Kirtle Progress and Silk Facings

So first things first. For some ridiculous reason I have decided to hand sew my dress. This is partially because I am lining it with canvas and I think my sewing machine would probably have objected to sewing through two layers each of wool, canvas, and cotton lining. Secondly, I find hand sewing quite relaxing and I like being able to do it in front of the TV. And lastly,  if I am going to the effort of sewing it all by hand I am hoping that my chances of stuffing things up along the way are going to be reduced. The down side is that this is making the process a WHOLE lot slower.

I managed to get the wool dried on Friday, but then I had a busy weekend involving a friend's wedding on the Saturday (Congrats Cec!), and a last minute trip to Lithgow for Ironfest on Sunday, which also ended up in an extra drive to Orange to say hi to my husband's parents. As a result we got home about 2 am and I've been trying to catch up on the lost sleep all week. So it wasn't until about Tuesday that I got the bodice pieces cut out. Now because I only have 3m of the red wool, I sat down for about an hour working out how I was going to lay it out so I could have at least a 3:1 pleated skirt. Now I was using a mix of cm and inches so forgive me if it's a bit confusing.

Planning the fabric layout

The waist measurement for where the skirt will attach to the bottom of the bodice is 41" (or 104cm). A 3:1 pleated skirt meant I needed 312cm of skirt. However, I don't want many pleats at the front, and since my fabric was 150cm wide, I decided to just use the width of the fabric for both the front and back panels. I chose a skirt length of 45" (114cm) which is about 3" longer than usual for me, but I plan on wearing a farthingale with this dress. So out of my three metres, 2.3m will be needed for the skirt. Luckily the bodice pieces were only ~50cm tall, and I could fit them side by side.

Also, I wasn't sure how I wanted to actually pattern my skirt so I had a look at the kirtle pattern in The Tudor Tailor which said that for skirts from 1550-1580 (my time period for this dress) the front panel was shaped and the back panel was a plain rectangle. So I said fair enough, let's go with that! And thus my pattern layout was done.

Next I cut out the bodice pieces in all three layers with added seam allowance
1. Outer fabric - red fulled wool
2. Interlining - canvas
3. Lining - red cotton broadcloth

Pattern pieces cut out

Close up of layers

     


Then I tacked the wool and canvas pieces together. I will admit here to attempting this with my machine, and it failed dismally. This probably led more than anything else to the hand sewing idea as it looked horrible!

Tacking by hand

Next up I sewed the shoulder seams together on both the wool/canvas and the lining using red linen thread and backstitch.

And then I had to stop again because the next step was stabilising the neckline using silk ribbon. I have never done this before, so I checked with Lady Christine (maker of the awesome pattern and hopefully-soon-to-be-game-of-thrones-costume-maker-person!) and yes it does need to be silk ribbon (7mm works well) as normal ribbon is tool thick and adds too much bulk. If you want to know more about silk facings I found this tutorial here that was quite helpful, although not what I was attempting here. A lot of other websites like this one say you can use silk organza cut in strips on the straight grain (rather than the bias) but I thought I had better stick with the silk ribbon.

So the next day I went to Hobbysew, and the only silk ribbon they had was 4mm wide. No good. And do you think I could find silk ribbon in Spotlight? Of course not. I did, however, find a really good nylon equivalent which was 8mm wide and really thin like the silk. It was also only 39c/m and it came in red. "Bingo!" said I.

Nylon ribbon - you can see down the bottom how thin it is

*Disclaimer* Since this ribbon is going to be underneath the seam, in between the fabric and the lining, and is not going to be seen AT ALL from either the inside or outside of the dress, it really doesn't matter what colour ribbon I chose. I am just a little OCD about things matching (my clothesline pegs for instance are all one colour) so I did a bit of a happy dance when I found it in red.

So that night I began the process of pinning the ribbon onto the edge of the neckline and sewing it down just outside the seam line. After the first row I trimmed the canvas interlining right down close to my stitching to reduce the bulk.

First row of facing stitching

Then I made some notches along the curved edges. When I sewed the second row of stitching on the ribbon I began gently stretching or drawing up the curves, so that when the edge is folded over the seam allowance sits nice and flat. You will have to again forgive my paint skills but hopefully this explains what I mean.

Top - ribbon attached with only one row of stitching, no notching.
Bottom - three rows of stitching, two gathering up the excess seam allowance of a convex curve. 

Notches and gathering stitches mean the seam allowance on the bottom curve wants to fold over and lie flat on its own.

How it will sit flat when sewn

Neckline facing complete!

It took me two nights worth to finish, but I am very happy with how it is sitting. I'm not entirely sure this is what Lady Christine meant as her instructions said simply:

"Sew the silk tabby woven ribbon onto the neck of your dress with three lines of stitching (outside edges and middle). Turn the neck so the ribbon is no longer visible. Stab stitch the neck in place. Repeat for the lining. Pin the neck of the dress and the lining together at the seams and invisible stitch them together."

It doesn't say anything about curves and notching and gathering etc but I don't know how else I would get a nice smooth line. I tell you I thought long and hard about the whole process before I cut that first little notch out. And the whole point of the facing is to stabilise the neckline and stop it from stretching and it will still definitely do that.

I'm really not looking forward to the whole process again with the lining, but considering there is no canvas stiffener on that part it's probably even more important. But it's looking more and more like a bodice which is super exciting!!!