Peach Tap Pants: A Miniature Marvel of Making Every once in a while someone offers me some vintage g

Peach Tap Pants: A Miniature Marvel of Making Every once in a while someone offers me some vintage garments. Usually I beg off because I am keenly aware what costume museums need: proper storage in terms of humidity, temperature, and protection from pests. But someone sent me a box some years ago and inside among other bits was this pair of embroidered silk tap pants. And the more I looked at them, the more I marveled. Before knit underwear was common, women wore woven cotton underwear, rayon, and sometimes some lovely silk. These are peach silk crepe de chine. The pattern pieces are cut on the bias, see my black arrow marking the grainline, so that the threads can slip past each other creating elasticity. Which means the machine embroidery edging lies along the bias and yet does not seem to mar or stretch the fabric.  I believe the fabric was bought already embroidered, so nice stuff to begin with. The front and back  are each a single pattern piece, slit at the middle to allow the insertion of the gusset at the crotch. A self-trim strip at the waist stabilizes it, and a narrow button placket closes it at the left side.So, we are looking at careful cutting and piecing which are impressive enough on their own. And then, on closer inspection I realized all the seams are hand stitched and then flat-felled to the garment, i.e. the seam allowances, themselves tiny, were turned under and then sewn down. See the teeny weeny stitches which I photographed next to reading glasses to give you some idea of their size. The inside looks just as neat. Hand stitching means more control when working with a bias seam, but it also means more time, and in this case, a lot of skill to keep these small stitches so neat. This was either made in a shop that sold luxury goods or by a woman who wanted a little luxury for herself. Which I why I pronounce this a marvel. I don’t know who made it, but this was one careful and skilled maker. -- source link
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