18th century quilted petticoat

This blogpost is more reflective than anything else on my experience of creating a ‘coarse stuff’ quilted petticoat for the Betty Burke Project I did in 2023. It also will discuss some of the extant quilted petticoats I saw in Newcastle in January 2023, and why I ended up using a quilted petticoat at the V&A in London, VAM T.264A-1966 T, as the inspiration for the quilting pattern.

Background

The Kingsburgh Manuscript

In 1802, Anne McAllister who was the sister of Flora’s husband, Allan Macdonald, dictated her memoir of when Prince Charles Edward Stuart visited the Isle of Skye.  This was clearly written for her children, as there are frequent references to ‘your mother’ and so on.  This manuscript is in the private possession of her descendants at Glenbarr Abbey in Argyll.  I have been told by the Clan MacAllister historian that Lady MacAllister is of advanced years and in poor health, but I do hope to be able to see the original manuscript at some point. 

Thankfully the manuscript was seen by Rev. A MacDonald in 1930 and published in his Memorials of the ’45 as an appendix.  Pages xxiv – xxv give us an excellent description of Prince Charles Edward’s Betty Burke dress, from someone who clearly knew how to make clothing. I think it is important to include Anne MacAllister’s own description here:

Your mother brought the Prince a suit of your father’s cloths, the first she brought him He thought too fine as they had plated buttons, the next she brought him pleased him much and answered him as well as if they had been made for himself […]. A short time before he left the house your mother came in to put on his dress as it was proper he should leave the house in the same dress he brought to the house, after putting on his gown and head dress, Madam you have forgot my apron, he says, smiling.  The Prince dress was a printed goun, a coarse stuff petticoat and an old Camlet cloak, a linen apron, a musline cap - and a ribbon, and a coarse napkin & cotton gloves – your grandmother made a bed cover of the goun, your mother got the gloves, Flora McD got the apron which I myself saw. There was bits of the ribbon and cape sent to different families in the South, your grandfather kept the shoes. (A MacDonald, 1930: xxiv – xxv)

As can be seen from the above quote, not only does this information confirm what has been written elsewhere about various items of the dress, but it also adds incredibly useful other information.  Perhaps the most important piece of information is that the petticoat was not made from silk, as I had originally expected, but was actually made from ‘coarse stuff’.  Coarse in this sense means what we would today call heavier or thicker fabric, and ‘stuff’ is an eighteenth century term for worsted wool fabric. Coarse stuff, which sometimes had a linen warp and worsted weft (known as ‘Linsey-Woolsey’) was predominantly made in Kidderminster, England in the 18th century, but could quite easily have been woven locally in the Outer Hebrides or elsewhere in Scotland. I suspect that the original petticoat, which hasn’t survived, was made from a locally-woven woollen fabric.  This would have been relatively cheap fabric suitable for a servant.  

Inspiration

For this petticoat, I wanted a simple design as it fits in with the narrative of the petticoat belonging to a maid (most extant quilted petticoats in museums today seem to have belonged to those of a higher social status as they are elaborately quilted, with the external fabric tending to be silk). [1] It was commented on by Prince Charles Edward himself that he had not seen any maids in the Highlands wearing silk (which was common elsewhere at this time). Coarse stuff, referred to in quote above from Flora’s sister in law Anne MacAllister, refers to thick woollen fabric (not coarse as we would think of it today; it could well have been rather soft, especially if the petticoat were older and been used a lot).

Figure 1: Quilted petticoat, 1750 - 1780, Maker unknown. Silk taffeta, wool flannel, carded wool, silk grosgrain ribbon (& presumably silk thread). T.264A-1966. Accessed from https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O25539/quilted-petticoat-unknown/ on 6th May 2023.

I am certain that the petticoat could not have been made in the four and a half days available to Flora and Lady Clanranald to make the Betty Burke costume. I think it a lot more likely that they took an existing petticoat, removed the waistband and lengthened it to make it fit the Prince. Why do I think they did this? There are a lot of references about the Prince being tall, and indeed this was especially noticed when he was dressed as Betty Burke. I have not been able to find any data on the average height of Highland women during this period. It was noted by several people that Flora Macdonald was petite, but I have no idea how tall Lady Clanranald, her two daughters or any female servants were. In fact, I’ve not even seen a painting of Lady Clanranald sadly.

