Ladybug's Aumoniere (Or the stupid embroidered bag)

When I made the boys their viking pouches, I wanted to make something for Ladybug as well, Since she's doing the 14th century princess deal, it seemed like an ideal time to make a stab at one of the delightful little embroidered pouches common to that century, and have a try at opus anglicanum at the same time.

I started my project with a beautiful extant bag, a little research, and a lot of talking to people who'd done recreations. I'll list some sources for good information on these delightful bags at the bottom, other people have done the research far better and more organizedly than I have!

These little bags feature as a group: a foreground worked in split stitch, with a limited color palette, that is, only two shades in each field with which to work the shading. Details are frequently worked in some sort of running or back stitch, and outlines worked in stem stitch. The backgrounds are worked in couching or laid work with metallic threads. The drawstring area typically is couched, and then has eyelets worked over the couching. The bags could be decorated with beads along the edges, bobbles, bells, or tassels. Most commonly these bags depict "scenes of courtly love" or romantic stories. Tristian and Isolde for instance, or patient Griselda.

For Ladybugs bag, I chose to not use a scene of love, but to draw inspiration from the styles of the

bags, and other period artwork, and draw a scene with a princess, which included her badge, the magpie. I drew the tree direct from the romance of alexander, than drew a scene around it trying to stay true to the period artistic feel, which included a unique scaling that enlarges items to make detail visible or give them more importance. I transferred the design with ink to the linen, then put it on my rolling slate frame. This was my first time using a slate frame, and I really loved it, although next time I will take more care with dressing it. I didn't hem the edges of my fabric, and I feel that as a result, the tension across was not as even as I would have liked.

With everything prepared I began to work. Using two colors of DMC cotton floss for each field (yes, cotton. Ladybug is 7. I'm not using silk.), I first outlined with stem stitch, then filled with split, I found that it was helpful to use a colored pencill to  lightly work the shading before I started embroidering an area, that gave me an easily followed guide, but I didn't risk smudging the work by shading it all at once. it was a time consuming process. The stitches are very VERY small, and the back of the work gets quite built up as you go. Each leaf on the tree took more than an hour to work.

When I first started I had some trouble getting the threads started without making an even bigger lump. I found that if I made a couple stitches on the surface, it would temporarily secure the end. after I'd worked a row over it, I could come back and cut it off. When I finished a thread,I just ran it through a little of the backside of the work, then clipped it off short. I discovered in short order that it was really important to have no loose threads on the back of the work, because they cause knots, and knots make the work really difficult. There's enough bulk in the back of the stitch as is without any knots. if I had a little end hanging out for some reason (maybe the thread knotted and I didn't notice, etc) I found I could hold it out of the way with a straight pin until I 'd worked over it, then cut it short.

The face was really difficult to do well. I'm still not 100% happy with the outcome. I had some trouble with the shading in such a small area. it did turn out acceptable,but I think that it would have been better had I used a slightly higher contrast in my flesh tone threads. I used a tight backstitch to make the small details, and to differentiate between fingers, and help the hand stand out from the flesh of the neck. I think if I'd picked a better contrast in the flesh tones I may not have had to do so much of this. This technique does appear in period examples though, so I don't feel too badly about it.

With the face done it was on to the underside couched background. I used Krenik #5 braid for this project. It was a stab in the dark picking thread, because I have no frame of reference for it. Doing the couching was easy enough, although getting the turns nice was very fiddly. But the thread I chose wasn't ideal. Even though I spaced the thread very closely, the springyness of it, along with the relatively small size, meant that I just didn't get good coverage. it's ok. but it's not great. it would work fine for standard front side couching. but it wasn't a good choice for this application. I'm keeping some of it on a card for reference. As I continue to use gold threads I will keep building a little library of these cards, and hopefully in future have a small library to help me make better thread choices.

