My First Project of the 18th Century…with NO Intimidation!! - 1700's Shift

Well, hello. Welcome to this channel. I have been pretty quiet, but I've finally made a decision to make something and make a video about it, as I usually do. I've just decided to go to an event that is historically inspired event hosted by a friend, Sarah Gonzalez of Ensembles of the Past. I went to costume college with her. We kind of lost touch, but I finally decided I wanted to go to one of her events that she's hosting. But the catch, I don't own anything from the era that it's going to be in, which is the 18th century. It's an 18th century picnic in April, and I should probably mention it's March 17th. So anyway, I haven't really sewn anything since October. Justly so, I needed a break from that because it was a very busy sewing season. But then after my break, I kind of just fizzled. I don't know how other way to say it. I felt kind of frozen in time trying to figure out other aspects of my business and website, a lot of other things. I just was not motivated to come in to sew because I needed to get the other stuff done, and it just kept mounting on top of everything. You might know how that feels, but I decided to go to this event so that I would be motivated to do something and sew something. And I am motivated to sew something now, and I have a deadline to which I need to sew that thing, which will be very helpful for me. I work by deadlines often, and even though this is a crazy deadline to have just over two weeks to sew in a complete 18th century outfit, including undergarments, it's gonna be crazy, definitely crazy, but I'm excited, and I'm gonna take you all along with me like I usually do. But on that note, I do not know what I'm doing as far as this century goes, or more like I've researched it and am researching it and will continue to research it as I make the different parts of it, but I don't have any prior knowledge of this era. The only thing that closely resembles this era is Belle's ball gown, sort of, from the live action movie that I have replicated, and then also Cinderella's work dress, day dress is 18th century inspired, but those are not historical accurate costume pieces that need all the historically accurate undergarments as a lot of people have debated about all that. But that's the closest I've ever gotten, I don't have any of the undergarments needed. I feel kind of lost in this era because there's so many different things, like such as a chemise is called a shift, and a corset is a pair of stays, or stays, I think. And so there's just a lot of differences compared to what I'm used to. I'm used to Victorian type with chemise, corset, hoop skirts, petticoats, and just those very distinct silhouettes that you've got going on through that, and variations of that. But I feel like every time I've looked at 18th century stuff, it's like, it's a whole new world of figuring out what needs to be. Like, just the shape of the stays are just so different than Victorian. I'm excited to dive into that and try my best. I will be using a lot of patterns or diagrams of patterns found at various places. If you're new to 18th century, join me as we discover this whole new world together of 18th century fashion. And just as a side note, 18th century fashion has never really been my favorite. Yes, I actually said that. I feel like every costumer that I've followed at some point has done an 18th century, and I have not yet done one because of that reason. I honestly am really not inspired by that era. I'm just gonna say, there's certain eras that do not inspire me, and it's okay. It's okay. So I decided to go to this picnic because I knew at one point, I wanted to explore 18th century fashion, and this would be the perfect excuse to make it happen. Also, I have replica fabric of this dress from Poldark that I wanna do around Christmas season because that's her Christmas special dress or whatever. So I knew I wanted to do it at some point. So this is a great segue for that. And I have chosen some patterns and certain looks of the era that I prefer over other ones, and that do kind of spark my interest and stuff. And so we'll talk more about that later. My camera battery keeps dying on me, so I gotta wrap this up. But anyway, enough of me talking. Let's just start doing some stuff, and we'll explore this era together. And if you are an expert on 18th century fashion, please be kind. I don't completely know what I'm doing. I'm trying to research and learn the best I can, but also I have a deadline, so I might cut corners. But then at the same time, I'm thinking I might hand sew everything. Yeah, I probably shouldn't, but I probably will. So part one of making the shift from 19th century fashion, which I'm more familiar with, to the 18th century is the shift. See what I did there? Yeah. But the shift would be called the chemise later on in the 19th century. And the shift, calling a chemise a shift, I saw was actually kind of a taboo word. It became, but in the 18th century, it was called a shift. So for the pattern of this, I ended up finding an article online that gives a diagram for how to pattern it based on your size. And so I'll walk through what I did to do that. There is one long rectangular piece creating the body, two rectangle sleeves, two square underarm gussets, and four triangle gores to widen the skirt of the shift. So the measurements for these are all based on your