This is the romantic image of undergarment that comes to mind for me when I think of the 1920s: loose, flowing, gauze and lace with sheer, delicate cutouts and soft pastels - all of these things are what make the perfect chemise. The circular flounce chemise adds even more fluidity and femininity to the shape and drape of the standard chemise.

Among the most frustrating things about constructing these 1920s undergarments over the past year has been the inability to match the fabrics and findings that are in my mind with what is actually available in today’s market place. I imagine that there once existed vast selections of beautiful, delicate laces and soft silks of chiffon and charmeuse specifically meant for undergarments. Yes, anything you can dream of can be found on the internet, but internet ordering can be a lot of trial and error. For undergarments, the “feel” of a thing can make or break the finished product. Many of today’s laces and fabrics just seem so disappointing in comparison to the laces and fabrics of days gone by. The laces in the chain stores are stiff and scratchy polyesters in very limited designs, and unless you have the rare speciality fabric shop in your town, so are the fabrics. And while I am able to find some 100% silk fabrics in speciality fabric shops once in a while, they are usually of a heavier shirt or suit weight than would be suitable for undergarments.

I know. I’m preaching to the choir here. Complaints about access to quality fabrics and trimmings are nothing new. I just really regret the direction our fashion world has taken away from pride in quality toward shoddy quantity. I’m about ready to start making my own underwear for real. The most recent pair I purchased (admittedly in a hurry) were so cheaply made, it makes me sad to wear them. As a busy mom and business woman I can’t afford to be wearing underwear that drags me down!

I suppose that women of the 20s felt the same way p,aging through their Montgomery Ward catalog, and trying to decide which piece of lace and which type of fabric was going to be just the right thing for their delicate projects. These are some scans from my 1932 Montgomery Ward:

So forgive my rant on the unchangeable world for fabric and lace sourcing, but I really find this to be a roadblock when I sit down to try and create a beautiful undergarment. What I desire to create and the contrast with what I can realistically and cost effectively create from local sources, is very disappointing. I long to spend an entire day digging through mountains of beautiful laces and fabrics searching for just the right pieces to create the perfect ensemble, but alas, it cannot be.

But here is my other problem, and I am sure I’m not alone in this, even when I do have the perfect fabric and trim I freeze! I become afraid of using it for the wrong garment or wasting it on a project unworthy. I become miserly and basically turn into a fabric hoarder, even of fabrics as unworthy of hoarding as cheap muslins and scraps of satin. And that’s how the stash begins, isn’t it ladies?

They say the first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem...

FINE! I’m saying it here and now; I have a fabric hoarding problem. And you all have heard me say it so now you are on the hook to hold me accountable ;-). Besides, I am going to be forced to drastically reduce my stash - whether I want to or not - over the next month or so, as I close my store front shop. I think that the hardest part about closing my business is losing the justification for keeping my fabric collection. Bits and pieces were always saved under the guise of “I might need this for a customer”. Hahaha! Right!

So that leads us up to picking out the fabric for making the 'Chemise with Circular Flounces'.

This summer I was cruising the aisles of the local thrift store and I came across some vintage sheet sets. I am guessing from my familiarity with the patterns they are from the late 70s or early 80s. Yes, the sheet patterns I grew up with as a child are now “vintage”. Or I will go with the theory that Mom never bought sheets and they were inherited from her childhood... (Yeah; I prefer old, old sheets to being old myself!) As I was admiring the vintage prints, it occurred to me that the sheeting fabric would be excellent for making mock ups, or making actual vintage undergarments from some of the patterns I have left to work up. So into the stash they went.

I thought this soft pastel floral fitted just right with the feel of the Circular Flounces.

We start the Circular Flounce Chemise with the basic Step-In Chemise Pattern we made back in September. As in past articles, if you want to follow along in Ms. Conover’s text, you can do that here.

“To copy the style shown in Figure 72, lay the plain chemise on another piece of paper and mark around the edges. As in the case of the step-in chemise, use these traced outlines for diagrams.”

If you have worked through the other undergarments in this series, Figures 73 & 74 should be very familiar to you. As you can see this pattern simply builds upon the previous patterns. The primary alteration here is re-drafting the leg opening to be fit with the circular flounces. If you need a refresher on the Step-In Chemise you can see that article here.

I outlined the simple step in chemise as described in Ms. Conover’s directions and worked out the specifics as best I could from the meager directions provided. This pattern has very few directions compared to the others Ms. Conover has covered.

“Decide how deep you want the flounces at the side seams and mark point C. From point C curve lines from the lower front and back edges, lines AC.

Between the legs the ruffle need be only about half as deep as the underarm seam. Make the line AE about half the depth of CD. Slant it to form the crotch. Draw the lower edge of the ruffle from E to D.”

