A 1660's Bum Roll: A Skirt Support Good for 300 Years of Costuming!

Today is your lucky day. I'm about to share with you a historical costuming secret. A marvelous multitasker of skirt support that will take you through three different centuries. Hermit Grip! Even better, you no longer have to figure out all the complicated math yourself because Skript has a pattern out. So go grab some fabric scraps and make thyself a bum roll. Now before we get into making the bum roll, we are going to also be making the petticoat that goes over top of it today in this video. And since that requires a little more prep than the roll, let's go ahead and get her cut out and ready for the bath. The dye bath, that is. Commence aesthetic fabric flipping. This is a fairly standard petticoat, except at the waist. Standard length is 35 inches, so measure down on one selvage edge and give yourself a little seam allowance. On the other side, aka the fold, measure that length plus an additional 2 inches and mark. Now draw a sloped curve from one mark across to the other using your french curve. Then cut on the line. And once you've cut, you'll cut another skirt half using your new curved edge as the top. This is the next step in our Sew 17th Century Skript series, where we are exploring the only size-inclusive mid-17th century patterns that are commercially available right now. I do want to point out that the petticoat that we're making today is a petticoat that goes over top of the bum roll. It serves a different purpose than the one that you should be wearing over your shift and under your bodies. That one is typically made out of linen and serves as another layer between your body and your fancy fabrics. This one is specifically there to smooth the skirts out over the bum roll, or the pannier, or the bustle, or what have you. These again can be made out of linen, and you can absolutely use this pattern that Skript has to make your under petticoat, but in our particular case, we're going to use some nice, crisp, lightweight silk. And I've chosen to dye it deep purple. Oh, BT Dubs, for those of you who are interested in making your own 1660s gown, or if you're one of my regular viewers, there will be a very special announcement at the end of the video after the reveal, so stay tuned. All right, bum roll. There are two sizes. There's size A, and size B. Size A is the earlier bum roll. This is a little bit more time appropriate to the very mid 17th century and earlier. This one is the later bum roll, and it's a little bit geared more towards like the 1670s through the 1690s. We're going to use the smaller one, because the neon bodice that I'm going to do is going to be for the 1670s. Snoopy snoopy time! Please enjoy this exceptionally sharp focus on the top of my sewing machine. Okay, now that we've sewn the outer edge, we need to tackle the inner. You want to leave a good chunk of the center open for stuffing. I like to make pin X's to help remind myself not to sew further. Ta-da! Use a chopstick or turning stick to help yourself with those pointy, pointy ends. Now, depending on which size fabric and roll you choose, you may need to clip these curves to get it to lay flat. I personally try to avoid clipping on things that are going to get stuffed, because inevitably I clip in too far, and then it frays, and then suddenly there's a hole. But that might be a personal problem. And now it's time for stuffing! You can stuff this with a variety of different fillings, from your standard polyfill to down feathers, loose hair or crin if you can get a hold of it. You can even use your cabbage pile if you're so inclined. That will make it quite heavy. However, there is a very cheap, very breathable, very historically accurate method, and that is wool roving. I get this from KnitPix. My fellow knitters and crocheters will be very familiar with this website. If you are not, this is a good place to get your standard wool roving. Use that chopstick again to stuff this into the sharp corners. If you're enjoying this video, are excited to see some more love laid on the 17th century, or are just plain confused over why I just turned myself into a turkey, please consider doing this channel a huge favor and hitting the like button and leaving me a turkey down in the comments. Also, a huge thank you goes out to my supporters over on Ko-fi. Thank you so much for helping me to keep this channel going in these very difficult times. If you have the means, please consider checking out the link below. But just by watching this video, you're helping this channel out, and I appreciate you so much. And then all you need to do is close up the end by hand and sew a tape on each end for tie-in. Ta-da! That's it! That's really all there is to it. Super simple, super fast. Only took me a couple of hours from start to finish, and that's because I was filming. If I did this off camera, it would probably take me less than an hour. Now we have a little section called honest truths. This is not your historical multitasker. This roll, roll B, is very specific to the very tail end of the 17th century. So mid-1670s through 1700. Think Mantua. If you're going to make one of these rolls, it should be roll A. That is your multitasker. That is the one that is going to hit you for the late 16th century. It's going to hit you for pretty much the entire 17th century, and will work for certain impressions for the 18th century. Now you may be asking me, Jackie, you said that this was a historical multitasker. Why didn't you make the historical multitasker? Because I already have one. I made one a couple of years ago using the instructions that I found on the same website as the custom Corsa generator, and I hated it. It made me feel like I was wearing a spare tire around my waist. So unflattering. And honestly, I wore it once, I threw it under my bed, and lamented ever making it. Until now. Last night when I was zipping this guy up, I realized this is not going to make a very exciting reveal. And honestly, I'm never going to wear that big hoop again. So, I harvested some of the stuffing from the old spare tire, and made up UA. This is the one we're going to do the reveal with. And honestly, I needed to have it anyway. As you all know, I do costume from