I worked over the top of the gold with standard couching in purple, then worked eyelets over that to make the drawstring area. Then I applied a silk backing and made it into a pouch, which was somewhat fiddly. it was hard to decide the best way to do it. Original pouches were embroidered on both sides, and then put together with a narrow woven band at the sides, but I decided to embroider only one side of Ladybugs pouch, because the back side would just get destroyed rubbing against her dress. I ended up wrapping the back of the pouch around the front, and hand stitching it down right along the edge of the embroidery. Fiddly but it didn't risk getting the embroidery caught in the bag proper.

I don't know why it won't let me put these pictures right side up.
You can see the failure in coverage for the goldwork here though. 

It was really hard to get photos of this project, the gold was so sparkly it seemed to throw the focus off on my camera.

I did enter this in our local Arts and Sciences competition at a recent event, Wars of the Roses. I didn't win the championship, but I did win the populace vote. I was too busy to get good pictures myself, but the lovely Catherine de la Broderesse took these.

Over all this was a great experience. I'm not 100% happy with the outcome, and I'm sad I didn't win the championship, but Ladybug is over the moon about it, and I learned a lot, so I'm going to call it a win.

Resources:
http://cottesimple.com/articles/aumonieres/
http://thomasguild.blogspot.com/2013/11/aumonieres-and-purses-from-germany.html
http://rosaliegilbert.com/purses.html
http://cottesimple.com/articles/aumoniere-reconstruction/
https://opusanglicanum.wordpress.com/2015/05/06/lovers-purse/

Robe a la Francaise, A Modern Twist.

Jean-François de Troy, The Declaration of Love, 1731

One of my favorite things to do in my own designing (when I'm not obsessed with historical
reacreation) is to use historical garments as the foundation for wearable modern clothes. Whether it be a house robe or a formal gown, there's something enticing and fascinating about blending classical forms with modern sensibilities. Most of the time for my own fashion choices (at least the ones I wear out of the house!) I stick to a very 1940's and early 50's new look vibe. It's suitable for my figure, and I love the look. But for special occasion dresses, it's a lot of fun to just go a little wild, and the girls are the perfect models!

From the collection of the Metripolitan 

I admit to having a weakness for the robe a la francaise, or sack back gown. Even though there's very little about the rococo period that I like (most of it's just too much for me. Music, Interior decorating... even the art) there's something about the fitted tapered front, and elegant sleeves of the robe a la francaise, contrasted against the flowing, voluminous Watteau pleats that I just love. These gowns also showcase some of the most phenomenal use of large prints and particularly striped prints, that I've ever seen. I may be a little obsessed.

I've done one sack backed project before. I have a dressing gown that's a empire waist with a sack back which is both comfortable and elegant. It's been one of my favorites for years, but I've yearned to do a closer approximation of the style. This has been simmering on the back burner for a long time in the "nowhere to wear it and it's not practical for at home" pot. But as I was looking at fabrics for my daughter's Easter dresses inspiration struck. I could do a gown, constructed in the period manner, complete with elbow flounces, with the entire top layer made out of terminally sparkly organze, making a whole modern twist out of a beautiful historical gown. I drew ups some designs and showed them to Ladybug, and she was in love. so away I went.

The original sack back I experimented with for my dressing gown had the pleats gathered into the neckline direct, which had some difficulties inherent to it: all that bulk, the pleats didn't want to turn under into neck seam easily, it wanted to pull at the neckline, etc etc. So for this gown I decided to select the other construction option, which uses a yoke. That way you don't have to turn down all those layers of pleated fabric, but instead just flip the yoke up over them. In some ways the line isn't as clean as pleats falling from the back neckline direct, but the construction is simpler. The yoke also gives you an easy flat space to attache trim, which with planned ruffled ribbon trim, was another plus.

I drafted the gown off of another roccoco inspired gown I had made last year, this one had a faux stomacher and a pollanaise style skirt. It took a standard sleeve pattern that I also have in stock, which made it easier than re-drafting from a block. Super secret: I hate drafting sleeves. If I have something similar I've already drafted I will frequently bastardize the pattern rather than go back and re do sleeve and armscythe drafting. With a few minor alterations, the pattern was a go.

