Long term sewing project: 18th century Quilted Petticoat, pt. 1

Part 1:  Preparation and Design Planning

I've been sitting on some French blue silk taffeta, linen and wool batting to make a silk quilted petticoat for 2 years and just have not been motivated.  I had bought a feather design quilting stencil and was hoping to use that as the design but I just felt ambivalent about it.  If I'm going to commit that much time to a project, I need to be excited about it or it will never be finished.  This really seems like the best time to get this done.  I may have a reason to have this done come late winter so I have a rough deadline.

My business partner Ruth just had a gorgeous sky blue quilted petticoat made so that started to get me motivated.  Then on a business zoom with one of our presenters, the topic of quilted petticoats came up and I learned of a research article on petticoat designs.  I was intrigued.

The article didn't disappoint.  As it turns out, there are quite a few extant petticoats that have designs of whimsical animals and mythical creatures.  Now you're speaking my language.  Some of these designs were sketched out so I was able to study them in detail and I came up with a design for my own petticoat based on a compilation of designs from a number of extants.  

The border of my petticoat will be based on the Sarah Halsey petticoat in the Connecticut Historical Society Collection.

Here are a few of the actual motifs:

There was a tiny detailed sketch of most of the border for this petticoat.  It wasn't on a graph but rather just a sketch in 3 sections. I put it in photoshop and enlarged it enough to fit on standard paper.  This was an inexact exercise.  I printed out the the sheets of paper and taped them together to get this:

 I needed to add one more section on this border to get it to measure 100 inches to fit my petticoat"

I used a bird motif and drew a small vine to fill in the additional space.

This border is about 8 1/4 inches high.

The petticoat quilting above the border will inspired by this design from a petticoat in the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation Collection:

I have copied some other animal motifs and flowers that I will use in random diamonds on the quilt.

Okay!  Now that the design has been planned, I need to plan the construction.  After studying the construction of the quilted petticoats in Costume Close Up, I decided to simply have 2 side seams and pocket slits like a regular petticoat. I cut two 40-inch panels.  I seamed the first side seam in the lining  and silk.

The next steps are:

• Mark the quilting design on the silk
• lay out the lining, wool batting and silk, matching side seams in the lining and silk
• baste the layers together
• quilt
• finish constructing petticoat

Next step--Marking the design on the silk.