This hood is was made using the instructions in ‘The American Duchess Guide to 18th Century Hair and Beauty’. While it does look like it was stolen from Darth Sidious it was popular in the second half of the nineteenth century for warmth and protection against rain.

The large size is for pure awesomeness and to be able to go over any large hairstyle you might have. It is made from one large rectangle that has been gathered at the back, and the bottom has been folded up to make a drawstring. It ties at the front with said drawstring.

The material I made this out of is a polyester taffeta, though the 18th-century correct fabric would be silk taffeta. This is quite simple to make and perfect if you want to look like a resurrected Sith lord.

Chemisettes were a common accessory in the early nineteenth century. They would fill in the necklines of low-cut dresses, making them suitable for day wear. There were many different styles of Chemisette with some being popular at different times, but the style in the picture above would probably have been popular from about 1805 to 1826 approximately. This one is composed of two hemmed ruffles being finely cartridge pleated at the neck.

The raw edges are covered with linen tape on the inside. The front shoulder seam in this example has small pleats taken in it for decoration.

This chemisette closes at the neck with two cords with tassels at the ends. It also closes with a drawstring in a casing that ties at the waist.

Both chemisettes consist of two front pieces and one back piece that are not joined at the sides. This would be unnecessary as you can only see the part of the chemisette visible at the neck. They are hemmed at the sides and bottom edge.

The other chemisette would be more popular from about 1820 to 1838. It consists of a neckpiece with a ruffle around the edge.

This one has whitework flower embroidery around the edge. Both chemisettes are based off of early nineteenth-century examples in the UK National Trust and can be found in Patterns of Fashion 1, with a pattern taken from the originals. By the 1850s necklines had become higher in the daytime and there was no longer any need to wear a chemisette. They fell away from popular fashion, though smaller decorative collars started becoming fashionable at that time.

This 1840s bonnet is made out of a beige cotton. The brim and structural materiel is stiff cardstock with wire stitched around the edge. This is not proper millinery but it is relatively simple to do. Maybe some poor person would have a paper stiffened bonnet? Maybe? Deffinitently not rain-proof though. It ties under the neck with self fabric ribbon.

For the side of the bonnet I used strips of gathered fabric joined together with piping. There is also a pleated trim on the brim with a strip of fabric down the center to secure the pleats.

I have since realized that the effect would have been made by sewing small channels for reeds to go through, which would have also provided the stiffnes for the crown.

The back is plain with piping around the edge.

The inside of the brim is decorated with lace and fake flower petals

and leaves.

Hair cushions in the 18th century were used to give height and width to the hair to give it the fashionable shape. They could range from a small banana shape to help with a curl to the large donut shaped cushions to give that iconic Marie Antoinette look. Not all hair styles in the 18th century used hair cushions and for the first half of it hair that laid close to the head was most popular.

Beginning in the 1760s a small amount of volume in the front was desired as you can see in the portrait above. This could be given by a small banana shaped cushion at the front of the head. You could roll the hair around the cushion for the appearance of a curl or styled in a number of different ways.

By the 1770s the large bouffant hairstyles we most commonly associate with the 18th century was in style. This well known style of the 18th century was really only in fashion for about three years While mythical stories of three feet high hair are out there these donut shaped cushions were really only four to six inches high. It does not take a lot of height to make the hair seem considerably taller and the addition of hats and caps added height more as well.

By 1780 the height at the front of the head started to come down and the volume started to go out towards the sides. The cushion shape gave equal volume at the top and sides of the head and curls or chignons could be made at the bottom of the hair. Hats at this time also got bigger and wider to match the hair.

In the mid and late 1780s the hair became incredibly curly and fashionable ladies would have their hair papiotte curled, which involves the hair being twisted and sandwiched into wax paper triangles. The an iron would be press the wax paper and set the curl. The first cushion is mid 1780s and the second smaller one is late 1780s.

The 1790s continued the popularity of curly hair but the use of hair cushions died away as the fashionable hair did not need the volume that a hair cushion provided. The hair cushions were made by hand with wool. All the hair cushion patterns are from, “The American Duchess Guide to 18th Century Hair and Beauty.”

This skirt was made as my 2020 “Back to school,” skirt. The pattern is an 1893 one from a drafting manual. It consists of one front piece and two very large back pieces. I wanted this skirt to be a more “casual” Victorian skirt so I decided to make it with a cotton fabric.

The skirt was constructed with french seams to hide the raw edges in case I want to wash it. The front is shaped with four darts on each side and the back is gathered into the waistband.

The right side has a pocket sewn into the side seam, and the pocket pattern is from Bertha Banners Household Sewing with Home Dressmaking, which can be found on Google Books.

I initially bought two yards for the skirt but that ended up only being enough for the front panel and one back panel. However when I went back to get more several months later the same fabric was there but with cooler colors instead. This probably has to do with the different batches of fabric having different dyes. To fix this problem I gave the fabric a tea-bath to warm up the colors. You can still tell that they are not the same but it is close enough that I am not bothered by it.

The bottom eleven inches have a stiff cotton facing to hold out the skirt. To prevent a line from showing where the facing ends, I took only one thread from the fabric at a time while I was sewing.

The tape was added to prevent wear on the hem since it extends a sixteenth of an inch past the actual hem line. With that the skirt was complete.