Victorian Era Undergarments: The Drawers Sewing (Stage 1)

Project 7, part 8 – Patterns Are Weird (Part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6, part 7 here)

Welcome back to the Victorian Era Undergarments project! I did a bunch of photography for another project, and had my ISO set completely wrong and everything turned out absurdly blurry…so I have to retake it all. SIGH! Shoutout to my buddy over at All Games New and Old who also recently had to do a reshoot – it’s so frustrating! Luckily I always have a couple things in the works, so I changed gears and was able to get all of the pieces for the drawers cut out in time for this week’s post. 🙂

Patterns are weird. I’ve been sewing for years, and at this stage I always sincerely question whether everything is really going to go together in a way that A: works, and B: fits me. It all looks so HUGE! Did I really pick the right size? Was this made for giants? We will see in the future…but for now I just have to trust the process and get everything cut out and prepped.

I prefer to make use of the offcuts from previous pattern-cutting sessions whenever possible, both to use as many bits of my expensive fabric as possible, and to save the big cuts for when I really need them. Sometimes though, there’s no getting around the fact that a piece is just too small for the pattern chunk I need to cut. (Yes I know the fold is on the wrong side in the image, haha! I couldn’t cut this piece here anyway, since it’s a solid couple centimeters too short.)

It’s only tangentially related (since we’re talking about underthings, more or less), but if you haven’t seen Bernadette Banner’s recent video where she makes an OnlyFans to show off saucy Victorian ankle pics, you really need to. She debunks a few myths as well, and it’s truly hysterical! I love that there are other folks in the historical sewing community with a sense of humor; I’d hate to be the only one. 😀

I’m much more likely to work on a project when all the bits are prepped in advance, so I made sure to get every piece cut (2-4 of each, depending on where it’s going), and pinned to its “parent” paper pattern piece so I’ll be able to find what I’m looking for later! The next step will be to get to sewing, so join me next time here on Mukashi no Sewing to find out if I picked the right size! ❤