Tucker and Engageantes

 For my round gown, I knew I wanted to dress it up a bit. The first thing that jumped to mind was to make simple engageantes and a tucker from fine white cotton. I also decided that I would use velvet ribbon to add a pop of color in the form of trim on a bergere hat. 

I looked at the diagrams in both Costume Close-Up and the American Duchess Guide to 18th Century Dressmaking for the engageantes, and then cut a shape somewhere between the two from a cotton batiste.

Cut and pressed to be hemmed

I hemmed the bottom, and gathered the long edge. This I attached to a cotton twill band, which was measured to fit the circumference of the gown sleeve. 

Finished result!

After attaching the engageantes, I realized that I had gone perhaps too simple. You do see cotton or linen on occasion, but I've not seen a completely unadorned single set before. I did find a beautiful set of linen engageantes on the Larsdatter linkspages, unadorned and simple, but double-layered, and was immediately convinced that this was the way to go. These are clearly a very, very fine linen, and I was using what I had in my stash (cotton), but I felt that I could achieve more or less the same effect.

Credited to the Manchester Art Gallery

I cut the second layer slightly shorter in length, as I was happy with the shape of the original layer. Going bigger would have been a little more dramatic than what I was looking for. The unfortunate part to this was it meant disassembling what I'd already done in order to put both layers on the band. At this point, I broke down and gathered both layers simultaneously on my sewing machine. I don't love that it meant breaking my hand sewing streak, but I don't love gathers. In the end, I ended up with this:

The more finished finished results!

The tucker was even simpler. The American Duchess guide gives measurements for the tucker: 2 yards of lace (I again used cotton batiste) and a piece of tape slightly longer than the circumference of your gown neckline. Simply hem, gather, and stitch to the tape, and voila! A tucker. I didn't take any process photos of this, but there's not much to it. As a note, like the second set of sleeve ruffles, I did the gathers for the tucker on my machine, then hand sewed them to the band. It was a lot of gathering, and I wasn't finding that very fun to do. I enjoy arranging and stitching down the gathers, but actually taking the precise stitches for what felt like miles of fabric was stealing my joy for the project. Sometimes you have to make allowances in order to have fun. 

Finally, I purchased a new fine milan straw hat from Burnley & Trowbridge, and adorned it with a cranberry colored velvet ribbon from my stash. I sewed a band around the crown and the very edge of the brim for a simple pop of color. I had to ease stitch the edge of the ribbon to go around the brim in order to allow it to lay flat, as seen below. I opted against adding additional trimmings, but it will be easy enough to add on in the future if I choose to!