individual measurements. For the body piece, it's twice the length from your shoulder to hem. And the hem is around mid-calf, no shorter than your knees. And then the width is half the circumference of your widest point, plus about six inches of ease. So my shoulder to hem length is 43 inches. And at my widest point, which are hips, is about 38 inches. So that means my body piece will be 86 by 25 inches. For the sleeves, it's as wide as the largest circumference of your upper arm. And mine is about 13 inches and long enough to reach your elbow. At first, I thought this was measured from shoulder to elbow, but it's actually not. Have a rectangle piece of fabric that makes up the whole piece of body of the shift, and it's as wide as the widest part of your body, or half of it goes down on one side, down the other, connects together, and it makes a place for your body. But that same width is all the way up to your shoulders, and so it actually drapes past your shoulders. If you made it the sleeve length from your shoulder to your elbow, it's gonna end up being connected more like down here, and so then it's gonna go like all the way down here, based on how I was measuring and how it seemed like you were supposed to measure. And so I ended up shortening the sleeves quite a bit and more measured from about where that rectangle body piece will end to just beyond my elbows. But anyway, little rabbit trail. So because of this reason, I ended up with a sleeve measuring 13 inches wide and nine inches long. So on that 13 inches wide, you would think you would need extra room because that is no ease. That's just your arm measurement. But because the sleeve hangs down lower on your arm, you end up not using up that full width in the sleeve, if that makes sense. And then moving on to the underarm gussets, they're usually around four and a quarter to six inches square. I made mine five by five inch. Then for the skirt gores, usually they are six to 10 inches wide at the bottom, reaching up the side seam, not all the way up to the underarm seam. So kind of wherever you want it to start it from underarm to the hem. I personally cut mine at 30 inches tall and nine inches wide at the bottom. I also measured out the size that my neck hole should be or around what it should be, but I won't cut this out till the shift has been assembled. So moving on to starting to cut these pieces out, they are all basically rectangles with the exception of gores, but two triangles together flip-flopped create a rectangle. So with that, I then mapped out the most efficient way to cut out all these rectangles. Decided to use a method I saw Bernadette Banner use a while back, and this will ensure that I'm cutting these square edged pieces on the completely straight grain. This is especially important with this linen that just easily distorts the grain and all that. So the method is to basically pull one of the threads of the fabric and remove it, which creates a hole type line in the fabric, which is then easy to follow when cutting out the pieces. With this particular linen, the threads are quite fine, so I did have to deal with it breaking quite often and I just had to get my needle and re-get it out so I could pull on it. And it was a bit time-consuming, but the result of being able to cut completely straight on the grain pieces was just so great and really satisfying. So I'm happy I tried this method out. I did a testing seam for how I want to hand sew this together, and I used the Mantra Maker seam. Mantra Maker? Mantra Maker? I think I'm saying that right. Who knows? That seam I learned from the American Duchess 18th Century Guide to Dressmaking. I had never used it before and I'm in love. I love it. It's so good. It's so fun to sew. It's kind of like a French seam and a Feld seam combined together. I like it much better than those two other seams, especially just hand sewing it. And I think I love this aspect so much is because it's just a seam on the outside. You don't see any other secondary stitch line, which you would get with a French seam, but on the inside, I feel like a French seam is just much more bulky. I don't know. I just don't prefer French seams in general. So I usually do a Feld seam, and that you turn under the fabric and you stitch through to secure the raw ends in the inside, but you end up having like a second little stitch line along the seam. So this is kind of the best of both worlds. You're containing the raw edges, similar to how you do a Feld seam, but you don't have to tack it to the outside of the fabric. So anyway, I really like it. And this is one of my favorite parts about just trying new things like hand sewing something is you learn these new techniques and then you just end up finding something that you really like. So anyway, I'm gonna walk through a little bit of how I do that. There's other tutorials you can find. You can look at the diagram. In this book, personally, I'm a very visual person. And even though they have a little diagram, I need it like 3D and in my hands working through it. And so I just did a tester seam to figure out what it was looking like and meant. I love it. So we're gonna do the rest of the seams sewed like this. And after doing that one, I attached another gore to the side of the thing and then realized I put it on the wrong side. So it was one seam was on the outside and one seam was in the inside. So I had to take out the whole seam. That's