Making a Good Omens Historically Accurate Cosplay: Victorian Aziraphale (Part 2)

Everyone and welcome! It's time to start the sewing process for my Victorian zebra fail, and this week I'm getting started with the lower half of the garments, namely the knickerbockers and the divided skirt. These are really unusual garments when put in the context of women's garments of the 19th century, but they have a very popular past to them as well. In fact, the knickerbockers are sort of the cousins to bloomers, which were popularized in the 1850s and took on their name from Amelia Bloomer, who was one of the people that popularized them, though they didn't exactly make it into regular fashion. They were more of a popularity with dress reformers and got picked up for things like gymnastics and other athletic things for young women, but they never really made it that far into regular fashion because, frankly, they're not that flattering. So even though they were pushed as a healthy and much easier to wear alternative to skirts and petticoats, they didn't really catch on that much when they first came out. In fact, it wasn't really until the 1880s that that started to change. In 1876, Viscountess Harberton supposedly invented the divided skirt, or at the very least popularized it, and that is exactly what it sounds like. A skirt that has a division down the middle essentially makes it into wide leg trousers, usually with extra panels in front in order to cover up that split and make it look more like a regular skirt. This garment was poised to take the western world by storm because the 1880s was when there was this huge explosion of cycling, and the new upgrades and designs for bicycles made it much more achievable and accessible to the average person. Women's regular skirts of the era didn't adapt well to bicycles. Not only were they too full, getting caught in the chains and the wheels, they were too long, usually you had layers and layers of petticoats underneath, the entire thing was very heavy, difficult to do all that movement in, so they were looking for an alternative, and the divided skirt was the perfect answer for multiple reasons. First off, with the division, that meant that you could split the skirt over the sides of the bicycle, or even over the sides of a horse. It meant that there's a lot more freedom of movement for the legs, and that you had less of a concern of the skirt catching the breeze and flipping upright. This also meant that you could shorten the skirt, and they definitely did. They went almost up to the knee in some cases, so it was a really short comparison to what we generally see as the average fashion of the late 1880s and even into the 1890s, as regular skirts shortened as well. They put a lot of effort and weight into making sure that these skirt hems still stayed down, no matter what sort of level activity you were doing, but inevitably with a skirt that short, you were going to see a flash of knee or upper thigh occasionally, which meant there was a whole new issue. If you can't wear petticoats underneath of these garments, and the big open ruffly drawers also don't work because they're not going to actually cover the upper portion of the leg or the knee, nor do you want your underwear flashing everywhere, we have to come up with alternative options. Some do recommend things like union suits, which were essentially knit underwear, so you would have your legs covered appropriately, but you're still flashing undergarments. The answer instead came in the form of those earlier bloomers. Plenty of women were picking up wearing bloomers for bicycling and other athletic things as well, but what if we took those bloomers, sized them down a little bit closer to the knickerbockers that men and boys were wearing, and put those underneath? Because now we have an undergarment which also can function as an outer garment, so it's perfectly fine if it's being seen, but it's going to have a very similar fit to those drawers that women are already used to wearing, just covers the knee and bands down below it, so that way you don't have anything blowing open, and that means that you're going to find knickerbockers being made in a wide range of different textiles. Some are better suited to being solely undergarments, such as silk pongee, lightweight almost sheer silks, and then in other cases they're making them out of wools and heavier textiles, they generally avoided the really heavy stuff, but something in the mid-weight range that could be worn on its own, because there's plenty of imagery of women wearing knickerbockers without the skirt over them, but this sort of created a garment that was in between underwear and outerwear, because it was fine for it to be seen, even technically in some cases fine for you to wear it on its own, given the correct circumstances, so it's a pretty practical pairing in many ways, which is why I wanted to go with that choice. Now of course this is still a set of garments that was going to be situationally appropriate given the era, it wasn't something that all women took up, and it certainly wasn't something that was acceptable everywhere, and it created a lot of hubbub. When the divided skirt really took hold in the early 1880s, there was a lot of division about whether or not this should even be allowed to exist, and you know me, I can't go through an entire subject about Victorian fashion without reading off some of my favorite quotes. So first up in 1881 we have an article that mentions that dress reformers are now wearing trousers because they aren't attractive and can't catch attention otherwise, and that the divided skirt can't last because it will lead to trousers in two or three years. It did take a little bit longer for trousers to become a normal thing for women, granted, but it did eventually lead to trousers in a way. Another article in 1882 states that the new divided skirt will prove a dead failure, and it's the