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Quilted Circle Skirt + the History of Quilted Clothing

I have been saving an old quilt for years now. The plan has always been to make some sort of garment out of it, but I could not settle on which era I wanted to use it for until recently.



Originally, the idea was to make an 18th century petticoat. There are tons of beautiful examples of these, and they were quite common in most decades of the 1700's. These petticoats would usually be worn over a bum pad (a garment tied at the waist and filled with cork, feathers, or cloth scraps to give that unique shape of the era) and tied so that there was a slit at either hip to give access to a pocket underneath. They were originally worn for warmth, and usually by middle to lower class women, but once skirts started to split so that you can see the petticoat underneath, it became more decorative. Upper class ladies would wear silk or satin ones with beautiful, decorative stitching, while lower class ladies would wear wool, cotton, or linen ones. There is a fabulous, in depth post about quilted petticoats in this era in the blog All Things Georgian.




When I started getting interested in the early 1800's, specifically the 1820's-40's, I thought that I would make a petticoat for that era instead. Before crinolines came into fashion (crinolines are the boned cages that make the gorgeous bell skirts for the 1850's and upwards, such as the costumes in the newest Little Women), women layered many petticoats to get a full skirt. To avoid having to use too many petticoats (since they can get very heavy), they turned to corded and quilted petticoats to get a nice shape. This garment was worn in many places, and there was a producer of such petticoats in Clinton, Massachusetts in the early to mid 1800's. They later focused more on making crinoline cages when they became popular (briefly mentioned in the book History of the Origin of the Town of Clinton, Massachusetts, 1653-1865 by Andrew Elmer Ford).


Later on in the 19th century they kept using quilted petticoats, but they did not have the decorative quilting as often. The quilting was fabulous for clothing in many earlier centuries since it gave a beautiful shape while keeping the wearer very warm. The more it got used, the more decorative patterns and stitches were used.



Quilted clothing through history is fascinating, especially since so many cultures used it! For example, a padded garment was worn underneath Roman armor (and pretty much any other culture that wore armor), and it was usually made of quilted cotton, felt, or silk (spoken about on page 114 of A Military History of the Mediterranean Sea, edit by Georgios Theotokis Aysel Yildiz). The garment would also hang down past the armor to protect the wearers legs. Noblewomen in the 1700's also wore quilted skirts in winter instead of the traditional layers of skirts to keep warm. However, the shape of their quilted petticoats in this era were not the same shape as many other countries (the wide at the hip but flat in the front and back) since it was not sensible in the cold (more information about this in Women in Russian History: From the 10th to the 20th Century by Natalia Pushkareva and Eve Levin in the 'Fashion and Tradition' section). There are also examples of quilted clothing from India (a hunting coat shown at the Victoria and Albert is here) and other warmer countries for protection rather than warmth.



However, once we get into the 20th century, it is far less common until the 1950's. The mid 20th century (1937, to be exact) is when Charles James (my favourite designer) created the puffy jacket! His was a sculptural, elegant coat, but the idea has stayed in fashion nearly ever since. Puffy jackets are the most common place for us to see quilting in clothing now, but a few brands have made quilted dresses or skirts in the past few years. Glamour wrote an article about quilting on the runway in an article from 2014 here, which shows some examples from Dior and Miu Miu.



The puffer coat is not the only place that they used it in the 1950's though--there is also a ton of examples of circle skirts (like this one here). After seeing a few that I loved from vintage sellers on Instagram, I decided to bite the bullet and actually cut into the quilt I had saved. I took a very basic circle skirt pattern with 4 pieces, then made a waistband from the scalloped edge on the quilt so that I didn't need to do anything to finish the edge of it. The skirt has a center back zip, and I used bias binding to finish the hem. The whole project was really quick, and I love how it looks! Making a circle skirt from a quilt is perfect, since it doesn't need any gathering or pleating at the waist, plus it has enough fullness to really show off the quilt.


It turns out that cats like quilted skirts too

Do you have any quilted garments that aren't a coat? Would you ever wear one?


Thanks for reading!


~Katherine



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