A Dedicated Follower of Fashion

I got a lot done on the Welsh outfit today, although I didn't take any pictures; I was wearing stays and petticoats for a good part of the day for fittings, and so was gently sweating all day - and looked like it! No selfies today, thanks.

I'd started the top petticoat yesterday, and got the panels sewn together and the hem bound, so today I wanted to at least finish that petticoat, which I did. I completely forgot to split the back panel so I could have a CB closing on a seam and didn't realize until I was pleating the petticoat into the waistband today. Oops - guess it's gonna have a side-fastening! (Most of the extants seem to close at CB, but I didn't care enough to unpick any hand sewing to fix that!)

Found my 1840s corset, so was able to put the fastenings on both petticoats, and then figured while I had it all on, I might as well mock up the bodice. I started with one of my 1770s gown bodice patterns, since the type of gown I'm making is pretty much a late-18thc-style bodice!

Why the 1840s corset, then? Basically I'm splitting the difference. 1 - the eponymous "Welsh hat" doesn't appear until the 1830s, 2 - there are  very few accounts of what Welsh women wore under their gowns, but there are a few late 18thc/early 19thc accounts that mention Welsh workingwomen not wearing stays, 3 - "Welsh traditional dress" hadn't crystallized as such until later in the 19thc, so it's really kind of a toss-up as to who actually wore this style of dress and on what occasion. 1830s-50s seems the most likely timeframe, and this kind of dress is mentioned as potentially being middle-class "Sunday best" for countrywomen during that time frame. And...they may have been Welsh, but I suspect middle-class women would have been wearing some kind of stays by the second quarter of the 1800s, at least for "dressing up".

Regardless of guesswork, plausible or otherwise, it's WAY easier to fit things over a foundation, so that's what I'm doing. ;)

Not to put too fine a point on it, fitting an 18thc bodice over an 1840s foundation kind of sucks! I'm used to being able to get an 18thc bodice pretty much wrinkle-free (apart from the "hey, I'm a body that moves and breathes, therefore there are some wrinkles" ones), but that wasn't happening for this bodice. They're not quite as tightly-fitted as 18thc bodices, though, and judging by the few actual visible bodices on humans (everything's covered with shawls!), theirs were a bit wrinkly too.

So I got the mockup to a "not too offensively wrinkly" point, cut the paper pattern from the mockup pieces, and left it at that. Will pick up there tomorrow!