I had a yard and half of super sparkle organza, and about the same of a purple satin. The plan was to use the organza for the entire exterior gown, and the satin for the interior gown and stomacher and then add ruffled trim. The first hurdle showed up as I began laying out pattern pieces This gown uses a LOT of fabric. Yes, those capitals are necessary.  To illustrate the stupid amount of fabric this gown takes: Kitten is 16 months old now and wears 24 month sizes. Her gown used all but scraps of an entire yard of 60" wide organza.  So, when I laid out Ladybug's, it was instantly obvious that I wasn't going to be able to get sleeves, ruffles, and the gown pieces out of the organza unless the back was pitifully narrow.

So back to the stash I went and came out with some embroidered chiffon and an old white silk shirt. There was enough there for the sleeve ruffle and a matching stomacher, and it was a nice compliment. of course it was terrible and slithery to work with, but in for a penny, in for a pound! The only downside was you could see the seam allowances through the chiffon where I made the ruffles. this bothers me but is basically invisible on the finished gown. I may still go back and try to put some trim over it.

The dean of the fashion dept when I was in school, Mrs. Hannan, always said that working with synthetic organza was like trying to sew live spiders together. She's not wrong, but I still do use it occasionally, particularly for little girl dresses. This fabric though? I don't care HOW sparkly it is, I will never EVER use it again. You can't iron it without a pressing cloth. Iron the front? The little plastic jewels melt on the iron. Iron the back? The glue from the jewels seeps through the cloth and onto the iron. It was also a nightmare to sew evenly, you can see how completely crooked my top stitching on these sleeve ruffles is. Every time you hit some of the jewels the fabric jigged, and you might not even see the ones you hit, because they could be in one of the bottom layers. The fabric made what should have been a fun project into rather a nightmare.

Whenever I'm making a gown with a sleeve treatment I like to apply the treatments to the sleeve before I attach the sleeve. This saves wrangling the whole gown around while trying to evenly apply ruffles. I also like to try and cleverly hide all the raw edges. In this case you want to trim the organza as little as possible. because it's evil and ravelly and will slither out of the seams if given half a chance. I flipped the seam allowances to the outside here, and then sewed ribbon trim down over it.

I used a heavy linen underlining to give the bodice some weight. then stay stitched all the satin to it to keep that from slithering off. Then I pinned the pleats, and sewed the yoke down over them. This was a really great way to do the sack back. I wished I'd had more fabric in the back, but it made fairly full pleats.

The bodice came together fairly quickly. The trickiest part of the whole gown was pleating in the side pleats. I was able to cheat a little bit because I was using an attached under skirt instead of the historically accurate petticoat so I just caught the pleats in the waist seam and was done with it. Putting in the sleeves and the lining was a nightmare because of the fabric. Instead of just giving all the seam allowances a good heavy steam pressing to make the edges crisp and keep everything in place while I was sewing in the lining, I had to hand baste all the edges of the sleeve and the neckline to the underlining, which, while it seems like a small thing, added another few hours of labor to the job.

Then I added the under skirt. I pleated it onto the bodice, but gathered a large loop of it directly under the side pleats. This gave it a shadow of the silhouette that would have been given by panniers in the original gowns.








With that sorted and the lining sewed down I put on ruffled organza ribbon trim. Yards. and Yards, and Yards of ruffled organza ribbon trim. Because go big or go home right?









Then the stomacher, which I sewed down to the lining at one side, and applied hook and loop tape to the other of for closure. Again, a historical fudge. Stomachers tended to be pinned into place, but that's just not practical for tiny people. The stomacher has one plastic cable tie down the center to help it keep it's shape and two layers of underlining.

Finished and on to Kitten's dress!

I picked cow print for Kitten's dress. Because of a hilarious family story started by my Aunt, my Cousin, and a ridiculous cow print romper one easter long ago cow print baby clothes have become a thing in my family. I decided to keep it going with my youngest this year, so she got her very own cow print gown.

