Dressing Girls Sew-Along: Petticoats, or Making A Mend

In the Petticoat Evaluation post, I discovered a petticoat I’d made for our oldest years ago that just needed a bit of repair and button movement to make it suited for our youngest this season. Said youngest has actually been using the petticoat for generalized dress-up for about a year, and there is visible damage from her tenure. I’ll definitely need to “make a-mends” to get this petticoat into shape!

Mending is a grand use of my time. With just a single 20-minute sewing session, I’ll restore an entire petticoat to hardy use, saving myself a few hours and several yards of cloth to make a full new one.

Mending is also a very common mid-century practice, and to get a great fix, I can use two different options.

I could darn the ripped area, using stitches to draw the edges back together and make a new, small-scale weave to strengthen the area. When done well, this is very nearly invisible, and quite strong.

However, my youngest is a very active girl, and I anticipate a lot of rough wear on her petticoats! Another period mending choice is to patch under the area. This will give me a fresh piece of fabric stabilizing the ripped area, and the whole thing will take heavy laundering without a hitch.

This is the rip; it’s on-grain, vertically (I have no idea how she managed this, but a tree and climbing were likely involved). There is a second small rip not far from it.

You can see that the edges are a little shredded from being laundered a few times before mending, but not too badly. I’ll definitely want to “make a-mends” before any further laundering, or this rip will grow!

I don’t need to match the fabric exactly; I can get into my scraps for a 3×2″ piece of basic white cotton. This is a very utilitarian item, and since our interpretive needs are working class and western emigration, a tiny bit of visibility can actually be a great interpretive point for us!

With a bit of steam and a hot iron, I pressed each edge of the patch to the wrong side.

Using pair of small, sharp scissors, I cleaned up the edges of the rip, and pressed those to the wrong side very gently. (The picture was taken just before I clipped out those long threads in the middle of the rip.)

Laying the patch on the inside of the petticoat, a quick felling stitch attached the pressed outer edges to the body of the petticoat.

You can see the short stitch perpendicular to the edge of the patch in the photo to the left.

The needle and thread move diagonally up to the next stitching position, so on the inside of the patch, there are short perpendicular stitches over the patch edge, and on the outside of the petticoat, there are tiny diagonal stitches outlining the patch position.

Another round of felling secured the tucked-under edges of the rip to the underlying patch. I used the point of the needle to “sweep” the raw edge under just a bit, which turns a long, gapped slit into a slender oblong with finished edges.

All done!

Now the petticoat is ready for a nice long soak to remove old stains, and a good line-dry (with the help of friendly hens, of course!)

A good starch and press, and re-positioning the button to sit more securely at her waist, and this petticoat is ready for action for one more year!