So one of the classes that I took at Costume College was 18th Century Petticoats and Aprons. Now I've made a few petticoats (corded and otherwise) but even with all my reading and looking at photos of extant garments, I knew I was missing something. To be HA (which I'm not normally super concerned with) you use natural fiber fabric in linen, wool, silk, or even cotton and you hand stitch it. I usually end up machine stitching at least parts of my garments (and I did with this one.) The hems are ferreted (sp?). Below is my best definition of "ferreting".
"To ferret the hem" was new terminology to me. I looked it up on Google and all the old sewing books I had to no avail - even Wikipedia couldn't help. Ferreting is a technique when you sew linen tape or bias tape to the right side of the fabric with about an 1/8 of an inch seam. Then you wrap the tape to the underside of the fabric - leaving just a hint showing at the hem and sew it down. In the 18th Century this would protect the hem from wear....
Here is my first attempt.
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| I used button hole stitches along the bottom of the side slits. |
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| Look at the white peeping out! That's the tape! It protects the hem and helps it stand out a bit! |
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| 18th C petticoats are tied on in two halves. This one is short enough to be a petticoat. |
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