HSF #2: Innovation

Guess I'm back to procrastinating. Huh, who would have thought. On the other hand, I did say I'd sew when I felt confident in passing, so let's say I rewarded myself with a little bit of sewing last weekend. A couple of years ago, when I first started reading up on victorian clothing, I learned that in order to get such prettily bell-shaped skirts, women wore crinolines underneath. Obviously, I had to have one. Since I've always been a bit on the thrifty side, and round cage-crinolines seemed a pretty straight-forward concept, I didn't bother with a pattern. Instead I drew and calculated, and because that was several years ago, I don't have the sketch anymore. Still, I did kind of the same thing The Laced Angel did here, only I spaced all four hoops evenly, because I'm neat like that (and didn't know any better). The math I did went something along the lines of "well, I want to be able to walk through a normal doorway without squeezing, so the bottom hoop can't have more than 80cm diametre, so the circumference would be...(looking up formula in the internet)... 2,5m." and went on from there. I think I only used four hoops because of the price of the hoop-steel, but I'm not sure. Anyway, I ordered hoop-steel online, marked it in neat 10cm sections, marked where I needed to cut only to realize I didn't have any tools to cut it. My brother eventually helped me out with a Dremel. (To my embarrassment I have to admit he meant to show me how to and then let me do it myself, but I was way too afraid to slip and cut off my thumb to do it properly, so he had to do most of the work...)
I cut (tore?) an old bedsheet to strips, folded and pinned and sewed and so on, with the final result looking like this:

Because I didn't know any better, it ended up being way too long, so when I put it on and tried to walk around, I always stepped on the lowest hoop. Also the closure was impractical, and I didn't really like the form - not bell shaped enough. The picture above is what it looked like even after I shortened the uppermost strips by 10cm, so you can imagine how unsatisfied I was with it. So I packed it away and there it was, waiting, biding its time.
I had sometimes thought about taking a rectangle tube of fabric, sewing on channels and thus making a more stable hoopskirt (and eliminating the danger of stepping through the bottom "window"), but until I read the blogpost linked above, I hadn't thought about it seriously. And even after that, the thought of making four 2,5m channels (folding and ironing!) and marking, placing and sewing them onto 2,5m of fabric 4 times (8 if you count having to fix both sides of the channel) always put me off. But then, as you might know, I got the Green Checkered Nightmare. My brother had ordered a bright green checkered cotton to sew curtains for our van out of, and sew I did. (folding and ironing, folding and ironing, occasionally I even pinned!) Not being accustomed to calculating with lengths, widths and whatever of either fabrics or cars, he ordered way too much and generously gave the leftovers to me (which also encourages thoughtful measuring and counting ;) ).
But bright green checks isn't my colour - at all. So what to do with all that free fabric? Why, tear off strips until you have 10m and use the checks as easy guidance for where to place them! Here we go:

I took a rectangle of 2,5x1m as a skirt base and put a channel every 25cm. I didn't bother with pinning of ironing, was a lot more relaxing that way ;)

So I sewed down the channel once, folded over, sewed it down once again, rinse, repeat.

I took the opportunity to use up all those leftover bobbins wound with colours I don't even have the spools of anymore.
















After that I gathered the top and put it into a waistband (couldn't really do that without pinning, though)

Then I only had to feed the steel through...

...and done!

I put together a little comparison:

Much better!

Just the facts:
The Challenge: Innovation

The Innovation: Hoopskirt/Crinoline. As far as I know, hoops were worn by women of all classes, so this very small hoop could even be a working girl's skirt.

Fabric: bright green checkered Cotton

Pattern: Math and this 

Year: between 1856 and 1860

Notions: couple of metres of hoop steel 

How historically accurate is it? I have no idea if there were actual hooped SKIRTS, if there were, cage-crinolines were a lot more common. In any case, I like the silhuette and as that's the important thing about underwear, I'll give it a 50%

Hours to complete: ehm.. 3? 4? 5? something like that

First worn: not yet (as I have absolutely nothing to wear it with

Total cost: Once again, all from stash! yay