worst of both. It's so ugly it would drive all of the men to the North Pole, and it will lead to trousers and knee breaches and a bristling sea of legs, which is a wonderful description. But of course despite these, the divided skirt did catch on. Plenty of people saw the use in that, saw the use in women in bloomers and knickerbockers, saying that well they have two legs, don't they? Why do we pretend that they only have one? But even as late as the 1890s, once the bicycle craze had fully taken hold, so many women were wearing bloomers and bicycle suits, divided skirts were absolutely everywhere. There were still plenty of people that were very, very concerned about these sorts of garments. An article from 1895 recognized that bloomers were becoming more and more common, saying that some of those that were seen at the cycling parade yesterday and all around the park every day might better and more correctly be called by the vulgar name of pants. So there's a lot of concern over these garments, but they still become very popular, create a lot of effect on regular fashion, and continue to be utilized for decades after that as alternatives for riding attire and all sorts of sports attire. In fact, this is really one of the major points where women go from riding side saddle to a stride. So there are tons of changes that are happening in the social fabric, as well as the tailored fabric of this era. As for my choices, I'm going to be making knickerbockers because I find bloomers to be far more voluminous than I want for a practical everyday garment to be used afterwards. I am choosing to put a full waistband on the knickerbocker, so that way I can wear them as is by themselves as a modern-ish garment. A lot of the examples have just a bound edge on top, so that way they're not adding bulk to the waist. Instead, what I'm going to do is focus on that complicated waist stuff with the divided skirt. Because I need it to go both over the knickerbockers and not, I want it to have two different waist sizes, which requires adjustability. Thankfully, bicycle skirts and divided skirts were so incredibly popular, but also really potentially complex in terms of what was needed, that there were tons and tons of patents trying to figure out how best to make adjustable and interchangeable skirts. One of the things that I stumbled across was at the Met Museum. This example there has what looks to be an adjustable waistband, and it mentions in the description of the garment that it is a patented style. So I went and did some research and came across this patent for it, and it created a really interesting idea in my mind of how to have overlapping waistbands that are then adjustable. I didn't like the style of this particular divided skirt that much. I really didn't want something with all of the external pleats on the back. I also had fallen in love with this particular drafting of a, what they called, rainy day skirt that I thought was really cute in terms of the plackets and other little additional decorations up around the hips and waist area. So I wanted to try and turn that into a divided skirt, but with that adjustability. The nice thing is, because the vast majority of the divided skirts I was seeing have these little plackets that are just to the side of center front, so there's one panel in the front that covers up the split in the skirt, and then usually it's buttoned up at the top, and that's where the waistbands connect. Instead, what I was going to do was leave that loose. The buttons on those plackets would instead be false, and then that was the waistband that would wrap around, leaving the back as is. So the closure would be center front for the main waistband of the legs, and then the panel that stitched on would flip up and go around the waist to button towards the back in two different positions. This meant that I had to leave the plackets open in front so that way they could adjust back and forth, but that also meant that I could hide a little pocket inside. So I do have a welted pocket hidden in front. Could technically have done two, but I felt like that was more than I personally needed. So today I'm going to be diving into the making of both of those, as well as some of the fitting of those knickerbockers, because they turned out to be rather complex. Whether I was actually trying to make them complex or not. First up, I'm going back to the knickerbockers, where after the mock-up in the last video I realized I need to drop out the crotch by about an inch, so it's not too high and tight, and that I needed to raise up the knee bands by a couple of inches. I had given some extra on the mock-up, so only an inch taken out of the pattern here. Then I cut the pattern out and applied it to the fabric, marking out both the stitch line and the seam line, because it's just a lot cleaner and easier that way, in my opinion. The thing is though, since this is a plaid fabric and I want things to match up pretty well, there's no easy way to do it through two layers at the same time. So I marked out everything on one side of the folded fabric. The front, the back, the plackets, the waistband, the pocket, all of the different bits, and I'll be cutting those out individually first on one level, and then I will be applying them to the second level in order to cut everything out from there. I also worked through making sure that that pocket was large enough for the cell phone, because it's a really important thing. Then I got to cutting that top layer, making sure that I wasn't catching the layer underneath. I could have laid this all out flat, but it wasn't too difficult to cut this way, except along the edge, and that allows me to then go back and double check that I have the grid lines laid out the exact same way. So everything will be on grain, everything will match up, center back, center front, that sort of thing. So I have the waistband, the back, the front, the placket, and the