Quilted Petticoat
The quilted petticoat was a ubiquitous item of women’s 18th century clothing, and spanned all social classes being worn by both the wealthiest elite and the very poor. However, this does not mean they all looked the same. Those who could afford them wore satin or plainweave petticoats quilted in pretty and fanciful designs with silk thread. The cheaper versions were made of rough woolen fabrics quilted in simple designs such as a lattice work pattern.
The example I am constructing combines a garment pattern from the Colonial Williamsburg costume collection found in Costume Close-up: Clothing Construction and Pattern 1750-1790, pp 35-38 and one from the Museum of London. The Williamsburg petticoat is dated 1750-75 and is of English origin; I therefore considered it eminently suitable for my project. The quilting design for the petticoat is taken directly from an artifact at the Museum of London that I charted myself.
Materials:
- dark cream coloured (tea stained by me) silk satin
- untreated wool batting (you can still feel some lanolin in it!)
- off-white coloured plain weave wool for the backing (which I starched and pressed with a hot iron to achieve some semblance of the ‘glazing’ that is typical of extant examples. I think it partially worked)
- off-white silk filament thread
Day 4
This is how far I got today:
I quilted the upper portion of the first repeat, and
the lower portion of the second repeat.
I think it’s looking kind of like a retro bedspread so far, and that this impression will increase the farther I get into it. However, I have to say that I think it will look pretty fabulous once it’s all made up into a petticoat!
If you click on the above picture to see it full size you will be able to see some of the design marked in purple (that’s the colour of the marker). However, some of it looks more orangey. This is because I got a little experimental with starting to transfer the second repeat. From somewhere in the back of my mind I remembered someone telling me cinnamon was good to use for this sort of thing because it’s so fine. I took a scrap of my linen fabric I use for linings and made a little sachet. I dabbed and rubbed this over the paper pattern, but when I lifted it up saw that the colour of the cinnamon goes a little too well with the dark cream of the silk and it barely showed. It also seems that with the satin weave the powder mostly just sits on top of the fabric surface anyway. However, still feeling a little adventurous, I got out some paprika (which I actually bought in Hungary!) from my cupboard and tried that since it’s a much brighter colour. It showed up a little better, but there was still the problem of the surface resisting the powder. There was enough of it that stuck on though so as to slightly colour the marker markings I made afterwards – oops.
Day 3
Today’s work was pretty straightforward: I quilted. I got the lower portion of one repeat finished.
Day 2
Today I started off with sewing the 2 halves of the wool backing together on one side to make one long length of cloth. The edges were cut and raw so I lapped and slip stitched them.
I had now done all the sewing I could for the moment since such petticoats were quilted while the cloths were still flat. So I turned to the quilting design and enlarged it. I traced over the design with ink so that I could erase the pencil and not end up with it accidentally trasferring to the silk (because you just KNOW that would happen, no matter how unlikely it would seem).
I have to admit that I do not know how quilting patterns were transferred to the fabric in the 18th century. If anyone reading this knows (I’m kinda lookin’ at you Julia), please let me know and I will switch methods. The technique I am using involved poking through the lines of the design with a very large, thick needle. I then started transferring the design to the silk using a fading fabric marker (I bet they would have loved to have these back then!) I only transferred one repeat of the pattern at this time.
I then layered all the materials together and pinned around the part of the design I would start quilting; I don’t have a frame to stretch the petticoat onto, so pins will have to do (at least for now).
I started quilting and got this far:
Apparently the example in the Costume Close-Up book is quilted with 10-12 stitches per inch. I’m managing 8 stitches per inch at my best. I’ll be keeping an eye on whether this changes throughout the progression of the work.
Day 1
The silk satin I’m using for the face of the petticoat actually comes from a series of scraps I happened to already have (this project on the whole has the added benefit of helping me out a little with my stash). This meant there was a lot of piecing to do, although I thought this very fitting considering how much of this one sees on extant garments. However, this also meant that I spent most of this first … you guessed it – piecing. I sewed the scraps together in as logical a fashion as I could manage using small running stitches and pressed the seams open in accordance with much of the fabric piecing I observed first-hand. I didn’t bother to finish the edges of the seam allowances since the entire garment will be lined.
Once this was finally finished, I cut out the lining pieces from the wool and sewed the selvedge edges seams up. To do this I simply overlapped the edges and sewed them up with long running stitches.
edges overlapped and running stitchededges lapped and slip stitched
13 Comments »
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Julia Said:
on October 5, 2008 at 20:17
Err, sorry to disappoint you, but I only know about the beginning of quilting transfer patterns in the 19th c. The Collection doesn’t have anything quilted from before then, so I never had to learn. However, Google brings this up:
http://lists.whatwg.org/pipermail/h-needlework-ansteorra.org/2004-January/011806.html
Sounds plausible. Surely Beverly would be able to tell you for sure?
brocadegoddess Said:
on October 5, 2008 at 21:37
Oh, I knew you’d come through for me one way or another Julia! What kind of search did you do on google to get this? And how freakin’ funny is it that her name is Carolyn!!?? I did a double take when I started reading!