the 1650s forward. So it is going to be coming in handy, and it is much, much less like a spare tire. Yay! But first, before we get to the reveal, let's go tackle the petticoat. She's all dried and pretty from the dye bath. I do want to mention real quick, that I actually don't recommend dyeing crisp silks like this shantung, dupioni, organza, taffeta, etc. The dye process does change the hand of the fabric. And while it's still a nice hand, it's much drapier after the fact. Furthermore, once you crease a crisp silk, that crease stays forever. And you'll notice how wrinkly this petticoat is. It's because my rather large dye pot wasn't large enough to accommodate these two pieces of fabric without them wrinkling in the dye bath permanently. I'd probably call this dusky purple, not deep purple, but details, details. Let's get her assembled! Whoops. Here is the front piece. See, it goes down and dips in the center front. And here is the, uh, what side is it? Wait a minute. Okay, yes, this is right. See that it's higher on one side? There you go, taller in the center. Let's save our sanity and mark for the pocket slits. FYI, I messed up somewhere in my cutting because for some reason my edges don't match on either side and it's slightly different on this side than it is on this side. I did double check and make sure that I had both of the curved edges on the top and these are the straight edges on the bottom. I don't know if part of it was just I cut it wacky, which is possible because the silk didn't rip on the cross grain like a lot of silks do, so I had to eyeball it. Or maybe it was an issue with the directions. I remember being a little confused because she didn't really give a length for the second cutting. I think the instructions were working from the assumption that you were cutting from the exact yardage that they suggested in the cutting guide, which was for me two inches, but I was working off of a four and a quarter yards cut. If you are looking to use this pattern, I would take a little care and just make sure that your sides are right before you cut. Me though, I DGAF and I'm just gonna leave it as is. It's a petticoat. You're the only people that are ever gonna see it, so I don't care that the hem is uneven. I would rather zip it up in the nice neat fashion that it's in than try and cut a curve and then have to deal with the hemming on a curve. It's annoying and it takes more time. Next up is pleating, and this is where it goes a little away from the instructions that I've seen on other 18th century petticoats. Instead of pleating it even half the waist in the front, half the waist in the back, you're going to divide your waist measurement by five and pleat the front to three fifths of your waist and pleat the back to two fifths of your waist. This will give you more fabric in the back to get over the hip thing. The bum roll, technical term. I do have a little concern about this because is that going to put the pocket slit in a weird spot that isn't equal to the rest of my pocket slits? I don't know. Only time will tell. Okay, so let's turn up that uneven hem. This is a quick and dirty project for me while I work on my ERCG, so I'm zipping it up by machine since again, it'll never be seen. Okay, let's tackle the pleats, this time without an accidental poem. Starting with the front, make a two inch box pleat in the center. Then radiate your knife pleats out towards the sides, pleating by eye like our friends in the 17th and 18th centuries. The front should be three fifths of your waist measurement. The back should be pleated down to two fifths of your waist measurement. This time, start with a two inch inverted box pleat in the center and then your knife pleats should radiate toward the center back. The instructions now have you tack down the pleats by hand before basting them down. Normally I do that, it keeps the pleats much prettier, especially if it's something that you're going to wear often or wash, but in this particular case, this silk is being so ornery, I'm about to throw it into bed without dinner. So, given that I'm concerned adding more stitches is going to make it more ornery instead of less ornery, I'm choosing to skip that. I'm not that concerned about it, but you, when you're making yours, may want to make sure that you tack those down. The good news is, with that, we only have one little step left and that is the waist tape. Unlike all of the hemming that we did earlier, I'm opting to do this by hand. You just have so much more control by hand than you do with the machine and when you're dealing with pleats and slippery fabric that is extra ornery, it's just going to look nicer if you use your needle and thread. You know, I don't hate it as much as I thought I was going to. It is still a little crinkly and wrinkly, but it's not that bad. I think now that it's all together and I'm not trying to maintain all of the pleats, et cetera, et cetera, I can give it a little quality time with the iron and maybe the steamer and see if we can get it a little bit prettier and then we can do the triple reveal. Bum roll, please! I promised a special announcement and I actually have two. Firstly, there will be a sew-along for the rest of this 17th century scoop series. That's the Neon Bodice and the Anne Skirt and Overskirt. We will be building it together and I'm super excited. So if you want to make one of these with us, now might be a good time to start building your structural undergarments, your chemise, your bum roll, your under petticoat, and gathering your supplies for the rest of the outfit. Second announcement, we have a Discord server! Yay! If you're a Discord person, I would love for you to come join our server. The link is in the description below. We will have a separate channel in there dedicated to the 17th century sew-along, so if you're wanting to join in and want your voice heard in the planning process, you know what to do. In the meantime, if you want to check out the rest of the videos in this series, you can check out that playlist here. And if you just want some good 17th century video content, well, I've got a whole dedicated playlist to that here. That's it for me. Thanks for watching. I love y'all and I'll catch you in my next video.