pocket at the side, and then the plackets down at the knee bands as well. So quite a few little pieces for this, though it's not really too complicated of a garment. Started off by stitching up the center back and the center front seams, and then it was time to get on to all of those tiny little plackets and sides. So for the front, the plackets aren't going to extend out, but be so much little facings. So that's the very first thing that I'm going to be doing, is stitching those facings, which are only about an inch and a half wide, to the upper section on the left side of the front, and to the knee bands as well. I'll be stopping the stitching before I get to the bottom of those. There's a little bit of seam allowance left to fold up. This is the center back stitched up, and it has plackets on either side as well, but they'll be faced with cotton rather than folded over to the garment. So those just get pressed open for the seams, and we will stitch the cotton facing around them next. But for the front, the pocket gets stitched to the right side, fully opened there, just as far down as the opening needs to be, and then the same plackets at the left side and down at the knee bands will be stitched on and then folded back over and hand stitched down. There is a little bit of work to do on those first, however, especially in the case of the upper portions of the hips. I first want to reduce some of the bulk. I did serge the edges of this fabric to make it much faster, so I'm reducing a little bit of extra bulk there where it's going to be top stitched down. Now there's also a lot of stretch in this fabric when it comes to the bias at the hips, so I stitched in a little bit of tailor's tape to that seam, and it stretches a lot less. This is important in terms of facings and pocket openings, things that are going to get a lot of heavy use and pull and tug in the hip area, so you want to make sure that those are well established and not going to stretch out over time. I then did all of the little cotton facings on the plackets that will stick out of the back, and those get folded in the top or bottom edges left raw, and then the inner edge is folded over, and I'll hand stitch that down once I'm sure that everything fits correctly. I know that there's a chance I might need to adjust some of these side seams before I get that far, so that's what we're going to check next. Going ahead and doing the side seams and the in seams, connecting the backs to the front essentially, so that way I can get to trying things on and seeing how they fit. The pocket does require a little bit of extra work up at the top because it needs to be seamed onto the back as well, and then I can go around and stitch the bottom of the pocket closed. Because I serge these edges, I don't need to finish them in any other way. I then go ahead and top stitch over the waistband area so it holds a little snugger while I'm trying things on. Pocket's ready to go, everything pinned into place in terms of the darts and pinned to the waistband lining, because that has much less stretch than the plaid fabric. The front looks pretty good, four little darts in the front. Sides are looking good, but the back, um, not so much, as you can see me starting to laugh there. I have a serious case of the baggy butt. So now we have to figure out how to fix that problem. Thankfully with the plaid, you can see the grain lines that we're dealing with. Pretty fast change there if I just lift and pull outwards. I think that makes the most sense, so we're going to show three different methods of managing to fix this. The first thing I did was raise it up, so it's pinned up about an inch higher on the waistband. Already, big difference. However, it's still not enough, so I pinned in about half an inch center back seam. A little bit better, but still more than enough room in the back. So the next day I came back to it, pinned up the side seams as well, moved the back up further, and made sure that the shaping of that center back seam was a little bit better, and it is so much better than it was to begin with. So the answer for this was all three of the different methods to reduce that back. You can see here the chalk line of where the new line sits, and the edges where the old line was. So quite a bit of difference made, but not a huge difference in terms of where the actual pattern would have been drawn. So this is what they look like after I've stitched them back together. The darts are still pinned in to make sure that they're good, and this is the point where I can go ahead and start hand stitching back those plackets, because I know that the edges are in the correct place. So for the front, it's just stitched down to the fabric by hand, and for the back, the plackets just need the cotton stitched down, and then tacked into place. Then I got to doing the darts in the back and the front, and it was time to start moving on to the kneebands and waistband. So gathering up the kneebands, as well as darts on that, and starting the waistband on the top. Like I said, it will be lined in that stiffer cotton. You can see the kneeband there. It's gathered in the back and darted in the front. This is just the way that the pattern told me to do it. I don't know exactly why, but it turned out pretty well. Once I have waistband and kneeband stitched on and faced with the cotton, I turn them right side out, folded the cotton lining over, and I'm slip stitching everything into place. I then have to do all the buttonholes. Fair warning, these are buttonhole scissors, so don't worry. I'm not cutting through the edges. There are two buttonholes at the waist and one buttonhole on each of the kneebands. I could have put two buttonholes on the kneebands, but the pattern, again, called for one. A lot of the descriptions I looked at had one listed as well, so that's what I went with. I did keyhole buttonholes, and I use a 30 weight silk for this, so not