Accessories: Partlet Edition

Partlet
Originally uploaded by Catrijn.

I recently finished a simple partlet that I hope to wear with my Kampfrau dress. It's a lightweight coating-style black wool, lined with lightweight white linen because I can be very sensitive to wool around my neck. I'm not really going to talk about the design of it, since I used someone else's pattern rather than doing my own research, but there are a couple finishing details that are worth mentioning.

The first is that the linen ties that are used for the side fastenings extend under the hem all the way around the bottom edge, both front and back. This should reduce the danger of stress on the corners pulling the partlet out of shape, since the tabby tape is quite sturdy and unlikely to stretch.

The second thing is the way that the lining is attached. With a garment like this, you really don't want the lining to shift around or peek out at the sides, which can happen with a simple bag lining. After assembling the outer fabric, I attached the lining pieces one-by-one, directly to the outer fabric. To get them lined up correctly, start by laying the matching pieces out flat, wrong sides together. Pin outwards from the center, allowing the edges to be uneven if matching them would cause the lining to pucker. Once you've pinned to within a couple centimeters of the edge, then you can turn the two raw edges toward each other and pin together, and any slack is taken up by simply allowing it to have a deeper seam allowance. You do this all around the edges, and also possibly at the internal seams, but I choose to leave the seams until both lining pieces were in, and then sew those pieces together while simultaneously catching them down to the seam allowances from the outer fabric. There's a photo of the stitches I used, but I should note that they're just what seemed to work at the time, rather than being especially documentable.

Off-topic: where I've been

We interrupt your regularly scheduled programming for this important announcement:

It's been very quiet here, but there's a good reason for that. Last week, I successfully defended my Ph.D. thesis, completing many years of hard work to earn my degree. My professional field is unrelated to historical clothing, so I'm not going to go into details here, but with that finished, I may have more time to return to my hobbies. I've got a little time off before I start my new job, so I hope to get back in the swing of things soon!