Deciphering Victorian Patterns: The 3-in-1 Apron

Hello darlings!

This is a small 'behind the scenes' post following my 'Victorian 3-in-1 Apron' tutorial (available on my Etsy and Patreon). It should have been a straightforward endeavour... however the article I chose to follow was written in such a haphazard manner the act of first deciphering the pattern and subsequently following it took twice as long as it should have done.

Said article was written in 1888 and was included in 'The Housewife' November edition. It's customary in this periodical for the author to sign their name at the bottom; as you can see, the author didn't sign this one, presumably out of SHAME.

I'm probably being too harsh on this poor writer; most of what they've written probably makes sense in historical context. 'Butter cloth' and 'Miss Jewry' are no longer contemporary references, and I'm sure a reader at the time would infer a lot more from the pattern that would have been common knowledge that is simply lost on me. I read a lot of historical patterns and articles, but there are always phrases and techniques that stump me; it's usually a case of different words being used in different parts of England, or names that have evolved over time so the thing I'm familiar with is no longer the thing it's referring to. But continue reading and decide for yourself whose side you're on.

Let's begin with the fabric. The pattern calls for 'checked tea-cloth material which can be obtained from any drapers'. Fair enough; there aren't any more drapers, but I know what a tea-cloth is. It then goes on to say 'in two colours, namely red and blue.'

Does this mean two colours of checks, red and blue? Or does it mean you can either get red checks or blue checks (the other check presumably being white?)?

Reading a little further into the pattern may clarify things: you need 'a skein of cross stitch cotton, red if the check is red, blue if it is blue'. Now based on the illustration:

Seeing as there’s a stitch in every square, I ultimately made the decision that it was checks in red and blue. This is still contradicted, however, in the last paragraph with the sentence ‘some people decorate the red-checked tea-towelling with designs in both colours, which can be very prettily and skilfully blended’.

I ignored this and stuck with checks in red and blue.

So, I need a fabric with red and blue 1" checks, shouldn't be too hard right?

WRONG.

I searched everywhere, and when I did find a fabric with red and blue checks (it doesn't seem to be a very popular colour combination?) they were never the right size, or the size of check wasn't even listed. In my desperation I visited spoonflower and even they couldn't help to fulfil my wishes- at least, not for the prices that they were charging.

I chose my final three fabrics after too much searching and eventual frustrated purchasing. The first I bought on EBay and was a gingham remnant produced by IKEA in collaboration with Cath Kidston called ‘rosali’. The checks are far too small (“) and there are three colours, red, white and blue. It is a very pretty fabric though. 

The second I bought in a charity shop a while ago. It’s white with red and blue stripes, the squares formed measuring ½”, which isn’t perfect but at least it’s a nice round measurement. I actually bought it thinking it would make quite a nice apron so I’m glad I finally found a use for it! 

For the third I bought a fabric remnant from oxfam online. When it arrived the checks were HUGE, which suited the apron design I went for in the end. Apparently it’s a traditional African fabric. I love the bold colours and the fabric has a nice weight to it. 

So I got three fabrics in the end- none were perfect, but they all worked. 

My next challenge was the fabric width. The first apron pattern says to ‘take the width of the cloth’. The average width of cloth nowadays is between 112cm and 140cm. I started the first apron with this in mind- it just looked silly. 

So I did a bit of digging. The average tea cloth width nowadays is between 17 and 20 inches. I found this book on the internet archive dating from 1866 which mostly holds fabric samples for waistcoats and fancier garments rather than for a tea towel. Nonetheless, I skimmed through for fabric widths. Many of the widths range between 19” to 25”, so it would have been a common loom size at the time. 

I also looked here, here and here. After this research, I decided that the full width of fabric measurement would be 26” (24” after hemming). 

Now that I’ve finally decided on fabric and fabric width, I can finally get to making!

I will fully admit that the first mistake I made was entirely my own fault- the pattern says to ‘ take the width of the cloth and 28 squares long’ and ‘nine squares must be turned up for the pocket’. I wrongly assumed that these nine squares weren’t included in the 28 squares. 

You’d have to have the arms of Mr Tickle to reach those pockets!!

So I re-did it with the correct yardage. 

Much better, don’t you think? 

I didn’t have any more trouble with the first apron and I think it came out rather wonderfully. 

The second had only a few issues. The first was due to my own fabric constrictions. The fabric I had was merely remnants so I had to work with what I had- this meant that the apron wasn’t 26” wide, but merely 23”. The slightly thinner apron means that it has a tendency to buckle unattractively in the middle, especially when pockets are added. 

This may be in part due to the empire-waist style, and perhaps the ties of my apron being too short. 

Which brings me to the neck band! The pattern states ‘the bib is one of the new ones carried right up to the throat’ and boy are they not kidding. When I was cutting pieces out I looked at this one and was like surely that’s not right? 

I tested it on my neck, with the ‘hem’ pinned back. Then I tested it pinned to the bib.

I did cut a longer strip, double the amount, thinking that there must have been a mis-print. But as I followed the instructions I thought that I had better follow them as accurately as possible in order to correctly follow the period pattern. 

What resulted was a very high bib that turned the apron into an empire-line. With a longer neck band it would have sat on the natural waist, but this is the style that was described. I do like this apron and I’m glad I followed the instructions in the end. 

The third and final apron involved a lot of playing around and guesswork. Although it is by far the simplest, being constructed out of one piece, creating anything apron-like with it proved to be a challenge. 

This apron is ‘one yard square’ and ‘one of the prettiest’ according to the author. One corner is pinned to your neck, two have ribbons attached and are tied around the waist and ‘in the front the fulness is confined by a piece of ribbon (tied in a bow and the ends left) at the waist’. 

After reading these instructions, I made this rough sketch on what I assumed the apron would look like. 

I tried this method of gathering out. It looked fine on the mannequin…

But on me it definitely wasn’t right. 

The waist ties would have landed at my bum and there was no way of gathering it more without the whole front basically just being one big gather. So I tried again. Assuming that the piece of ribbon ‘confines’ the front, I simply tied a piece of ribbon at my waist level. 

Much better! The ties sit at my natural waist and it actually has a shape to it. It took some fussing with the front to give it an ‘apron’ shape (without the fussing it just looked like I’d pinned a length of fabric to my body), but the pattern was right- it did come out very pretty indeed! 

That’s all three aprons done. This tutorial was meant to be quick, but three months later I’m still working on it by writing this blog post… Oh well. I had fun doing it and now I have three new aprons in my wardrobe to add some intrigue to my outfits!

For the final kick in the teeth, in the last paragraph it says ‘I forgot to mention that all these measurements are for large checks’. Thanks, anonymous apron designer from 138 years ago. I hate you. 

~

You can find the tutorial for these Victorian aprons on my Etsy and Patreon. If you make any of them please tag me in the pictures on social media, I’m Perfect Little Parcel on pretty much everything! 

Until next time,

Aisha x