However, there are quite a few quilted petticoats in museum collections with their measurements noted, so I compiled a chart. Annoyingly, this wouldn’t cut and paste nicely from Word, so I’ve had to save it as an image. I’ll add links to the images below.

Links for the above table (all accessed between January and May 2023)

VAM VAM 2 VAM 3 VAM 4 VAM 5 VAM 6 CW1 CW2 CW3 CW4 MFA1 MFA2

Based on the above measurements, I decided that my petticoat would have the following measurements:

Hem circumference = 100” / 250cm (2 x 50” / 125cm)

Height centre front = 41” (102.5cm) but initially sewn to 37” (92.5cm)

Quilting Height = 30” (75cm)

After compiling this chart, I decided that my petticoat is going to quilted to a height of 30” / 75cm, but the length overall will be 40” / 100cm, to allow for lengthening without any issues when we are in Benbecula. The waistband would first be applied to make the petticoat length 37” / 92.5 cm to fit in with the average length from my chart above, and would then be lengthened three inches on Benbecula as I think Flora and Lady Clanranald most likely did this to a quilted petticoat from Nunton House to make it the correct length for Prince Charles Edward.

In January 2023, I went to the stores at the Discovery Museum in Newcastle and not only did I see the original hooped petticoat which is in Patterns of Fashion 5 (that I replicated in 2022 for the Flora Macdonald wedding dress project), but I also saw several quilted petticoats. I’ll write about the hooped petticoat seperately. It was absolutely invaluable as I was able to see how they were quilted, how many stitches per inch and so on. All had a silk fashion fabric, most had an inner layer of wool, most were lined with linen or linsey woolsey.

This petticoat didn’t have a woollen batting and was just stitched on to its lining. I seem to remember there is a gown which goes with the petticoat. Photo taken by me on 9th January 2023.

You can see this petticoat has been well worn. Photo taken by me on 9th January 2023.

This was my favourite petticoat. It’s so sad to see light damage to the outer layer of silk, but the inside shows how the pink would have looked originally (I think the salmon pink was probably achieved with madder dye). Photo taken by me on 9th January 2023.

Despite the light damage, this petticoat is still absolutely stunning and it would be possible to take a quilting pattern from it. Photo taken by me on 9th January 2023.

Here’s a quick sketch I did to give myself a plan of what I was aiming for. As you can see, I’m no graphic designer nor artist, but I find it a helpful part of the process to sketch everything I wish to make, and highly recommend it to others.

Process

After doing the compiling the above chart and looking back at measurements I have taken of other quilted petticoats, I drew a quilting pattern.  I then pierced holes in the pattern so I could then transfer the pattern on to the common shalloon.  I did use a modern water erasable fabric marker and not chalk as was most probably used in the 18th century, simply because I did not want to leave a lasting coloured mark on the fabric and I have not quilted a petticoat before. I have quilted quilts before, but quilted them ‘in the ditch’ and did not hand quilt a specific geometric pattern before – so this was very much an experimental process. I quilted with Gutermann Linen thread which I waxed.

End of Day 1 (25th May 2023). On day 2, I poked holes through the pattern where lines cross, and then used my longest quilting ruler to help me join up the lines. You can see the marks in the next photo.

Day Two

The rest of the pattern was transferred, then the three layers were pin basted together.  This sandwich was then stitched to the curtain poles and clamped to the Ikea trestles to form the quilting frame.  I did maybe two hours of quilting, learning how to alter stitch size and feeling my way to finding a comfortable quilting position.  I have adopted an ambidextrous position – my dominant hand (left) is underneath the panel, by non-dominant hand is on top, with my elbow resting on the lower curtain pole. I also had the pleasure of painting some water on top of lines already sewn over to see what the quilting would look like after it is finished.

26th May 2023. First few stitches. I was just figuring out how to quilt with one hand below the frame and one above the frame, so the stitches aren’t perfectly even but they are good enough.

End of Day Two.

Day 3
Eight hours quilting today. Listened to half an audiobook on Audible. Not much crossed my mind, except how useful it would be to wear a pair of stays while quilting as it keeps your back straight and gives you a lot of support. Attached my embroidery magnifying lamp as it allowed me to keep on quilting when it got dark and my eyes got tired. I still find the damage to my eyesight done by Covid extremely annoying, so I ordered myself some cheap reading glasses twice my prescription.