quite as heavy as a button twist, not super lightweight either. For the buttons, I decided to go with a bit of a contrast. There's that lovely gold stripe running through the check in this, so I thought it'd be nice to accent that with gold buttons, as well as the gold cotton fabric for the lining. I'm also adding a few hooks and eyes. I'm doing this as subtly as possible, which means that I'm actually using an awl to open up a little bit of that side seam there and inserting the hook in between the seam. So this is something that's easier done on hand stitching, mind you, but it does bury it a little bit better. In my opinion, it makes it a little bit stronger. I'm still taking stitches through most of the layers. I try to not touch the exterior layer, but go through all the seam allowance and really get those well established. Then I'm doing thread eyes. Since they're right on the edge, I can't do the loop style because that would be visible, and even the bars are somewhat visible, in my opinion, so I'm just doing a thread style that will blend in perfectly. A couple loops of thread and then a buttonhole stitch over the edge. If you've ever done friendship bracelets, it's the exact same type of thing. So overall, a pretty simple garment. Once you get the hang of dealing with plackets, there's just three of those and one pocket, and everything else about it is pretty plain and simple. It's just getting that fit right, which is always the difficult thing for bifurcated garments. Next, we are moving on to the divided skirt, which the first challenge is figuring out how to get this massive pattern out of two yards. It's a really wide wool. It's over 60 inches, so I was fortunate in that regard, but there is still a lot to deal with here. I ended up deciding that there was no way I was going to get the leg panels cut out as single full pieces, so I added a seam to the front in the same place that the panel will overlap, so it will be completely invisible as a seam. And that helped a lot. I think it also is good in terms of keeping things a bit more on grain. You can see here, I ended up having to literally cut a corner off of the back there, but that's going to be between the legs, underneath, down by the hem. You're not going to see the fact that I had to seam on this tiny little corner, unless you are way up in my divided skirt, in which case we have more questions. Then it was time to start with the welted pocket. A tiny little scrap of fabric that sits over where I want the opening to be that will be the welt. I should have cut this a little bit wider, to be honest. It turned out okay, but it'd be easier if you're not super experienced with this, to have one that's a little bit broader than that. And I'm just stitching the full rectangles half an inch wide, by however long you want the opening, and I go around all four of the sides in order to finish it off. And then once that's done, I will clip it open all the way down, making a little V at both ends in order to clip into the corners. I can turn the welt to the inside, and I'm not going to press it completely open. Instead, what I'm going to do is press those little seams that I made open. So the reason why I do that is because it actually gives me the size of the welt that I will need in order to close that back up again. So I find that to be useful in that regard, as well as keeping it clean and flat. And that extra will just wrap up and over, and I will stitch in the ditch from the front side. It's just easier if I go ahead and iron this first before doing the stitching. You can see there, there's the finished product of it. So the little welt's folded towards the inside and pressed, and then top stitched through that seam. In order to add the pocketing, what I'm going to do is open up the same size as the welt, and fold all of those edges back, and then that will sit on top of the open welt and be hand stitched down. There are so many ways to do a welted pocket. It just depends on what type of method you want to use and what type of bulk you're dealing with. This fabric was pretty bulky, so I was trying to make this as flat and smooth as possible since it's in kind of an awkward area. As for the pocket bag, I didn't serge this garment, so I knew I wanted to do a French seam. I can't just fold it right side to right side and stitch it, because then the raw edge will be sticking out. So instead, I'm going to do a French seam where I'm folding it wrong side to wrong side first, but the skirt is going to be in the way for that. So I'm folding that up nicely and shoving it inside of the pocket bag essentially, and then I'm going to stitch a quarter inch seam around all of the edges, actually slightly less than a quarter inch seam, and then I will pull the entirety of that piece back out through the opening and turn everything right side out. It's a fun little magic trick in a way, but this ends up putting the raw edges of the pocket to the inside, so that way I can then top stitch again and finish them off both ways. Then it's time to deal with the center front. I could do a regular fly front here where it overlaps, but because it will never be visible, and because I want to keep this as flat and smooth as possible, no more bulk in the front than I need, I am just doing both as little facing pieces. So I'm just stitching the cotton on, top stitching it to hold it back, folding it, and doing up that center front seam from where they meet down, and then I'm top stitching around those edges of that placket again. Yes, this will all be visible from the exterior, but then I have the panel in front that hides all of it, so this just needs to be clean and flat and strong enough. So I'm top stitching back and forth where that seam separates there to make sure that it won't eventually pull open no matter what happens. Then it's time to get to the rest of the legs. So I'm adding in those little corner pieces that I mentioned