Auris Lothol

Hello lovelies,

I wanted to make a nice cap after the Regency dress I finished but it was so hard to find surviving extants and pictures in general. I dove into museums and libraries that shared their collection for free online. And for future references, I will post them here because they are brilliant.

Gallery of Fashion

Published 1794-1802, probably London. 64 pages full of fashion plates.

National Portrait gallery

This was a rare find, it has fashion plates, portraits, etc. I searched for regency morning dress and I found a lot of fashion plates. Click here to my specific search.

Show me

Another British source:Games, collections, videos, stories, homework help and family days out from museums and galleries. I found a few regency fashion plates, for example this one here.

Regency fashion

More fashion plates from the magazine "The gallery of fashion" (1794-1803)

Candice Hern

is an author of Regency romance books and her site contains a lot of information on clothing during that era.

Regrom

another site dedicated to the Regency era. I found some interesting articles about caps and clothings.

Mimi Matthews

this site would not be complete without this author. She is another author of Regency romance novels and her site is also dedicated to everything Regency. I found this article about Regency caps that was very interesting. Read more.

Cap sewing

on there is a whole load on information on how to sew an 18th century cap. I include this on the list because most of these forms were also used during the Regency era.

In the end I found a cap I especially liked from the Riksmuseum, located in the Netherlands. follow the link here to go there.

small portraits of women wearing regency caps

It was published in the magazine "Magazine of Female Fashions of London and Paris, No.31.2, London Head Dresses" around 1800. This cap especially caught my eye:

I liked how the hair was not completely hidden underneath the cap and there was a kind of veil over the eyes.I immediately set to work and made about 5 different mock-ups before I found the pattern I liked.

Normally I only do one mock up and it fits, at least for modern or lolita clothing. But for historical clothing I always find myself doing mock-up after mock-up because it is not quite right. It stresses me because I have the feeling that I just can't do it properly. I remember also doing about 5 mock-ups of my Edwardian corset before it finally fit. But it cost me a lot of time and nerves.

I bought a very fine cotton fabric at my favourite fabric store for the base. I still had see-through but stiff silk for the veil. I made the mock up with cotton and tulle, but felt the tulle didn't look good enough.

This is the pattern I ended up with. It looks like half a croissant and only looking at it makes me kind of hungry.

brown paper pattern on white cotton fabric

After cutting it, I already measured it with seam allowance, the piece looked like that.

At the bottom I measured out dots every 0,5cm and then gathered it to 7cm.

Afterwards I did the same at the top, and gathered it to 8cm. And it went from a nice croissant to something that looks more like a cap. But see how the shape of the fabric changes completly with just one line of pulled thread? I love it!

From the same fabric I cut out two strips of about 4cmx74cm and ironed them to make something like a bias tape. On the original picture the band that goes around the cap is a bit wider, I guess I could have also made a 2cm bias strip instead of a 1cm.

two strips of white cotton fabric on a brown table

The strips were then pinned around the edges of the cap, sandwiching the fabric. I left the bands on the sides longer because I wanted to close it at the back of my head with that.

I went over the whole cap with a running stitch and removed the pins. Usually I like to stick in the pins and be done with it, but I was working with real silk fabric in the next step and I did not want scratch or tear it.

I tried to use as little of the fabric as possible because it was so expensive. And I am very happy, that everything with the fabric worked out so well because I did not have to redo it. Hooray.

Below is how the pattern really looks like. I ironed it on a very low heat and did not ruin it. Plus it kind of removed the wrinkles. Horray.

While the top is a picture of how it looked like right after I cut it out, below is how it looke like after I ironed and hemmed it.

The next thing I did, was of course, pinning and then sewing both parts together. The project, so far, was very nice and easy, except for the 5 annoying mock-ups. At least everything else worked out.

But I was not done yet, I added ribbons made out of lace, I have no idea if this was actually work like this? No idea and I didn't find anything else that looked like that, so please leave a comment!

And here is the finished look.

A video will be completed and uploaded soon. I will post it on the blog as soon as it's done. But if you are a patreon member, you will see the video 48h before anyone else. So if this interests you, you can support me there: Patreon

All the best,

Auris Lothol