I Made a Mid 19th Century Working Womans Dress. Pt 1

Welcome to this video. I really really hope you're doing very well and this is the third part of the so-called madness project in which I sew my mid-19th century ensemble where certain things easily can go under the title madness. Not that this is the only mad thing I do on this channel but this is a bit crazy. If you have been following me on Instagram you know that I have been posting a dress lately that many of you have been really really interested in and I've been telling you that there will be a video about that and here it is! The video where I will sew this dress and actually this video became so long that I in the end decided to divide it into two parts so this is only part one. There will be part two as well, hopefully. But I really really hope you will enjoy it and now it's time to go a few months back in time. Well hello from the past! I have straight hair today just because I cut it yesterday and they always straighten it so that's what... that is not interesting information. Okay, today we are going to start with the dress and I think that I have been excited for everything but I think that this might be the thing that I'm most excited for. Obviously, as you probably know right now, I am doing this 1850s-1860s dress which would be suited for a working woman from that time, maybe on the countryside and I mean it's her nicest dress that she has that she wear on fine occasions. And as said earlier, the difficulties with this project is very much that the sources that I'm taking my inspiration from or basing it on, I'm trying to only keep them Swedish which is very very difficult of course because we haven't really got that many and the pictures of them are of quite poor quality so it has been and will be very hard to to finish this project. But what I actually found, which I'm so grateful for, is a Swedish pattern based on a dress very similar to the one that I'm planning to make and I will talk about that later. But one thing that was surprisingly hard about this was the fabric choice. The Swedish originals from this time are mainly made out of wool or fabrics that contains like 50% wool and 50% I don't know if it's linen or cotton but some of those. But I quite quickly understood that I wanted a checked fabric and finding a wool checked fabric, that wouldn't be possible. But then I remembered that cotton was quite or began to be quite common during this time period and I thought that a checked cotton would be very easy to find. I was so wrong because the checked patterns of this time period, they was very very similar to Scottish checked fabrics but I mean those fabrics always was in the wrong material and always the wrong colors for me so that didn't work and the checked cotton that I could find in the right colors, the pattern of those was a bit off because they had only squares like this which wasn't really what I was looking for or I thought that at first because I looked into this dress which I took very much inspiration from and will take very much inspiration from and I really really thought that this dress was made out of I mean whole squares like this but when I zoomed in I understood that that wasn't the case. They are made out of many many stripes which made the whole thing so much harder. I looked into all fabric shops in Stockholm, I looked into everything on the internet, everything but I couldn't find anything. Then I returned to a shop again and when I did that I actually found one fabric that I thought would work and that was a blue and white checked fabric with those many stripes on it. I don't know if it's perfect in its pattern but I think it will work, I really really think it will but there's two problems. The first one being that I only have 2.2 meters of it and the second one is that I don't really like the colors of it. Well I mean it looks good and it's a beautiful fabric but for me this doesn't really look that historical. The blue is a bit too cold and the white is a bit boring. So then I thought I could over-dye it. So I was thinking about different ways of over-dyeing this and I was choosing between light blue, dark blue and green which was a very very hard choice but I think now with the help of my followers on Instagram and also my family which I involved into this that I will over-dye this with dark blue. So what I am going to do now, I'm standing in my bathroom and I will with the help of my bathtub... bathtub... try to dye this which is extremely extremely interesting. So here we have the pattern which I'm going to base my dress on and I got this from Skansen which is a Swedish open-air museum and I know that many Swedish green actors have used this and have been very pleased with it which is always a good thing and it also comes with information about fabric choice and materials, step-by-step instructions on how to sew and cut and assemble all the pieces together and I mean patterns and instructions like this is something that I almost never use. So this is really really fun and really interesting. Then we have the pattern itself. So here we have the front piece, the side piece and the back piece and since we're going to have two front pieces and two side pieces it will be five pieces in total. And then we have the sleeve which I will... I think I will base it on this but do some adjustments to it. And then we also have instructions on how to fold the skirt here which I may use as well but just as a sleeve I will make some changes to it. So It was a bit too big for me, so I made it smaller. I have some problems with the shoulder seam here, but other than that I think it looks pretty good actually. But yes, there are still a lot of things that needs to be made to make this work, so I'm just going to fetch my pen and start making some marks. Fabric. Maybe it isn't a huge difference, but I have definitely toned down the bright white stripes now, so I think it gives a more settled and calm appearance now. And also the blue is a bit more on the green