The Victorian Nightie with Issues

Last week’s Victorian Nightie project started strong: we found a pattern in a book, ordered some cotton lawn, and I enlarged the pattern from the grid in the book.

The cotton lawn still hasn’t arrived yet, as it didn’t get dispatched until the end of the week, blowing away plans for weekend sewing. So instead I cut out a nightie from some very pretty pink floral cotton we had at home. There’s only 2.43m x 90cm wide (the pattern calls for 4m), so the nightie has short sleeves and is knee length. It’s probably better this way, as Teen gets two nighties and I get to check the pattern properly.

We looked through the lace stash and found some pink and white broderie anglaise lace which matched well.

Second choices were two nylon laces which belonged to my great-grandma. They were wound on a piece of cardboard along with knicker elastic, which must be at least 50 years old and amazingly still has stretch!

The pattern calls for pre-gathered lace, but I cut the broderie anglaise in half and used it flat (there’s not enough to have it gathered).

I made a few tiny changes to the book’s cutting layout to eek the most from the fabric.

I squeezed the front placket between the front and back’s armhole, and switched around the yoke pattern to make a shoulder seam (which only saved 3cm but that saving added to the nightie’s length).

In the end there was only a handful of scraps.

The instructions are brief, just text with a few diagrams. Manageable though. There’s no line drawing, which would have been helpful as the photograph was very styled.

The nightie has 24 tucks across the front, which I sewed while questioning my life choices. Ended up doing 26 to make the front yokes fit.

The back has gathers instead of tucks, to my joy.

When the tucks/yoke/collar unit was complete, Teen and I both tried it on. The collar was too tight. Was it supposed to lap over the same amount as the placket, or should the edges have simply met in the middle? A closer look at the photo (with a magnifying glass) suggests the latter, but it fitted onto the neckline fine when I sewed it.

It would make sense though, because it’s far too tight otherwise.

Teen also declared the collar too high for her. So now the whole collar situation needs to be addressed before going on with the sleeves, or it will be harder to fix.

You’re no doubt familiar with this point in a project, where it feels like you’re going backwards but must persevere or else you’ll have an abandoned half-finished thing lying around. We shall persevere!