped pieces on each side and a placket with hooks and bars in the back. I doubled the silk with calico to give it a bit more body. The pieces were all treated as one, this is a technique called flat lining that is used a lot Victorian bodices and has the advantage that a lot of stitching can be done to the inner layer that won't show up on the outside. In this case, I ironed the seam allowance inwards and stitched it down onto the calico. Now, you might be wondering, why didn't I simply face this whole thing? Well, the answer is that in theatre, practicality is more important than how it looks from the inside and it's much easier to alter something when the seam allowances are left easily accessible. Plus, in the next step, I'm attaching the boning that goes directly on top. Usually, you'd encase the boning in a channel and then stitch that channel on, however, I used plastic rigilene boning, so I simply zigzagged it to a ribbon, folded over the edges and used a herringbone stitch to attach it. Another theatre tip, don't put the bones on the seam allowance, they should be in the middle of the panels, so they don't have to be removed if any changes are made to the seam allowances. My favourite part by far are the eyelets. All pretty standard at first, you know, punching a hole, putting the actual eyelet in, but then I decorated the basic eyelets a bit more by stitching around them. It is a common theatre technique for historical costumes to use metal eyelets and then stitch over them as it looks like handworked eyelets but is more sturdy. In this case, I took it a step further by using a stitch called lazy daisy that is actually an embroidery stitch and oh, is it pretty. Really simple to do too. Dyeing used to be my ultimate pet peeve, so it's kinda cool that I've been doing it a lot more for recent projects. For this costume, I wasn't able to find ribbons in that rusty orange Wilhelm's drawing calls for, so I dyed them in the dye room pretty much the day before it shot due to corona. I made sure to match the colour with the embroidery thread I had, so as always, I did some sampling first. To find the perfect shade, I combined two different powders, brown and orange. I think it fits beautifully with the concept and gives me some major cottagecore vibes. We'll come back to the ribbons later, but for now, let's talk about the apron. This was actually done at home, because at that point in time, I didn't have that urgency pushing me through my fear of going to the dye room. Luckily, it wasn't a very complicated process, I just had to do some breaking down to reduce the stark white colour. The fabric is an antique linen tablecloth I snatched off ebay for about 20 quid, which I think was a pretty good price considering the beautiful embroidery and the crochet lace edging. I combined some teabags and onion skins in a big bowl and then played with what colours I could make. Wilhelm's drawing clearly shows that the lace panel is a rectangle, so I had some piecing to do. I first cut off the so that would be the centre. Then I cut off the lace at the bottom because it was way too far down and I needed a clean slate to work with, making sure to keep the border intact so that I could use it in the next step. I laid it on top of one of the side pieces that were cut off earlier and matched up the pattern. This is going to be the new hem of the apron, see where I'm going with this? Now onto some detail work. I handstitched the overlaid lace pieces together where they met and look how the half daisies complete the original border and create a straight edge where it was scalloped previously. Now that we have both attached together, it's time to get rid of the extra layer underneath. I cut it away very carefully, making sure not to undo any of the stitching I just did. And there it is, only one layer but with two straight edges. So I marked where the lace was supposed to go on the apron and placed the patchworked piece on top. It was really easy to attach it to because I could simply zigzag it and the thread was perfectly hidden from the outside. Now just cut off the excess fabric from the main piece and we have the perfect placement for the new lace panel. The sides and hem were overlocked, ironed inwards once and stitched down by machine. Now to attach it to the dress I cut a binding piece that was not on the bias but otherwise treated it as you'd treat bias binding. The top of the This is going to be covered later when I add the dyed ribbon but I wanted it to be neat anyways. The leftover lace from the sides was conveniently used for the cuffs and again, I had quite a bit of piecing to do. I first cut my pattern piece of calico, that would be the base. I needed lace that was about double the width of what I had so I got to work arranging the leftovers into a continuous pattern on the calico. The pieces were painstakingly put together and the finished lace was hand stitched onto the calico around the corners. As the shape is no square I wasn't able to have scalloped edges everywhere but at least I managed to keep them at the hem and on one side. The neatest option to finish something like this is to line it. For this I used a simple cotton as I had no calico left and cut it to the same size as the prepared top fabric. I then marked where I wanted the loops to go and made a rullo cord that I pinned onto the marks. There isn't really any maths involved in this, I just held it down to test if I could comfortably push the button through, but not too comfortably. I'm sure you could figure out some sort of formula for this but then why would you? The loops were stitched down individually to keep them in place until they'd be caught between lining and calico. Not much to say here, I gathered some lace, pinned it on right side to right side and that's pretty much it. Finally the lining was pinned to the lacy boy and stitched onto all edges except the top edge that had to be kept open of course. For things like this I do recommend staggering the seams after sewing, that means at least one layer is cut slightly shorter to reduce the bulk and overall make it look smoother. I also folded the seam with the loops open to edge stitch the lining to the seam allowance. Is it called edge stitch? Man I'm so bad with remembering