Making a 1905 Edwardian Gibson Girl Blouse with Lace Insertion Using HlSTORICAL SEWING TECHNIQUES

Sewing a 1905 Edwardian Blouse. Hello, I'm Maggie and welcome back to my channel. I've been loving the late Victorian slash early Edwardian period lately and Anne of Green Gables may or may not have something to do with that. I also came across this book, Authentic Victorian Dressmaking Techniques, which was originally published in 1905 under the title Dressmaking Up To Date. And I'm really excited to try out some of the techniques mentioned there. I will link it down below if you're interested. Anyway, I've been aching to try and make a turn-of-the-century blouse, or a waist, as they were called, using lace insertion. Shout out to Bernadette Banner for bringing that up in the sewing community. She's been working on recreating an Edwardian teagown lately. And she has made an awesome video on lace insertion and the techniques involved, which I highly recommend watching if you're trying to make something similar. And after watching the video, I decided to try and make a 1905 style blouse using only period sewing techniques, so this book will come in very useful. Let's see how we get on. I'm going to use some white cotton fabric I had left over from my white summer dress, a link to which you will presently see popping up in the corner. These are the pieces I ended up with. The pattern is self-drafted and I cut two of each shape. I started with the pin-tucked yoke, so I took that piece and, well, pin-tucked it. I used an about 4 mm, 1 16th of an inch seam allowance. I just did it by eye so I can't really tell. And I used about 1.5 cm, or 5 eighths of an inch of a distance between the tucks. And I also pin-tucked the cuffs and pressed the tucks in place. For the back yoke, I had to cut it in half and add some hooks and eyes, so I could slip my head through the opening. And then I attached the lace and attached the lace to the back. As I hadn't cut out the V on the back, same as I did on the front, I just sewed on the entire yoke and lace and cut out the V neck afterwards, which actually made the sewing a lot easier. I then gathered the top and bottom of the sleeves. I did this by hand, since I don't know if Victorians would have used a sewing machine for that. And I tried to get as close to the old rule, take up two threads and skip four, though in my case it was probably more like take up three and skip six. I also shortened the sleeves to about elbow length, and I used the excess bit to lengthen the cuffs. Then I folded the raw edges away from the lace and overcast them by hand, so they wouldn't show through the lace. And I also added a second row of lace to the front panel of my blouse. I sewed the lace on by machine, since this was quite common in the Edwardian era, although it was recommended to do it by hand if the time was available. I trimmed the collar to fit my neck and added lace around there as well. I sewed all the bits and pieces of the sleeves together. I had just enough lace to add some to the sleeves as well, so I added some lace between the plain cuff and the pintucked cuff. And I then sewed the sleeves shut. Time to put the blouse together. I french seamed the sides, as instructed in the book I mentioned. Now all there's left to do is some hand finishing, hemming the bottom edge of the blouse and getting all the raw edges under control. I really love how this blouse turned out. You can also wear it with jeans for a more modern look. I hope you enjoyed this video. If you haven't already, you can subscribe to my free newsletter here to get access to bonus resources and templates, as well as get all my new videos directly to your inbox. And I will see you in my next video.