Sunday, August 03, 2008

My Trashy Blue Petticoat - McCall's 5681

A year ago, I bought an authentic net petticoat to wear with my retro-inspired dresses. Though in love with it, I found it was too noticeable under this white cotton dress. You could clearly see the ridges of the piping. So for this and other thin fabric dresses, I decided to make a more low-key petticoat. There's not a lot of variety out there for petticoat patterns (surprised?) unless you are attempting a historic costume or a wedding dress.



After looking around, I chose McCall's 5681, a costume pattern for a 50's poodle skirt. This one was constructed with tulle or net half-circles attached to a fabric yoke. The pattern calls for one layer of net despite suggesting felt, corduroy, and denim for the real skirt. One layer was not sufficient for my cotton dress so it definitely wouldn't have made a difference to a skirt made of thicker fabric. I ended up using one layer each of tulle and net, but think I will probably add additional layers later. The edges of the tulle should be finished with ribbon or lace but do you know how hard it is to find blue trim? So, I'll add it when I find it.

Pre-petticoat of any kind


With red mega-petticoat: what you can't see is how crinoline, bell-shaped, stiff it looks and how crunchy it sounds. You can make out the tulle rows from under the thin cotton fabric easily.


With blue petticoat-lite: much better, though I may add one or two more layers of the thicker tulle. Do you see how scandalously sheer that tulle skirt is? Wow!

An artistic shot

2 comments:

drwende said...

Ooh, you're giving me the petticoat urge!

Of course, my goal would be to achieve skirts with a diameter the same as my height (in the approved Southern Belle manner), making it impossible to get through doorways.

*scuttles off to see if Macy's stocks crinolines*

Anonymous said...

I've been getting into European designs, particularly lagenlook dresses and skirts. Many require petticoats--have you seen the price of European petticoats? And the shipping costs are atrocious. So I'm going to buy the McCall's pattern and make my own. Thank you for your inspiration!