#redingote

Redingote, around 1815

Redingote, 1786-89 by unknown designer

This outfit is made of silk, decorated with embroidery. Redingotes are a women's wear adaption of men's riding coats.

Redingote c. 1815-1825 in piqué de coton (Paris Musées).

Description and machine translation:

Redingote longue et croisée en piqué de coton blanc, col droit rabattu, 2 poches à revers boutonnés derrière et une poche intérieure gauche, fermé par 12 boutons, 2 petits boutons aux manches.

Long, double-breasted frock coat in white cotton piqué, straight turn-down collar, 2 buttoned cuffed pockets behind and one left inside pocket, closed with 12 buttons, 2 small buttons on the sleeves.

Did a lil photoshoot in my fall/winter Regency wardrobe 🥰 reading Sense and Sensibility bc happy 250th bday Jane Austen 📚

Redingote, 1815-20

La Mode nationale, no. 52, 26 décembre 1896, Paris. No. 19. — Redingote pour voyage ou courses.

It's been such a fun project working on the Lioncourt Gown (aka Interview with the Vampire's Lestat de Lioncourt's theater costume -

made into a 1790s women's redingote) and I can finally say that I have finished it. It's done, and I love it. It didn't turn out exactly how I'd planned, but that's how it is with me and sewing. I admire anyone who can just stick to their original plan haha but that person is not me. Usually, when sewing I don't think too far ahead, I just do it until I hit a point where something just isn't working out and have to find a way around it. I'm also self-taught, so my workarounds may not be standard procedures when you actually know what you're doing. But I'm still really, really happy with it, and I did a little photo shoot as soon as it was done.

But anyways, here's the final part of this project.

In my last post, we left off with the still detached but finished collar/yoke and the finished bodice. I attached the yoke to the bodice, and then went on to make the final piece - the outer skirt.

For that, I essentially did the same thing I did with the bodice and the sleeves. I attached the colored satin triangles and stitched them down with the tape. Here is a picture just before I attached the tape:

This process is very time consuming and I had severely underestimated it. I did end up finishing it in a day, but it was the only thing I did that day. You have to stitch super close to the edge or the satin is going to fray and stick out and it's not a pretty look. It did end up happening in a few places, so I had to take the stitches out and redo them. But when that was done, I added red tape to the raw edges of the fabric and finished the skirt.

Then finally, it was time to attach the skirt to the bodice. For that, I gathered it with a quick basting stitch to bring it to the needed width and then had to hand stitch it in place, making sure I was attaching it only to the lining layer so the stitches wouldn't be visible from the right side.

Once that was done, it was time for the first complete try on! For one, I was really excited to see it as a basically completed project, but more importantly, I needed to know where to put the buttons. So I put on all my layers for this (shift, stays, bumroll, two petticoats, the skirt, and the bodice with the outer skirt), and realized... it was a bit smaller than anticipated. It fit, but I'd planned to make it double-breasted and the front panels didn't overlap quite enough to make two button rows possible while keeping them centered. So I ended up deciding in that moment I was only going to do one row of buttons. The original only has one row, so it was fine either way. But while on the topic of buttons, another thing: I'd mentioned in a previous post that I wasn't sure whether to add buttonholes or to fake the closure with hooks and eyes, and I decided to do neither. I was way too scared of the satin fraying if I did button holes and the whole hook and eye system is pretty annoying to do, and since I'm only really gonna wear it once or twice a year I decided to just use some red pins to pin myself into the dress for the day. This protects the satin from fraying and is less work for me. It doesn't look super professional though and while historically accurate for some dresses in the 18th century (some even used to sew themselves, or have someone sew them into their dresses), it was not used on redingotes (as far as I'm aware) for practicality reasons. Redingotes are essentially riding coats and were used primarily outdoors, so buttons was the most common way to close up these types of garments. Still, I did not want to risk ruining the fabric, so I decided to do it this way.

So once I'd figured out where to place the buttons, I sewed them into place. On a side note, I do love the way they look. They're so pretty.

I added four in the front, two on each sleeve and four in the back.

So this is it. It's done.

This was, mostly due to the color details, the most time time-consuming and frankly expensive project I've ever worked on (well, maybe except for my very first dress as I still didn't know what I was doing back then - that one took me literal months hah). But it was so worth it. It's been in my bedroom for a few days now and I smile every time I see it. I still can't believe it's in my possession.