trimming off, then I stitched up the center back seam where the pleat starts, then I'm going to be stitching on this little extra decorative piece. In fact, it's more than decorative in the fact that it will also strengthen the seam. I'm just stitching through two layers of the back here. I haven't folded it back together again for that reason. It's much easier to stitch this at this point than once I finish up that seam. So this is just reinforcing the top hip area in the center back. I'm doing a double stitch around both the edges. It's decorative as well as making it extra strong, and then I'm able to stitch up the curved center back seam that will run between the legs. So you can see why I didn't want to stitch through all of that bulk up at the top. It made a lot more sense to leave this seam free from that little applique piece, and that's the section that will be essentially the trousers. You can see here the center front opening completely open, but with the pocket there I'm going to be covering that up shortly, making sure that this fits around the waist, that the darts are pinned where they need to be and the size that they need to be, so that way everything fits comfortably, and then I will be able to move on to the darts followed by the waistband. Since there is a separate waistband for the trouser portion compared to the front, I'm going ahead and stitching on the waistband and the cotton facing in order to finish off the waistband for the trouser portion of the divided skirt. Then I will get to the front, which is done completely separately. So hand stitching back that facing for the waistband, and then we'll be able to move on to the front. This requires some weird little plackets in the front, so what I'm doing here is stitching right side to wrong side. So essentially those are going to flip to the front of the garment so that they're visible, but in order to finish off the edge, it's easiest to do that seamed towards the front with that little piece stitched over it. So did that, ironed back all of the edges as carefully as I could with the curves. Thankfully this wool was very forgiving with the complex curves and corners, and then top stitched down and around that. So this will finish off the opening at the top, but I'll still have to deal with finishing off the rest of the long seams in the end. There's a lot of top stitching on these garments in general. Same thing goes with the waistband. So the waistband is the weird thing on this one that I talked about earlier. The extension comes off the front. You have these little tabs that are a little bit narrower than the rest of the waistband because they're going to essentially weave through the larger waistband, but the front portion of the waistband is the same as the trouser portion. Clipped and turned all of the edges as carefully as possible, making sure that everything isn't too bulky. Same thing down at the end. I clipped back that acute corner as well as clipped into those curves. I like to alternate my clips so that way if I've got two pieces of fabric, they are clipped at different places so I'm less likely to get little angles. And then it was time to do all that top stitching again, but it looks so nice and it adds a lot of reinforcement for this reason that I didn't actually put an interfacing into this waistband. I didn't think it needed the extra strength or the extra bulk there. The double top stitching is really great at reinforcement, so I wasn't too worried about that. Next it was on to the hem. The hems of these garments tend to be faced, and they could be faced in leather, they could be faced in stiff cotton, or any sort of other weighty fabric. Sometimes they even have interfacing inside of that, but these are pretty broad, four or five inches, sometimes even more. And then they are top stitched multiple times. The point of this is that you want the stiffness and the weight in order to keep the bottom of the skirt down when you are doing things like bicycling. You don't want the wind to catch a lightweight skirt and flip it up. So I finished off the hems for both the front and the legs separately, and then the front has its edges folded back, and then the whole thing will get top stitched down that seam line on the legs. Again, double stitching as well. This seems to be a common way that these are attached, from what I could tell. It just makes more sense to have it as a completely separate piece. Then to the buttonholes. They're a little bit weird. There are buttonholes at the very ends of these straps, like we would expect for the waistband, which buttons around the back. But I'm also going to need buttonholes in kind of a weird place on the bigger waistband as well, where they're nearly the full width of the waistband, wide enough to fit that little strap through, but not so far as to cut into any of the top stitching. And then I was able to start stitching buttons on. There are two buttons on the waistband, making sure that they are far enough back to get in the right places for the two settings that I need for the waistband. But then I'm moving on to the buttons that are on the center back and the side front plackets. These are just stitched on. They are completely false, in a sense, so they don't actually do anything. They are just decorative. A lot of the originals do have functional buttonholes at the front plackets, but I couldn't because I want it to be adjustable. Then there are also some hooks and eyes at the center front. I embedded these just like I did with the Knickerbockers. So that will allow me to close up the center front, and I might eventually add in a second pair of eyes if the overlap needs it. But for right now, it seems to be holding itself in place pretty well with the waistband. So overall, it seems like it should be a much more complex garment than it actually is. It's basically just a pair of wide leg trousers with a panel seamed over the front. you