not fun. But I'm gonna continue on. Sew on the rest of the gores. I got that one skirt gore seam done in about a half an hour to 45 minutes. So I'm pretty happy with that progress and we'll see what happens. To make this mantra maker seam, you lay the pieces with the right sides together and one of the edges, you place about an eighth inch beyond the other or however large you want your seam to be. So I wanted a tiny seam. So I did eighth inch. If you wanted to say a quarter inch seam, then you would lay it a quarter inch away from each other. So then this extra length of the edge is folded over on top of the other edge and is basted in place. So the basting is going through three layers of fabric. Once it's basted in place, you then fold the edge over again and then you sew through the inner folded edge and the two layers of fabric that you folded it onto. So this is where the diagram comes in handy to notice and see what layers you're going through. But I promise you, once you just start doing it and trying it, it'll make complete sense. So with that method figured out and really enjoying it, I continued attaching all the gores to the edges of the body piece. I'm not sewing the side seam up yet though. Okay, so you might've noted something on this shift pattern that I personally didn't realize until I was starting to cut it out and stuff, that the pattern, how it's made and how it was meant to be laid out on the fabric that you're cutting it out of was all for fabric economy. And you could save a lot of these seams, specifically the one that I'm doing right here with the skirt core, you could eliminate that completely and just cut out the pattern shaped like that. So instead of being a rectangular body piece, it would taper out at the ends to include this gore and then you just have one side seam. But the reason they didn't cut it like that was fabric widths. Fabric widths were much smaller back then and just fabric economy. It just wastes less fabric if you cut it as a square or rectangle versus adding angles and such to it. When I saw that on the pattern, there was a comment on fabric economy and that you could just cut it out now in modern days when we have more fabric and wider fabric widths. And the way it was worded kind of made me feel like I shouldn't choose that option because it would defy accuracy, which is true. But I didn't want to make that choice just because I would feel bad about it. I feel like that can be a hold up for a lot of people starting to make something historical, just even sewing in general, because they feel like they'll be picked apart for not doing it right. And so I just wanted to encourage you while I'm sewing this that just do it and that can go both ways. So if you want to sew something, you either can just do it and don't care that it should be hand-sewn because you want to use your machine and you just want to make it go faster. That's completely okay. The best part about that is that you're doing it. You're making it happen and along the way you'll learn things and enjoy it hopefully and you will end up with a finished product that looks great. So in that regard, just do it. Don't care that they word it that way that makes you feel like you shouldn't make it more practical for modern days because we live in a modern world. Like I am talking to a camera right now while I'm trying to make an historically accurate 18th century garment. That's like an oxymoron. So it's okay. Just use the sewing machine if you want to. And it can go on the other hand of just sew it or cut the pattern as they say it and just try it and do it and try something different and don't be intimidated that you might not get it perfect by trying those different methods. You might be surprised on what you can learn along the way just like this seam that I really like now. I'm probably gonna use it maybe in other projects and I wouldn't have done that if I hadn't chose to go down the hand sewing route. So either way, it's okay. For the most part, people aren't gonna pick you apart for not hand sewing it or for not doing the proper hand sewing stitch for that seam or whatever. So anyway, that's just my ramblings as I was sitting here sewing this. And also you might be wondering why am I hand sewing it when I have a deadline? Good question. I don't have a full answer for that but I really just wanted to hand sew it or at least attempt to hand sew as many pieces as I can until it gets to the point of I need to just machine sew it so I can get this done. So a reason a lot of people hand sew their 18th century garments and the reason why I'm sort of doing it is there was no machines in the 18th century. So a lot of the patterns and the ways that a dress was made or a piece of article clothing was made lended itself to being hand sewn. And so if you did it by machine, you'd have to change the method of how that pattern is made, change even the pattern shape because it lends itself to hand sewing. And so I wanted to use those techniques, those patterns just because I like trying new things. But also my rule, it's not really a rule, but my view on hand sewing for me personally is if I can make it look better by hand sewing it, I will most probably do that. So if there's a hem that is a sort of fabric and shape that I know with machine, it's gonna be slightly wrinkly, not very nice, I'm gonna hand sew it because I really like hand sewing. Spending that extra time hand sewing