victorian peignoir

Peignoir, 2022


A dream event: Weekend house party in a beautiful 19th century manor house hotel. But what to wear for breakfast? By this point I had a quite decent wardrobe for Natural Form era, but I lacked comfy loungewear because, obviously, you seldom need such in most costuming events. So, this was the perfect opportunity to make some.


victorian peignoir

I had even before this daydreamed about flimsy white morning dresses with a lot of lace insertions and ruffles, but unfortunately those were totally unrealistic for the schedule. As my petticoat was nothing fancy but decent enough and not too worn out I decided that a short peignoir on top of it would be adequate.




The Material

For once I was lucky, just when I should really be starting the peignoir I found a cute broderie anglaise blouse from a thrift store. It was a bit large for me, but might work for dress material. I had a lot of cotton batiste at home and I began to think combining them for the peignoir. I even had another previous thrifted treasure in stash, a bolt of broderie anglaise lace which resembled the pattern in the blouse fabric and the lace in my petticoat. I would certainly get something adequate out of these.





Choosing the style

From my overflowing Pinterest board I picked a few original pieces that caught my fancy. I wasn’t too particular about the dating, I just wanted something roughly suitable. A couple of examples had a front panel made with lace insertions in bias, and as the blouse was also cut in bias and the embroidery pattern had stripes I thought I might use it to make a sort of cheap imitation of this style.


19th century peignoir

Another peignoir had a back panel similarly decorated with pleats, so I thought I could plausibly put an embroidered panel also in the back.


19th century peignoir

I liked the idea, so I began to plan the peignoir around it. First I took the blouse to pieces to see what I could cut from it.


victorian peignoir

Drafting the pattern

The pattern is somewhat based on the basic shape of the peignoir on “Fashions of the Gilded Age”-book. The front edge is straight and the front pieces don’t have any darts. The back has some shaping, though. Interestingly, the sleeve is in two pieces even in a loose-fitting garment such as this.


victorian peignoir

My striped cotton summer dress was a bit loose fitting so I started out with the same pattern. The back is more or less the same (without the wide back pleat for skirt width of course). On the front I left out the pleats at the front and the waist darts. Both are slightly flared at the hem. I widened the sleeve a bit and drafted the armhole larger. Then I estimated the line for front and back panels. Both have straight edge, as I thought it would be easier to join on the batiste piece.




I cut the front panel from the blouse front, leaving the buttoning placket in place. The back panels came from the sleeves. The rest of the pieces were in batiste.




Sewing

Like in my other underwear, I assembled the peignoir mainly with flat felled seams and the like. I joined the broderie anglaise panels on the batiste by hiding the seam allowances in a pleat and adding another pleat next to it to complete the look.




The center back seam allowances in broderie anglaise pieces are covered on the wrong side with bias tape. By the way, the bias material stretched so much that I had to take in a bit more at the waist to get it to match the pattern.




On the front edges I removed the buttons and removed the stitching that secured the edge of the buttoning placket. This way I managed to squeeze the edge of a gathered lace underneath it before stitching it back on and sewing the buttons back.






I took apart the top and underside of the collar, shortened it a bit and added gathered lace on the edges. Then I sewed it back on and added the underside layer. Yes, it might have been even easier to make a new one, but the original collar was cut with the woven stripe which I wanted to keep.


victorian peignoir

I had made the pattern to the length I would get out of the blouse pieces, so it still needed some more length at the hem. The obvious solution was a wide ruffle. I cut it from the batiste, edged it with lace and added a couple of narrow pleats.




I cut the back of the original blouse into strips by the stripe, and they were just long enough when joined at the side seams to go around the peignoir hem. I used them as a fake lace insertion again to join the ruffle into the bodice hem. To adapt it to the flared hem I gathered the top edge slightly.


victorian
          peignoir

I finished the sleeves with a similar insertion and ruffle. The delightfully impractical flared sleeves actually became one of my favorite details in the peignoir.




At this point I had almost used up all the lace, but I still managed to get tiny pockets out of it and the remaining pieces of broderie anglaise.




For the last thing I added thread loops on the neckline and sleeves for attaching ribbon bows so that they could be easily removed for washing.


victorian peignoir

Conclusion

I did not plan the construction super thoroughly before starting, and made some decisions while I went. On the afterthought the lace in the front edges looks too tightly gathered, I should probably rather have pleated it. If I had used less there I might have had more left for decently sized pockets.

Another minor quibble is that the batiste looks slightly too heavy compared to the flimsy broderie anglaise. But then again, I didn’t want to go shopping for this one, and the same batiste has proved easy to work with and reliable in many previous undergarment projects. It’s not fun to make smallish flat felled seams on all fabrics.


victorian peignoir

But on the whole the peignoir turned out quite pretty, and I think the fake-lace inserts give a nice look. While the petticoat is quite heavy, I think the peignoir manages to strike a nice balance between delicate and practical. It was one of those fun, quick projects that are sometimes refreshing between ambitious long-time ones.