And feel like a dolt that I didn’t think to work from the underside – that makes so much sense with regards to the pouncing. I’ll have to try and find me some powder that will work – maybe my paprika will work better on the wool, lol.
Thanks again!
Julia Said:
on October 6, 2008 at 19:09
You’re welcome. Yesterday was a good Google-fu day.
Cynthia Kruitbosch Said:
on October 17, 2008 at 21:32
What kind of frame would you be using – I have a wooden frame that rolls the material out from the bottom and over the top as I work on my porject. My frame is +/- 3 feet wide -is this what they would have used for quilting? (or something similar)
brocadegoddess Said:
on October 18, 2008 at 08:10
That’s an excellent question Cynthia, and I wish I had the answer for you! Thus far I have not come across any specs with regards to the frames used for quilting, I just know that they used them.
I am, unfortunately, not even using a frame….yet. I haven’t been able to get a hold of a wooden one – could I maybe borrow your’s? ;o) If one thinks logically about it, people in the 18th century sought practicality and efficiency the same way production does today. So, if you find your frame to be a good size and method, I would hazard to guess it’s likely they used something rather similar.
If you happen to find the answer to your question before I do, please pass it on!!!
Julia Said:
on October 26, 2008 at 22:20
Check this out:
http://www.vintagemartini.com/clothing/victorian/pages/7910.html
brocadegoddess Said:
on October 26, 2008 at 22:52
That’s pretty cool, what a gorgeous petticoat it must have been! It’s a pity they’re splitting up the pieces though, that kind of cheeses me off. I’d be interested to see the actual backing too, I haven’t yet seen or read of any 18th century quilted petticoats being backed with what we now know as muslin.
Where/how do you find this stuff?
LadyInoui Said:
on November 17, 2008 at 19:30
I don’t know if anyone ever answered your question, but Williamsburg has an entire display of 18th century petticoats on display at their museum. I visited it this weekend, and they had a video showing the quilting process. The Mantua Maker poked holes in the paper pattern, and then used some sort of cheese cloth filled with cinnamon (it doesn’t stain), and patted it over the paper pattern. This left small little dots that she then used as her sewing guide.
brocadegoddess Said:
on November 19, 2008 at 21:05
Well, I’ve done the same thing as far as making a paper pattern and poking holes. I also tried using cinnamon in some loose weave fabric (I’d heard about cinnamon from somewhere). The problem was that it didn’t want to adhere to the fabric – being a silk satin it’s too slippery a weave/surface for the cinnamon. I tried paprika after that (it’s a brigher colour), but it didn’t work any better.
So I’ve decided to just keep going with my fading fabric marker. According to what I have since found out (can’t remember where at the moment, bad historical/scholarly blogger!) at the time they used powdered ink, I wonder if stuck to satin better.
Lizzie Said:
on April 1, 2009 at 12:44
This is lovely work! I’m glad the exhibition’s worked out so well – wish I could have got over there to see it.
Hope you won’t mind if I ask questions about the quilting process? How did you arrange the layers when you quilted? Did you put satin over batting over wool lining and quilt through all the layers together?
I remember reading somewhere once that they worked these skirt panel by skirt panel and they didn’t have batting in rolls as such then. According to this source they carded the wool, arranged it bit by bit on the back of the satin, pressed it lightly to make it hold together enough to tack it in place on the edges of the silk panel. Then put the frame over this, tacked the whole petticoat panel into the frame and somehow turned the whole shebang over. I can’t think where I read this but it sounds counter-intuitive to me. Working panel by panel, fine. Carding wool onto the back of the panel then plopping the frame on top, fixing it there then turning it over? Not so sensible.
But is this true? What did you see when you looked at originals. How did you do it?
Sorry to have written so much on so very little! Lizzie.
brocadegoddess Said:
on April 1, 2009 at 14:12
Hi Lizzie, thanks for your comment.
I’m not sure I quite understand what you’re describing. When you refer to working skirt panel by skirt panel, do you mean each panel is quilted separately and then all of them attached together? Or that the batting was added to the back as they came to each repeat?
How ’bout I just tell you what I’ve read and observed, and maybe it works out to almost the same thing anyway.
From what I understand the outer fabric layer and the wool or linen backing were each made up into the final length/width of the petticoat. The wool batting was sanwiched between the two layers, it was mounted into a frame, then the quilting was done through all layers from the underside. The original examples I’ve examined support this method: the top silk and wool lining layers were pieced independantly of each other, and the quilting was through all layers and was unbroken at the seams except for the centre back where it was sewn up into the tube that made it a skirt.
However, it may be that the wool batting was added in with each repeat of the quilted pattern, or at other intervals.
I would hazaard to guess instead that there was not just one way to do this. When it comes to making clothing there is rarely ever only one way to do something, and methods certainly change over time. So perhaps at one shop they decided to card and lay on enough wool batting to do the whole thing, at another shop they didn’t. Then as now, life and work were next to never black and white.
Is this something like what you were looking for?
Liza Said:
on April 24, 2009 at 04:22
The style of writing is quite familiar to me. Did you write guest posts for other bloggers?
brocadegoddess Said:
on April 24, 2009 at 07:27
Hello Liza,
Um, no I never have been thus honoured.