side, which I like. And I think that this looks more similar to the fabric in this dress, which I really, really like. So I think I'm quite happy with this actually. I'm trying to understand the next step in this. I have cut out all the pieces now, so here we have the front, and the other front, the back and the side backs. So I'm trying to understand the lining in this dress, which is always, I think always the lining is the hardest part in making historical dresses and things, because it always differs a lot. Okay, so it actually seems like we're going to take the back pieces and assemble them together. So we have three of them, and we're going to make them into one, because the lining is only made out of one piece, so when we're sewing these together, we can then take the single back piece and cut out the lining with the help of this. Yeah, I think that's doable. Oh, and I forgot! We're going to sew them together with the help of backstitches, with three to four stitches per centimetre. Okay, so the back is assembled together, and as you can see here, I could match stripes on this one, but at this side I couldn't, which is so annoying and so frustrating. I know though that matching stripes and patterns aren't a historical thing, you can easily find it in originals, but I can't ignore the fact that this frustrates me a lot. But honestly, there's no way for me to fix that. I don't have enough fabric to cut out a new one, so this will do. So now I'm going to cut out the lining. The original dress has a lining made out of quite thick and sturdy linen. I don't really have that right now, so I have decided to take the same fabric as I had for my stays, and as I told in that video, I'm not really sure what this is made out of. It's an old bedsheet, and since it is handwoven, it's made out of two panels and then hand-sewn together, so it is old. As I said, I'm not sure about the material of it, but as long as it is either cotton or linen, it's fine. So I will go with this, and then start to cut out the lining, which should be similar as the outer layer, but the left front piece should be 2.5cm wider in the front than the outer layer. I think it has something to do with the closing the front. I'm not sure. Well, I suppose I will find out. So now it's also together with the outer layers, and I actually think it looks quite neat. They said that I should leave the left front for the moment, so I will do that, and then focus on the next step, which is the closing in the front. They basically say that I should make a infoldring, which I don't know what it is in English, but it's basically when you have a strip of fabric, and then you sew it together with the outer layer, flip it around, and then sew it in place. But they say that I should make it out of the outer fabric. I mean, this fabric, which... I mean, I have such a small amount of fabric, so I don't think I will dare to do that. So my plan is to take another fabric, I think I will dye some white cotton that I have lying around here, and dye it blue, and see if I can make the infoldring out of that. this picture, you're going to take this, flip it, like so. My hands! Okay, and then you're going to make some basting stitches a half centimeter from the edge, and then you're going to fold this side in, and sew it down with small whip stitches. And then finally sew some decoration stitches here in the middle. So here we have the right front, with all the seams in place, and I'm not really sure about this front seam here. I mean, they said backstitches, and they said unbitched linen thread, so I did that, but I don't think they intended this result. I mean, I can stand for that my backstitches aren't really that good looking. I can stand for that. But I mean, this is in the center front, it will take all the attention, but I mean, I suppose it works. But there are one thing that I don't understand. I've been sitting here and trying to understand the closing on the left side, where the hooks should be, and I don't understand. They talk about something called underlott, which I've never heard before, and I have been searching on the internet, I have been asking people, I've been trying to figure it out myself. I don't know what it is, and I don't know how it works. And I mean, this whole text here is only about how to sew that. And since I don't understand what an underlott is, I don't know how to continue. It's so strange that I can't find anything about it. I mean, it's called underlott, which is, I mean, under means under, so. They have the hooks on this side, and the bars on this side, and they're going to hook together. I think I will go take a coffee and think some more. I think it is a bit more clear to me now how I should do this. And basically, it seems like I will take a strip of fabric. Again, it should be out of the outer layer, which again, I don't know if I can afford that. And I will sew it together with this layer, flip it, and then sew it together here with the lining. And then during some step in this process, I will add the bars as well. Super scary. I think it's almost embarrassing when I think about how much time I have put down into these pieces. But this is how the closing looks right now. It is of course not even close to being perfect, but I am very happy and very pleased that I actually could work out how this was constructed, because that was hard. And now you can close it like this, and it will lay like that. But of course, there's way more to do with this. For example, these seams here, which almost have disappeared now. Anyway, let's get those seams done. So, I stayed up the whole night trying to sew this together, and now I actually tried it on without my stays, and even then I think it looks nice! So, yeah, I'm very, very happy. As I told you in the beginning, I'm actually going to end it here. So, the sleeves, the skirt, and all the finishing will be in the next video, which I really, really hope you will watch as well. Until then, take care, and I hope I see you very soon.