I love drafting for babies: the pieces are barely shaped so it's super easy to change a pattern you know fits to new lines. I started from her little wool kirtle, and moved stuff around some.

The construction process was exactly the same except I could IRON this fabric. Therefore I managed to make her whole gown in about the same time it took me to make Ladybug's sleeves. Seriously, that's the difference fabric makes. (also it's tiny so it goes faster, but not that much faster!) I did do kitten's watteau pleats straight from the neckline and then hand stitch them down into shape. Partially just because I wanted to try both methods back to back, and partially because the gown is so small, more seams in a small space like that just add bulk.

My Model got tired waiting for me to finish....

I had my major oops for the project with Kitten's gown. Somehow, although I checked it twice both when I put the ruffle on the sleeve and when I put the sleeve on the gown, I managed to put the sleeve ruffles on backwards, so the long part is to the front. Thankfully it wasn't super noticeable. I'll take it off and turn it around later when I have more time!

My sparkle princess! 

I added vintage glass buttons to the bows on Kitten's stomacher for a little extra sparkle

note the backwards sleeve ruffle.... 

The first time Ladybug saw Kitten in her gown, she said "Look mom, she's a tiny cow fairy!"
The sack back does look a little like wings when she runs around! 

Crash and Bang didn't get left out. They got Dapper Dude Vests. 

Historical Sew Monthly, and the January challenge part 1

This blog has been pretty much defunct over the last two years as we've been overwhelmed with moving and life, but I'm hoping to keep up with it this year as part of the Historical Sew Monthly. I find in the last couple years that I am in a rut with my sewing/spinning/knitting/other fiber things. I am just sort of treading water, keeping up with demands created by growing children who need clothes, occasional commission work, and gifts. The Historical Sew Monthly, with it's challenges, will force me to get out of my sad little repetetive box, and do new things again. I am also hoping that it will help me revitalize my wardrobe, which has gotten severely slim. And I'm just really excited to have sewing that I'm dong for the sake of creating, not just to fill an urgent need (you know, of the kind of all my children have outgrown their pajamas, or all of my daughter's dresses are too short and she has nothing to wear type!).

For those of you not familiar with it, the Historical Sew Monthly is run by the wonderful Dreamstress. Please hop on over to read more about it at The Dreamstress. It's worth a visit anyway, she has cool stuff! The premise of the Historical Sew Monthly is that every month there is a new challenge which you interpret via a garment dated from the beginning of time to 1945. For January the challenge is "foundations." There have been a lot of really incredible contributions to this challenge. The Dreamstress has a list of participating blogs at her site, or you can hop on over to the Historcal Sew Fortnightly group on facebook, which is a really great community for anyone with an interest in historical costuming, no matter what their experience level.

I was actually really excited for January, because last year my husband, wonderful man that he is, gave me a Laughing Moon bust gore corset kit. I was super excited about it at the time, but never found time to make it, something else was always more urgent, and surprisingly, I was a bit intimidated by it. I've done stays, but not a real corset before. So there it's sat. Which makes the january challenge perfect. With that as my goal, I told myself that before I so much as traced off the pattern, I absolutely had to finish up my daughters shifts and pantalettes which were cut out and sort of half done.

This fall when I asked my daughter the "pants or dresses" question I ask at the change of every season, she decided on dresses again. I had already decided that I was going to be inspired by the civil war era for her garments this winter if she decided for dresses, which leads us to the problem of climate. We live in the frozen north, we heat with wood, and our house is typically chilly. You need something on your legs, and you need wool, or layers (or both!). Since I had a lot of cotton yardage for dresses already, I decided on undergarments that would give her leg coverage and layers over her chest: Pantalettes and knee length shifts. Worn as a set under a cotton dress, the extra layers make it so she doesn't even want a sweater or a shawl many days, and have the added advantage of making it easy to go outside and play: she just takes off her dress, and puts her snow stuff on over her pantalettes and shift.