Yes, I am using yucky, stained scrap fabric to build these pattern pieces. There is nothing I hate more than spending money on nice, new fabric that is going to get tossed out once the pattern is made anyway. And I never feel bad if I make a mistake on fabric like this, which is exactly what I did. It was at this point that I realized I must have added more width to my original Step-In Chemise pattern and never made those changes permanent on my block.

Once I figured out how much to add back in, I moved on to making the circular flounces. This involves some tracing, slashing, and spreading.

Image 104 (below) shows the front and back leg wedges cut out from the pattern. You can see where I added in more width and you can also see that my pieces didn’t match up. At the time I was working on the pattern, I wasn’t sure why they didn’t match but I can see now, looking back at the pictures, that I cut the center front piece longer than the center back piece. I just moved ahead anyway and trued up the front and back flounce pieces, as you can see in the picture.

“Put another piece of paper under the diagrams and trace off the ruffle patterns. If these ruffle patterns were used the ruffle would be very narrow at the bottom. You will need to spread it and put in fullness.

Draw lines across the ruffle patterns as shown in Fig. 75. Cut the pattern along these lines and spread the pieces at the bottom as shown in Fig. 76. Re-slope the lower edge to give it a smooth curve. Allow seams in cutting the new pattern. Trace the upper portions from the diagrams, Fig. 73 and 74."

You can see my new flounce piece with the slash breaks marked out and then the new shape with the slashes incorporated. I think I would go for even more flounce next time.

From this point it is time to move on to cutting the fashion fabric.

Now I am going to include the exact directions Ms. Conover gives for construction and maybe one of you lovely readers will be able to make better sense of them than I have. I cannot for the life of me figure out how the crotch is supposed to come together.

“Close the underleg seams in the two ruffles. French seams will serve best here. Also close the underarm seams giving them the French seam finish.

Then join the ruffles to the lower edge. Lay the ruffle on the chemise with the right side of the ruffle next to the right side of the chemise and the upper edge of the ruffle even with the lower edge of the chemise. Stitch along the lower edge. Turn the ruffle into its finished position and from the right side of the garment stitch along the joining again.

Hem the lower edge of the ruffles and finish the top edge of the chemise with a hem, as described in making the step in chemise."

That is it for directions. The first part was pretty straight forward about sewing the side seams. I went ahead and finished the top casing edge of the chemise. I then made two small button holes on the inside, top edge of the chemise for my ribbon to feed through.

I next attempted to sew on the flounces. I thought maybe the constructions steps would make themselves clear if I just started moving forward. Basically my big unknown is whether or not this chemise is supposed to have an open or closed crotch - and either way, there are no clear instructions on how the front and back panels get integrated into the crotch seam with the flounces.

I tried sewing the legs seams closed and attaching them to the chemise, and this is what I got.

When I tried it on, all of the fabric pulled down into the crotch in a very unbecoming way. I also discovered that somehow I had shorted the body length of the chemise by quite a bit, which was adding considerably to the pulling.

I was not happy at all with the legs, so I unpicked them. You can see how much better everything lays with the legs/crotch undone.

While I tried to figure out what to do with the crotch situation, I went ahead and corrected for my shortened body length. This would have been a fun cut out if I had matching lace but I didn’t, so I made do with what I had on hand that matched. I basically cut off the top edge of the chemise and added in a section of fabric in the amount I needed. I also found some lace to add to the top edge and straps.

After spending some time mulling over what to do with the crotch seam I decided to make a closed crotch with a seam just like you would see in a pair of regular pants. You can see in the next picture that my flounce edges were longer than my bodice pieces. Rather than lose flounce by trimming it off, I opted to push the extra up into the body. In effect, this caused my flounce curve to move higher up my hip - which was perfectly fine. Once those edges were even, I stitched up one leg, across the crotch and down the other leg.

And here is the finished result - again, much looser and baggier than I am accustomed to. Wearing it like this makes me feel like I am wearing a tent.

But with a corset on... so much better! I know this corset isn’t correct for the time period, but it was on hand and it matched. The closed crotch would be an issue if you really did want to wear this with a corset, but it would be simple enough to add snaps to the crotch/leg seam.

As usual, I had a blast working through Ms. Conover’s instructions. This project was a little more frustrating than the others, with its lack of directions, but I still learned a lot and I mostly had fun doing it. I was able to actually commit to using up some of my precious stash fabric and lace, and I am looking forward to tackling this particular project again at some point.

If any of you have taken the plunge and made your own version of 1920s undergarments, then I would love to see pictures of your finished projects! I will start a thread in the forum to post there.

 

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