Sewing project: 18th century shirt

[luzula]

I am dogsitting at my parents' house for a few days, and they have a sewing machine. So I am taking this opportunity to make an 18th century shirt (inspired by garonne's similar project). It's been ages since I did any sewing, and I'm really enjoying it! I have lovely soft drapey white linen, and my shirt will have the floofiest sleeves ever to floof. Pictures to follow.

Poll #26425

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 23

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Should the cuffs of my shirt have...

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Ruffles made of the same cloth as the shirt.
2 (8.7%)

Lace ruffles such as the shirt of Ewen Cameron's court dress clearly has ("And with his free hand he tucked his lace ruffle out of the way." The better to do his swordfighting, of course...)
14 (60.9%)

A combination! You should do cloth ruffles with a narrow border of lace.
6 (26.1%)

No ruffles. Show some restraint, why don't you?
1 (4.3%)

Comments

[regshoe]

This sounds like a very cool project—I look forward to the pictures :D

I vote for the fancy lace ruffles! This is clearly an occasion for being as extravagant as possible, floofiest of sleeves and laciest of ruffles and all.

[luzula]

The poll results clearly show that I should have lace ruffles. : D I could've gotten lace from the same website where I got the linen, but alas, I didn't think of it. But there's a shop in town that I think will have it.

I'm a bit annoyed that I used the white thread that was already in the machine, since it's a bit coarse and a very slightly different shade from the linen, thus making some of the seams noticeable. Not the inside seams, of course, but it shows on hems and flatfelled seams. I'll definitely switch for the rest of the shirt, and now I'm considering whether I should pick out the slightly noticeable seams and redo them...we'll see how much time it takes.