Ettie completed

I have finished my Ettie petticoat. I'm not sure why, but it seemed to take forever. None of this was the fault of the pattern, which was excellent. Leimomi had thought of everything, even including cutting layouts, which seem to be a rarity these days.

Not that I used them. There are pattern pieces for the two ruffles, with each four of piece being cut out. But the pattern also includes the dimensions of finished ruffles in case you want to just mark them out on the fabric. Plus, the pieces can be cut on or across the grain. So my ruffles were made from irregular length pieces cut to leave the minimum of waste, and joined make the total length. As a result, I only used 2.9m rather than the 3.4m requirement on the pattern - all my experience of squeezing dresses out of slightly-too-small remnants paid off!

The leftovers, with 6" ruler for scale

The petticoat is made from a front, back and sides, joined together with French seams. There is a placket opening between the front and the left side, but I swapped this to the right as that is easier to use for a left-hander like me. I couldn't imagine how a placket would work on a French seam, but the step-by-step instructions talk you through it. They even include the size number of snap fastens and hooks & loops to use, which gave me a good excuse to rifle through my box of vintage haberdashery.

Placket with Size 1 snaps, and Size 2 hooks & loops

The dust ruffle is attached first.

Laid out flat

The result seemed a bit long on me (I'm not particularly tall), but I didn't want to take the ruffle off and re-apply it, so instead added a pintuck.

Historically accurate shortening method

Then it was time to attach the outer ruffle. By this time I seemed to be wrangling So Much Fabric. I was very grateful to be sewing on my Singer 66K, with its long arm and large harp space.

A fight to the death with cotton lawn

On the subject of my machine . . . Some of the gathering stitches on the ruffles required a very small seam allowance, which in turn required me to attach the seam marker using the leftmost of the two screw holes. For some reason, this never fastens as tightly as the other one. I rescued some card from the recycling box, cut two small pieces, made holes with my pattern-cutting punch, glued them together and - success!

My high-tech fix

The top edge of the outer ruffle is covered with more lace. There is the option to make this an insertion like on the ruffle, but I just left the fabric behind intact.

The completed ruffle

And here is the end result. The cotton lawn is so fine that the corset flossing and binding are visible underneath but despite that, it's quite heavy. The result of all those ruffles, no doubt.

Side and front views

Even though I used less fabric than the pattern called for, it's still further into the green for the Stashometer.

Looking good (by slightly nefarious means)

I should explain that I have a fair amount of plain cotton of different weights in The Stash. Because so much woven fabric sold as '100% cotton' these days is mysteriously stretchy (well hello, unlisted elastane content), when I do come across plain true cotton fabric in white or cream, I tend to buy some while I can, and don't count it as a stash addition (#sorrynotsorry).

The remainder of this particular length is going to be made into a corset cover. But first, I'm going to make a new corset. My 1911 corset is greatly improved by my recent alterations, but there's no denying that the lacing gap is far too wide. I don't feel I’ve done very well with corset-making so far, so I'm not excited to get started, but needs must. At least I'm using another Scroop pattern to make it, so I'm giving myself every chance of success.

Next up (image © Scroop Patterns)

Finally, the petticoat is my entry for another Historical Sew Monthly 2026 challenge, and here are the details.

The small print:
The Challenge: December, Bottoms
What the item is: Mid-teens era petticoat
How it fits the challenge: It covers my bottom half
Material: Cotton lawn
Pattern: Ettie petticoat from Scroop Patterns, view C
Year: 1915-1917
Notions: Cotton insertion and hem lace, snap fastens, hooks & loops, elastic
How historically accurate is it? The pattern is based on a 1917 sewing pattern and the materials are authentic for the period
Hours to complete: Too many to admit to, I’m a very slow sewist
First worn: Just for photos
Total cost: £34

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. It is similar to Torchon lace, but in a very thick thread. 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 and more accurate 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.

Four rows of insertion lace would have finished me off

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!