Late 18th century shift, 2012

My new shift is based Garsault's L'art de la lingère as found from the site La Couturière Parisienne. Several years ago I was very lucky to find a few meters of very narrow linen with nice traditional kind of selvages that I've been saving for a project like this. I looked at the Garsault diagram on the bottom of this page, and I thought the fabric would be perfect for the variation C. I wanted to make the shift in a later period (1780's and 1790's) style, so I made narrow elbow length sleeves. The shift is hand sewn with linen thread and constructed with felled seams except for the side gores that I whip stitched together to achieve a nice selvage join. Hem, neckline and sleeves are finished with a plain hem, no drawstrings. The gores are almost invisible, but they are on the right side in the picture.

Cutting the fabric.