Insertion exhaustion

Or 'So many hours, for so little result'.

The culprits

I'm on to the next item of my 1915 ensemble, the petticoat. For this I'm using the Ettie Petticoat pattern from Scroop Patterns. It comes with four different views, covering your petticoat needs from 1890 to 1920.

Image © Scroop Patterns

All the petticoats have lace at the hem as well as insertion lace on the ruffle. I chose view C as best for the skirt that I will, eventually, make. As well as the outer ruffle, there is a narrower dust ruffle underneath, also hemmed with lace.

When it came to buying lace, the choice seemed to be between cotton but a bit clunky, or finer but synthetic. I went for the former. The insertion lace was 2.5cm/1" wide but, because it is cotton, I decided to wash it first, just in case. Sure enough, it shrank a little. Fortunately I'd bought extra, so I thought no more of it.

I made up the ruffles, using lapped seams for a flatter finish rather than the recommended French seams. Then I applied the lace, following the extensive instructions given in the pattern.

The hem lace is applied first. It should have been stitched along the top edge, but I decided to do the stitching further down so that the stitching for the hem was covered by the lace.

Pinning on the lace

The pattern matching gods decided to smile on me, and the joins on both ruffles were perfect.

Ta dah!

Sewing the narrow hems was very fiddly, but on the right side, the machine stitching disappears into the lace as I had hoped.

The stitching is barely visible

The wrong sides were a little less successful, even though I sewed wrong side up. In several places I missed the hem, and had to catch it in place by hand.

Fine at the far right, off everywhere else

Anyway, on to the insertion lace. This I did sew right on the edge.

Very precise stitching was needed

I applied both bands before doing anything else.

All sewn on

Then it was time to, very carefully, cut the fabric behind the lace. The bold pattern made it easy to find the centre line.

I held it up to the light to cut it

The cut edges are pressed back, trimmed to 9mm/⅜" either side, the raw edges folded under and then stitched in yet more narrow hems. The pattern instructions warn that this is difficult to do with lace narrower than 2cm/¾", and this was the point where the lace shrinkage really became a problem - especially trimming off the tiny amount of excess fabric.

10 metres of doing this was very tedious

As is obvious from the picture above, I trimmed, pressed and hemmed one edge before starting on the other. I also only cut the centre of the second band once I had completed the first.

Eventually it was all done.

Dust ruffle and outer ruffle

I've written on here before that I am a slow worker, but this was absurd. It took me over 12 hours just to apply all the lace. Admittedly, I did things like carefully hand sew the lace joins, and I got a little faster with practice - I was very grateful to be sewing on my treadle machine, where I can control the speed easily. I must admit I found it a real grind, and sewing white lace onto white cotton with white thread on looong seams (I used an entire bobbin of thread overall) was very tiring.

It's given me a whole new level of respect for the women who did this sort of work for a (probably very meagre) living. Dover Publications' republication of the 1909 National Cloak and Suit Co. catalogue contains several pages of petticoats. A few just have flounces, but pintucks and/or insertions feature heavily.

5002 is the plainest, and cheapest

5006, with its rows of Torchon insertion, is similar to my petticoat. All for just 98 cents.

The lace I used is Torchon in thick thread

Obviously 98 cents in 1909 bought a lot more than it would now, but I can't imagine that the woman making this petticoat earned a great deal for all that work. It makes me very glad that I am making my petticoat purely for myself and am not on piecework - I would starve!