it to get a neater, nicer finish is worth it to me and I'm gonna spend that time. But if I know I can do it by machine and it's gonna look just as good, then I'm gonna do it by machine because I'm also practical in a lot of areas. And so there's just different scenarios of when I choose to hand sew something versus not. And that's up to you to decide also. But anyway, I hope you appreciated my TED talk of sewing historical things. Don't be intimidated, even though I feel intimidated too. I just do it because I've never ventured into the 18th century and there's a lot of areas that I have not ventured into that I want to, but it's a little bit intimidating to think of all the things that you don't know. And I am a big proponent of learning what you can from other people who've done their research, but a lot of learning just comes from doing it. So I find it's a mix between research and then just trying it on my own and I will make mistakes and do it wrong, wrong, but I've learned along the way. So anyway, just do it, sew something and be okay with it. So moving on to the sleeves, I first need to attach the gusset, which is going to end up looking like this attached to the sleeve. So first I'm sewing one side of the gusset to the side of the sleeve seam. Once this is sewn in place, the next side of the gusset and the rest of the sleeve seam is placed on the other side of the sleeve seam, right sides together and sewn together. And this is what the resulting sleeve will look like. Before attaching these sleeves to the body, I first finished up the sleeve hem with a small rolled hem. And this is how the sleeve will be attached to the body. It's basically the same instructions as attaching a regular sleeve. You just have the point to the gusset and at the end of this point is where the rest of the side seam of the body gets sewn together. After attaching the sleeves, I then was able to sew up the side seam of the body. When you get to the gores, this area is a bit hard to do with the added fabric layers and the bulk of the gore seams, but with some smoothing out, it's possible it's just a little more bulky. Once you get past that tricky point of the gores, you're now dealing with edges cut on a slight bias and not a straight edge. So I was just careful to not stretch the fabric as I sew this seam. We now have a body piece of a shift with arms, but no neck hole. So here's where I use my measurements to cut a rough hole, but I am going much smaller than those estimates to be safe. It's better to cut a small hole and make it bigger than, well, not much you can do with a too big of hole. So then I tried it on and did my best to mark where the neckline should be. And then I took it off, did another trim and tried it on again. I probably trimmed a little too much. It's just slightly too big, but at the same time, dresses of this era do have a wider square neckline and they sit like just on the edge of your shoulder. So I knew it was gonna feel looser than I was usually used to. Then I was off to hemming this neckline with a small rolled hem. We'll talk about a drawstring later on. And then the last thing to do is the actual hem of the thing. So at the sides where the gores are, you do have a point where these gores come together and the online instruction says to just cut off the ends to keep a straight hem, but to not go as far as rounding the entire hem. Overall, you want the hem to be on a straight grain. And that completes the shift for now. This is how I wore it to the picnic. It's basically done. But afterwards, I did add a couple extra details, one of them being a monogram on the front. And I decided on BM for Bella Mae instead of my real initials. But anyway, this is something that shifts often had and a reason I found online said it was because often people did their laundry together. And this was to identify whose was whose. And they also sometimes had a number next to the initials. And this was usually for those who sent their wash away to be washed by someone else. And the number would help them identify which shift it was and which ones came back and make sure that things weren't being stolen and all that. So anyway, I decided just on the initials and I'm doing it in a gray silk thread. One place said it was often done in black, but I felt like that would be just too stark. But also I did gray because it's gonna match my stay color. The last thing I did was add a drawstring to the neckline. So this is not something that is mandatory for shifts, but they often do have them. And after wearing the shift, I did feel like it was just a little bit too loose. And so I first need to make a little hole at the center front, just on the outer layer of the hemmed edge because the string needs to get into the hemmed edge. And I did this by basically creating a tiny eyelet with some thread. I then grabbed some silk ribbon, which was the only sort of string thing that I had that wasn't too bulky and fat, not only to fit in my very tiny rolled hem, but also just to not bulk up the neckline. And with that, we have a finished shift. In total, it took just over six hours to hand sew. As always, a huge thank you and shout out to my patrons and YouTube members and Instagram subscribers for being here on this journey. Heads up, I did get it done in time for the picnic, but stay tuned as we continue to explore the rest of the undergarments and the dress that is needed for this final look.