1840's Cap and Bonnet

Today's post is about my cap and bonnet I made and wore with my 1840's dress. I pulled both of these together in a couple days before I wore the dress for Halloween. The cap is completely hand sewn and I really love how it turned out! The bonnet was something that I thought of making about a week before the party, which was too late to order a base online so I went shopping at my local thrift stores to find a plain straw hat to modify. I ended up with one for a couple of dollars from Value Village and it turned out great!



The bonnet is made from a plain cotton fabric I had in my stash, trimmed with lace (also from my stash) and ties in the back with ribbon. I drafted the pattern using this tutorial and sewed it all in a couple of hours. Overall, I really like how this turned out, however I will probably make another one in the future and make the back piece just a little bit larger (I think my measurements were off just a bit).

As I said already about the bonnet, I started off with a plain, modern sun hat. I tranformed it by cutting off the brim then pinning it to the styrofoam head in the shape I wanted and trimmed any excess away. To save time, and my sanity, I used hot glue to re-attach the brim to the base and then covered it with ribbon (also hot glued on). I pulled out my ribbon stash and played around until I found a combination that I liked.

The ribbon ties were hand sewn onto the fabric piece that sits around the crown of the hat (part of the original hat) and then I hot glued a piece of bias tape over the section where the brim and crown piece met just to make it a little more tidy.

You can see here a small portion where I didn't end up covering.

When I started the bonnet I didn't have high hopes for it, but I was pleasantly surprised by the end result.

All the Fluff | 1840's Petticoats

There are a lot of reasons why I really like my 1840's dress, but one of my absolute favorite parts is the petticoats. The fashions of the time were to have a large, full skirt but this was before the invention of the crinoline hoop skirt (which came in the 1850's), which meant lots and lots of petticoats.

I ended up using 10 yards of 60" wide cotton that I purchased at the LA Garment District while I was at Costume College in July. 10 yards was enough for 1 corded petticoat, 2 petticoats and just enough scraps left over to make the mock up of the bodice for the dress.

The patterns for my petticoats were really simple; just two square pieces 60" x 43". I wanted the end circumference of the petticoats to be approximately 120" and I cut the length at 43" to have plenty of room for a nice wide hem (I think I ended up with 5") and several rows of 1/2" pin tucks.

Underneath all of the petticoats I made a small bustle pad as well (which was popular for the era). Pretty simple, but it took me a few tries to get just the right size I wanted.

My corded petticoat. I had originally planned to do several more rows closer to the top, but I decided I didn't need to but it was still a little too long, which is why there's a random pin tuck at the top.

For the cording, I used white cotton yarn that I picked up at Joann's. I ended up buying more than I actually needed, but in the future I would try to get a thicker cording. Since this was my first time making (or wearing) a corded petticoat I wasn't quite sure what to expect, but it really adds a lot of shape/volume.

Petticoat #2. Pretty simple, with lots of gathers, 3 rows of pin tucks, and a drawstring waistband.

You can still see some of my pen markings, as I hadn't washed them out at the time of taking these pictures.

And petticoat #3. This one is a few inches longer then the one beneath. I opted out of any pin tucks on this one, mostly because I was getting too lazy to add them.

On a side note, I still have to starch these petticoats. I haven't gotten around to it yet since they need to hang dry and the weather has been rainy lately.

The Completed 1840's Dress

Just after I got back from Costume College (and I mean literally just after I got back, as in the day after I got home) I started working on the petticoats for my 1840's dress. I don't even remember how exactly it started, but sometime during the trip Michaela and I were talking about 1830/40's fashions and how they are a bit... odd (mostly the 1830's). And at some point I decided to make an 1840's dress, which lead to lots of Pinterest research in between classes.

As you know if you read my post about Costume College, we went to the fabric district, which is where I found my fabrics. I ended up with the perfect brown plaid linen along with plain white cotton for the petticoats. I think I ended up spending under $50 for all the materials on this dress.

I decided to wear this dress for Halloween and go as Jane Eyre, since I've recently become obsessed with that story. The pattern I used was Laughing Moon #114, which I modified the shape of the front to be more of a sharp point. The dress was soooo easy to make and was quite simple. The bodice only has 3 pieces (plus sleeves) and is shaped with darts in the front, which made putting it together fairly quick. The skirt on the other hand is cartridge pleated, which is very time consuming (but looks so pretty in the end!). And even so, it didn't take all that long.

A few fun facts about this outfit:

•  This dress used over 7 yards of fabric, and I used a total of 10 yards for all 3 petticoats. So that's a total of 17 yards of fabric I'm wearing.
• I'm wearing a cap under my bonnet (I don't currently have pictures of it... Yet), which I sewed 100% by hand (which is something I've never done before).
• I made the bonnet out of a regular straw had from a thrift store. I didn't have time to buy an accurate base for a bonnet and had to make due with this, but it turned out better than I originally thought it would.
• This dress is so incredibly fun to twirl in :D

These are just a few shots I got before going to a costume party last week, but I'm already working on plans to do an official photoshoot in the next month or so. I also want to get pictures of the undergarments and may even make a couple video's related to this outfit.