stitch names. Finally I sewed on the buttons and those are the finished cuffs ready to be attached. The smocking was a really fun but also very time consuming part. In hindsight I kinda wish I'd counted how many hours I spent on that, it would probably be a few days but it is kind of the focal point so it had to be done. I tried a few different styles and then settled on this one as I found that it looked the best and worked well with the double rows I had gathered. I'm not gonna explain how it works because pictures speak louder than words here and the technique isn't hard, it's just the same thing over and over again. I did all the lower rows but left the topmost row for after the collar was attached. I think I draped that collar about three times or something until I was finally satisfied with the shape. Initially I made a version with interfacing but I quickly realised that it was way too stiff to bend forwards in the front like I wanted it to. In the end this was my pattern. The process of attaching the collar was pretty standard, I decided to hand tack everything just in case and then sewed the outer side on with the machine. The loose edge was folded inwards, pinned and stitched on by hand. Once that was rubbed up I did the last row of smocking right up to the edge of the collar. Over the course of making this costume I really fell in love with the lazy daisy embroidery so even though it wasn't in the design I couldn't hold back from adding little sprays of daisies on top of the smocking. The center of the daisy is a french knot by the way. Oh boy did I struggle with the hat. I started out draping it from scratch when I was still at uni and when I later on continued at home I suddenly had this epiphany of turning the pattern around which semi worked a lot better. Okay so I've noticed that if I just wear my hat like this with the pattern as is this is extra bit here on the side that is really in the drawing so I think what I'm going to do is what I've done in this side already I've put in a dart here that starts right at this corner and then sort of disappears here so the volume is only at the top here and the curve starts above the ear uh not like it's here because this is definitely too much. So I did some adjustments to the dart and I also realized that there was more I could do to refine the pattern. I cut off some fabric on the corner to make the angle less sharp so the fabric bunches less. Then I played a bit with the back section bunching it together in a ring to create an upwards pointing v-shape. This helped to push the fabric up and improve the overall silhouette as well as creating a nice detail in the back. For the brim I cut three strips of dyed ribbon and arranged them on a piece of thick cotton to give it more stability. They were stitched on by machine using a decorative honeycomb stitch. I don't know about you but I always forget to have those options so I was really happy that I could use them for once. Because I wanted to add stuffing I had to make a lining which I simply draped over a styrofoam head. This was then sewn right side to right side to the top layer in the back to create a channel into which I inserted a cord to gather the fabric together. I didn't film that part but you'll see how it looks soon. I purposefully didn't sew the ribbon onto the base on all sides so I could slide the vertical ribbon in between the two layers. They were draped roughly into position and cut to the right length. Rinse and repeat. The lace in the front is the same as the used in the cuffs. For things like this I use the factor 1 to 2.5 meaning I determine the finish length it's going to be gathered down to and cut 2.5 times the amount of lace. Of course this can vary but I found this to be a very good average. To avoid visible stitches I decided not to use the machine so the lining was pinned onto the lace and everything was hand stitched together making sure to catch lining, lace and ribbon. Stuffing pretty self-explanatory. Once that was in I closed the last seams on the lining by hand of course. Also I had to close that gap left by the ribbons on the outside. Almost there. This bonnet took so long. Okay so the ribbons were gathered in the back over the hitched up part, stitched together and pushed inwards through the hole. Then secured with a few hand stitches. I caught the ribbons at the top to the fabric to prevent them from slipping down. And add the ties that go under the chin. Stitch everything together. Finish the edges. That should be it. For the bonnet that is. There's a few more details to attend to. Don't worry we're almost there. One of the last things that I did was finishing this smocking. Usually you would simply hide or take out the gathering threads but mine made quite a mess on the outside so I decided to remove them. However I didn't want to risk the neckline stretching out of shape with just the smocking stitches so I had to catch all the pleats with a separate seam from the inside. I think I didn't catch every single one just every third one or something. Just the ribbons to attach now. There's one on the waist that is attached to the center back and on the sides. The front is finished with a bow that was stitched down too. Nothing budges with this costume. The cuffs have these dangling bow ends that are really cute but made me almost run out of ribbon. It was a very close call my friends, very close. You guessed it, everything was stitched down to the last centimeter. This is a very small detail but I really like how I finished off the ends here. Nothing special just some embroidery thread wrapped around the bunched up ribbon but I think it's nicer than simply folding it and it looks more like the drawing. And that wraps up this costume. I had a small shoot in the garden with my mom the day beforehand in. Sad that my model couldn't wear the costume. I know she would have looked so cute. I was very lucky that the dress fit me though otherwise I would have only had photos on the dress form. This was my most fun project this year and even though I originally picked it for its simplicity I'm super happy with all the details and I think it turned out really cute. The next video is going to be something for CoCoVid so I'm very excited for that. See you then!