A c1790 jacket and petticoat

Some of you might be familiar with the Francaise Dinner my group of costumer friends has been putting on for the past few years, lately in Alexandria...it was this past weekend, and for various reasons, a few of us in the Philly area weren't able to attend. So I thought it might be nice to have a compensatory event the same weekend, just so we could play 18thc dress-up this weekend too! We ended up having a nice little lunch at City Tavern in Philadelphia yesterday, that I decided to very cleverly decided to call the Loser Anglaise Luncheon.

(Because an anglaise luncheon is not as cool as a francaise dinner, you see. Very clever indeed.)

The point wasn't to make anything new, but I did anyway - primarily because I wanted to get a nice display of the samples of painted petticoats I've been working on for the past few weeks. (The petticoats will get their own post in the next couple days, fear not.) And I really wanted a jacket to wear with a painted petti rather than a gown; what's the point if you can't see the whole petticoat, right??

No, I shan't stop showing off my pink American Duchesses, thanks very much. I luuuuurves them!

I was mainly inspired by the very-famous jacket in the KCI's collection, although I looked through a whole mess of late 18thc jackets on pinterest too!

The fit is maybe not the best I've ever done - those bodice wrinkles, hmmm. Still, I think it's rather cute! Glad I went with the yellow ribbon trim rather than the original matchy-bronze I was contemplating.

Cars in the background, whoopsie.

Materials and Construction: The jacket's silk satin (a remnant I bought a couple years ago from Renaissance Fabrics, with no idea what I'd make, but so pretty I couldn't pass it up), trimmed with butter-yellow silk satin ribbon from Farmhouse Fabrics, and lined in natural linen. Just the tails are lined in scraps of bronze silk shantung. Hand-sewn, as usual! I used the pattern from my "dress-in-a-day", and just drew tails in, moved the side front/front seam back a bit, and lengthened the sleeves slightly. Without making a mockup, but hey. In my defense it's not really the tails causing most of the problems here.

Box pleats for everyone! EVERYONE.

Yes, it was warm enough to not need gloves. But accessories are the key to good costumes!

 

It's harder to tell in pictures than in person, but the front piece is in fact a cutaway front; the fronts are separate layer and are joined at the side seam, the neckline, and the top 2-3" of the CF. The cutaway bit is unlined, while the full front underneath is lined with linen, like a normal bodice.

As I said, I'll do a more detailed writeup on the petticoat, but for now: Made of cotton voile and painted by me, and all hand sewn. If you look at the hem you can see just how sheer the voile is; I'm wearing it over my off-white petticoat (and my quilted/taffeta petticoat, and my 1860s hoop pad. Yes, my hoop pad! Hey, I needed a small rump that had volume at the back rather than the sides/back like my small 18thc rump does! That one's much more appropriate for 1770s-mid-1780s. And why make another one when this one did quite well?). The design on the petticoat is based on a textile piece in the Met.

Let's end with showing off my shoes again, 'kay? I can do that!