Underwear

Lately I haven't been sewing much out of studies... I've been just planning and dreaming mostly. The good news is that I'm nearly finished with a 1890s corset I'm making for my final project at school. I think I haven't mentioned that here before. The pattern is from Corsets: Historical Patterns & Techniques by Jill Salen. Mine is going to be very plain in white. It has been fun to try out something from the 19th century for a change. 

The whole project includes a set of unmentionables (underwear) from the 1890s and a study of the women's fashionable silhouette from 16th century to the early 20th century, which means I'm been researching a lot about the underwear from other periods than just 18th century, too, and it has been really interesting. 

Today I really felt like I just had to get my hands on sewing at home so I decided to make an extra under-petticoat that I should have made a long time ago but I just never got around to do it. It was a really quick project and here's the result. The petticoat is fitted over pocket hoops and has a ruffle in the hem. It's also white and shorter than my other petticoats so that it won't be seen. Nothing special, really, but anyway... A girl can never have enough petticoats, right? I was thinking about making a tutorial how to make a quick petticoat but I realized there is a few tutorials available already. 

Go check out:

The Diary of a Mantua Maker: Perfectly pleated petticoats

American Duchess: How to make an 18th century petticoat

Now, feeling this productive, I think I'm heading off to make the actual petticoat for my robe à la Polonaise, since I didn't make it in time for the ball a couple of months ago...

CER.ES: Online Collection and how to search

It's been a real pity that the Imatex online collection hasn't been available for ages because they had some very pretty extant 18th century costumes in the collections. Now some of the objects are available on Colecciones en Red online collection. The page is in Spanish so if you don't understand the language it can be a little difficult to find things. However, after trying various options I've found a way to get around.

Try search words such as polonesa (polonaise), vestido (dress), Museo del Traje and robe and click 'buscar' to search. After getting on the list of the search results, click on the 'Ficha completa' for more information and to see a bigger image. Click 'Ampliar Imagen' under the image to enlarge. There's also advanced search 'Busqueda avadaza' available and it's not too hard to understand the search options, specially if you use Google translator. I know Google translator is usually a bummer but in simple cases such as this it helps you to get an idea about the texts on the page.

You can find some of the objects that are in the collection more easily on Museo del Traje's Visita Virtual page.

This is definitely not one of the best online collections I've seen but it's nice anyway. The large views of the images aren't that large, really, there aren't many views on the objects and you usually can't open the links on tab, which I find tedious because you have to click the 'more information' link and get back on the search result list page in order to click the next object for more information.

Happy searching! ;)