Loose threads

This year Historic Sew Fortnightly turned into Historic Sew Monthly, which will be much more realistic for me (and hopefully less stressful for the very nice people who try to keep it all together!). The first challenge is foundations. As Leimomi pointed out, "foundations" doesn't necessarily mean undergarments, but as I originally planned to make a new chemise and ended up making a petticoat, I can only admit that I am with the overwhelming majority in how I interpreted this challenge.

 

The issue of petticoats does at times confuse me, mostly because I move a lot between different periods and/or geographical areas. Smock/chemise - kirtle/gamurra - gown/zimarra? Smock-petticoat-kirtle-gown? What's actually right for what period? It's a bit like the stays/bodies/corset question - not likely to be settled anytime soon, at least not in my brain.

 

However, I quite like to have something under the kirtle if I'm not wearing a gown, at least for upper class stuff, so I've been looking for a better petticoat for a while. Might not always use it, but still. And as I wasn't finding any nice linen fabric for a new chemise, I started to look for other options. I found 5,5 metres of polyester...uhm... taffeta-ish fabric on a clearance sale, and that settled it: this was the perfect opportunity to try out petticoats without spending scary amounts of money - since I'm really trying to work myself through the stash this year as well. That the fabric was red wasn't bad either; apparently, at least in a Tudor context, red's the petticoat colour nr 1.

 

With 5,5 metres of fabric I could even try to make two petticoats. To cut two bodices at the same time minimized the amount of leftover fabric, too, and made planning simpler. One's still in pieces in my stash, while I started with the U-front one I thought might be the most versatile variety, even for someone who's not (yet) doing Tudor.