After I spent some time digging through period photos, pictures of extant garments, and my own books, I started with an existing pants pattern in my collection that I liked the fit of the crotch and seat on, and drafted an ankle length pantalette. The knee or calf length was more common around the 1860's, but examples of ankle length can be found, and since she doesn't typically wear stockings, they're warmer. Also they work better with the few regency style dresses that fit her still from last year. I also drafted chemises with pintucks front and back. After I cut these out there were some narrow squares of fabric left, from which I cut straight chemises with no pintucking. I used the pictures in my excellent book of ladies 1875-1890 original patterns as a starting place for the geral shape and length of the chemises, with the stipulation that it was important that they in no way impede her from runing, doing handstands, practicing ballet, or whatever other activity comes into her head.


For fabric I used a cotton linen blend that I bought this fall from Dharma Traders. I bought 15 yards of to use for shifts, shirts, and general underthings, and am not regretting that one bit. I have already used it to make viking undergarments for all my kids this fall as part of their authentic viking haloween (yes, I am a dork. It was also really fun). It's a really great product, I cannot reccomend it highly enough if you're on a budget where 100% linen is not a possibility. There are still some things for which I really prefer linen, but for general duty undergarments and shirts this is a wonderful product and I don't find it too much of a compromise. It looks and acts much more like linen than cotton.

The two pintucked shifts were cut as squares, pintucked, and then cut out with the pattern. The seams in the shifts are 1/4 inch french, except the shoulder seams which are flat felled for comfort. In the case of the pintucked shifts which had a back seam I made it at 1/2 inch, then rolled it to both sides and top stitched. this left the top edges finished for the closure. I used the same method on the straight shifts, except they close under the arm. Although this is not strictly accurate, I like it because it allows my daughter to do up the buttons herself.  All closures are with antique bone or shell buttons and handmade button loops in matching thread.  The necks of the shifts were either finished with cotton bias binding, or hand scalloped. The arm holes are all hand rolled. and then some of them are trimmed wtih cotton lace. I had fun experimenting with some of the trim application metods shown in patern pictures from ladies magazines.  I am not entirely happy with the necklines on these. Next year I may recut some of them as square. the front shows under a few of her dresses. For now I will alter the standard dress pattern I'm using this year for a higher front neck as a stopgap.

I have a large collectin of antique and vintage lace thanks to friends who know that I make clothes for my daughter and give me bags of odds and ends. For the two pintucked shifts I used a pair of pillowcase edgings, odds and ends of yardage for the two straight shifts. I'm saving my large pieces for future projects, like petticoats....

The Pantalettes are all 1/4 inch french seam construction. I did the tucks and insertion before I finished the legs. This makes doing the tucks a lot easier, but it does mean that the legs cannot be let down at a later date wtihout undoing the seams partway, so it's a sort of win/lose scenario. Probably the most authentic method would be to make up the legs and then make the tucks, as this would make the legs easily let down to accomadate growth. They have a waist casing with elastic rather than a drawstring, which is clearly not authentic, but is much easier for a 5 year old girl who likes to be totally self sufficient, and these are a daily wear item. I had fun with the legs and finished all three with different amounts and sizes of tucks and different kinds of trim. My daughter enjoys the variety, and it made the sewing more fun. This pair has a remnant of hand tatted lace whip stitched to the rolled bottom hem.

 And finally the whole collection together. You can see the bottom treatments on the other patalettes and the two straight shifts here. All finds from my stash of antique lace, and all cotton except the beading insertion on the pantlettes, which is newer and nylon. I would  like to add cream ribbon to the beading with small bows on the outside of the legs, and I know I have some somewhere. I just can't find it! When it shows up I will add it. This has been a fun project in a lot of ways, and very practical. I'm glad to have it out of the way, especially with the coldest part of our winters upon us. It also clears the way for starting on my own underpinnings, which I am very excited about. I still hope to get my corset in before the midnight January 31st deadline, but have been delayed by a round of the stomach ick that went though our whole family. I have it fitted and the pattern finalized but all the construction still to go. I am feeling better now and hope that a two day binge will get me in under the deadline!