10.30pm on 28th May 2023. It took forever. I ended up getting through several podcasts and audiobooks.

The quilting frame was constructed from two Ikea Mittback trestles , two long wooden curtain poles (from B&Q) which my husband cut down for me and on to which I stapled 3” thick cotton tape, and four clamps. I also used two long stays cords and many, many quilting safety pins. I also ended up tacking the ends to the cotton tape to add a bit more tension than just the safety pins allowed. It took a while, but this worked for me. I hate the red carpet, by the way, but we will replace it eventually when we can afford to. 

Day 5

 I started by finishing off the lines I hadn’t finished last night (which you can see above), and then took the fabric off the roll to measure how much I had done – only 18 inches.  Disappointing.  I decided that the panels don’t need to be 60 inches wide, so I could easily reduce this down a few inches to save a day’s sewing. My chart above shows the average bottom width to be between 105 – 110 inches, not 120. 10 – 15 inches will save two, possibly three, days sewing and the petticoat will still be really quite full underneath the gown.   I have been really quite tired all day today – possibly as it’s a bit warmer than we are used to in Scotland!- so I did most of today’s sewing in the evening.  I feel like I haven’t made anywhere near enough progress today, but at least I have made some and feel like I have accomplished something (and I am trying not to be hard on myself).   Here’s the end of Day Five photo. The pin in the centre marks ten inches from the edge, which is my goal for each day. The stitching at the side isn’t very good at all, but I’ll address that (unpick and resew) once I’ve finished both panels and sewn them together.

End of Day 5. Starting to feel like a bit of progress has been made.

Days 6 -9

Were basically spent quilting. Another audiobook was listened to (thank you, Kerrigan!). Progress was very slow. My daughter and husband joined me for a bit of quilting and we sat at opposite sides of the frame. I had the revelation that this is probably how petticoats were quilted back in the 18th century; two quilters quilting at the same time, 12 hours days, by a big window. They’d be a lot faster than this newbie due to practice, so I think it is quite possible that between them they could quilt a petticoat a week (depending on the complexity).

By day 10, I had completely lost all desire to carry on quilting. 8-9 hour days, doing slow and repetitive stitching - even with podcasts and audio books- is quite literally back-breaking work. After finishing the first panel, I decided to look for a modern alternative for the second side of the petticoat. This side of the petticoat would be hidden by the gown’s skirt, and could be stitched at 7-8 stitches to the inch which would make it an easy to unpick. I googled, and I found Deborah of the Dastardly Line in Glasgow who has a very wonderful machine that could achieve in a few hours what took me 10 days to achieve by hand. Here is more about Deborah’s quilting business, which includes a link to her Etsy shop where she has fun and contemporary digital patterns for long arm quilting machines.

Day 11. This machine is absolutely wonderful!

For various reasons, the petticoat was finished at Nunton House. I never knew until last summer that my husband could sew as I’ve always done the sewing in the house, but he did a fantastic job helping me with binding the bottom of the petticoat with linen tape and putting the petticoat together. Due to having Covid the week before the visit to Nunton, and therefore sewing the project by myself and not with a small team, I didn’t get to do the alteration I had planned where I would make the petticoat fit an average 18th century woman, unpick it and then remake it to fit a thin 5’10” 24 year old, but this is something which can be done at a later date.

I came away from this quilting experience feeling incredibly grateful that I had not chosen a more difficult quilting pattern, even more annoyed that I had Covid for ten days and lost ten days to basically being in bed when I have been so careful over the past few years to keep away from people (we think my daughter brought it home from Edinburgh), but with a real sense of achievement. Why a sense of achievement? I didn’t have the quilting frame that I was hoping for - American hand quilting frames are ridiculously expensive to ship to Brexit Britain, I hadn’t quilted by hand for some years, and because I learned so much in the process. 

Woollen quilted petticoats are so incredibly practical for Uist weather, which I learned last year can be incredibly unpredictable, can change very quickly, can be very different from island to island (Uist is essentially a chain of islands), can be very very very windy, and can be very cold - especially in old, poorly heated buildings. I’ll finish this post with a photo of myself (I hate having my photo taken but ho hum) in the petticoat with the Irish cloak (which will be the subject of another blogpost). The photo was taken on Grimsay, just by the Uist Wool mill, which is the closest I got to Rossinish. More on Rossinish on another blogpost at some point.