It’s not much of a tale, actually? I needed some petticoats. I made some petticoats. Mission accomplished.
For these I used Truly Victorian 170, which has 4 slightly different views that suit looks from 1870-1897. I wanted two petticoats that would floof out my eventual 1890s Umbreon skirt, so I made View 2 (Natural Form era, more slender and does not fit over a bustle) and View 4 (Belle Epoque/1890s, a bit fuller and also does not fit over a bustle.) Both have darts in the front for a smooth fit, with a gathered drawstring back. View 2 has a flounce only in the back, while View 4 has a flounce all the way around. The petticoat with the turquoise ribbon is View 2, and the lavender is View 4. In the photos, I’m wearing the turquoise by itself, and the lavender on top of the turquoise.
I used 118″-wide Kona Premium cotton from Dharma Trading Co. Because it’s so wide, I was able to cut both petticoats out of 4 yards with about a yard to spare. (I skipped cutting out the View 4 ruffle from the cotton, though, because I used lace instead. For View 2, I cut a less-tall ruffle and seamed the less-tall lace to it.) It’s a tightly woven cotton with a fairly firm hand, well-suited to its purpose here. The pattern calls for five tucks in the flounce section, which also help stiffen the fabric to keep the fullness from crumpling under the weight of the skirt. Instead of ruffling everything by hand, I used my ruffle attachment on my machine, which worked a lot faster and was a lot less annoying, although it did require a few tests to get the ruffle ratio correct.
There’s not much else to say about these—they were not at all complicated to make! I did give in and use my serger on the ruffle seam allowances, which feels like cheating but also made the process far quicker and less fiddly than if I had done any other type of seam finishing. I used ¼” wide twill tape as drawstring and ⅜” ribbon in the beading lace.
Pattern: Truly Victorian TV170 Victorian Petticoats
Fabric: 118″ Kona Premium cotton from Dharma Trading Co
Lace: beading and hem lace from Laceking on Etsy
Total time: 13:19
Caroline M. Steele 