This post is waaaay over due. This hoop skirt, or crinoline as they are sometimes known, is from the Truly Victorian pattern TV141 – 1858 Round Cage Crinoline. My friend Jill and I made them together last December for the Dickens Fair. We pretty much made it exactly per the pattern so there’s not a whole lot to talk about but I took a bunch of pictures during the construction so here you go.
Piles of boning and fabric. I usually get my corset making / boning supplies from corsetmaking.com. They sell lots of good costume making stuff in general. I also like GoldStarTool and plan to get a grommet press from there eventually.
First step was cutting out the patterns for the kick bag which is a fabric covering for the bottom three hoops that prevents you from accidentally stepping through the hoops and getting caught. I cut those out while Jill cut and marked the grosgrain ribbon at the appropriate places.
Those both took a while so I ended up sewing the grosgrain later although I think we did get the kick bags done together.
After the kick bags were done it was time to start adding the boning. Those bottom bones are really quite long. Had to use the real measuring tape for those.
We forgot to order hoop clips so I used packaging tape to connect the hoop boning together into circles . . . next time I’ll definitely use hoop clips as I can hear it crinkle. It’s not too bad, but I’d prefer the cleaner finish. I’m sure this won’t be my last hoop skirt 🙂
Finally, I finished up the top of the kick bag.
This was one of the only places I varied from the pattern in that I put the grosgrain strips into the seam of the kick bag before sewing it up rather than after. It gave a cleaner finish. Thanks to Jill for that tip since she hit that spot before me 🙂
Next up was putting the boning through the casing. We used ready made casing. I’ve seen other people sew together two layers of grosgrain ribbon. If I were going for a particular look, I might do that, but in this case, the ready made casing was great and much faster!
The top two rows have an open area so I had to finish off the ends of the casing with some hand stitching.
The rest of the rows connect so I just sewed those together (after putting the boning together with tape).
A little in progress show before I added the top two rows.
Finally, I used some 1” wide twill tape for my waist band. I need to get something a little better though. Maybe some webbing since the twill tape kinda rolls up and digs in. I’m sure if I had been wearing a corset it wouldn’t have been a problem, but I wasn’t. Either way, I want something smoother.
So that’s my hoop skirt! It’s got a great shape. I’ve seen a few made with different colors and I’d love to make a more colorful one or at least a darker one for under dark skirts, not that you can really see it once there’s a petticoat over it.
