Hustle and bustle

I am rocking my new Steampunk Star Trek outfit, so I was thrilled to see Thimbles and Acorns has made a bustle to go under it.

I laughed when I read her comment when she posted a photo on Facebook yesterday:

Yes, as a foundation garment, this bustle pattern should have been finished before the bustle dress... better late than never. Hoping to have this pattern out later this week as a supplement to the "Unmentionables" pattern.

 
I have loved Shari Fuller's Thimbles and Acorns designs and patterns ever since she started in 2011. I thoroughly approve of her love of history and its fashions.

I also like her description of how the bustle evolved in Victorian fashion in her 1870s Bustle Dress:

Fashion is where expression meets practicality and lures it into the realm of the extreme. Though fashion trends have a tendency to push the limits, practicality always manages to bring them back into balance… at least for a time. Full skirts were the hallmark of the early Victorian era and by the 1860s they had expanded to as wide as six feet in diameter.

However, as railroads began forging paths around the world, women began to travel more and more. Full skirts and crinolines made for poor traveling companions and the boundary for this fashion trend had been reached. Still, it would be a gallant exit.

The 1870s saw a great boom in the textile industry. Hand looms were replaced by more efficient steam driven power looms which resulted in a larger supply of cloth and fancy trims at greatly reduced prices.

The great cage crinolines were shed and the surplus fabric from the full skirts was draped in elaborately decorated layers and pulled toward the back in large bustles that were reminiscent of those worn a century earlier. The fashionable silhouette had become smaller and more mobile, but what was lost in size was more than made up for with the elaborate trimming which would become the hallmark of the later Victorian Era. 

Since Momma is sewing again, maybe I can persuade her to make the bustle with one of the Unmentionables fabrics?

(Yes, it tickles my funny bone to make Unmentionables with Unmentionables.)