Project Journal: 1822-1824 Ensemble Part VI: Muff and Tippet

One thing I actually did finish for the recent ball was the muff and tippet. For visual reference, the picture below shows the garments I’m discussing.

1822 walking dress with muff and tippet (and a bit of the 1824 ball gown peeking out).

What is tippet, exactly? Merriam-Webster defines it, thus:

1: a long hanging end of cloth attached to a sleeve, cap, or hood

2: a shoulder cape of fur or cloth often with hanging ends

So, how did I make my tippet? First, I cut a piece of high loft polyester batting the length and width that I wanted. (I know they didn’t have poly batting in the 19th century… but it’s super warm and sometimes just worth it!) Then I cut a piece of my faux fur that was double the width of the batting plus an extra 3/4″ or so on each side as well as about 1″ longer on each end. I centered the batting on the wrong side of the fur, wrapped the fur around to the back, turned one edge under, and pinned. The ends of the fur I just turned up and under the other pinned bits. Then I whip stitched that folded edge down using pretty large stitches. The stitches disappeared in the fur… and voila, tippet! Too bad I didn’t take pictures of the construction!

The muff was slightly more tricky, not because of construction details, but because I agonized over what color lining to use! (To construct the muff, I made two tubes, one out of fur and one out of silk lining. I stitched one end of each tube to the other, turned the whole thing right sides out, inserted a tube of poly batting (warm!), pulled the lining through the middle, and pinned the open side of the fur to the silk, with the fur edge turned under. Then I simply whip stitched it like I did the tippet.

But before I could make the muff, I had to pick the lining color! Did I want it to match my walking dress trim (and be lavender?) Did I want to pick a color from a fashion plate? What colors were used in fashion plates? So many questions! I determined that of the muff linings I could see in fashion plates from that general period, there were three recurring colors: pink, blue, and white. Here’s what I came up with, image-wise:

PINK

19562579602803386_gVTjJrmC_c — January 1823 Walking Dress. La Belle Assemblee.

19562579602401776_TvaRkZoN_c — December 1822 Promenade Dress. Ackerman’s Repository.

19562579602401842_51zasE7P_c — January 1826 Promenade Dress. Ackerman’s Repository.

BLUE

19562579602401785_nUUKnK8g_c — March 1823 Walking Dress. Ackerman’s Repository.

186688347022992512_HVaD6lEY_c — December 1825 Carriage Dress. Lady’s Magazine.

WHITE

186688347022992610_ERzVeK6C_c — 1825 Promenade Dress.

83035186849486953_XGi68fzU_c — 1829 Walking Dress. Ackerman’s Repository.

UNKNOWN/OTHER

145663369167455361_eRX7bB2f_c — c. 1810 Redingote (and muff!). KCI. (Also a tippet, though they call it a “palantine”: which M-W defines as *a fur cape or stole covering the neck and shoulders.)*

19562579602930398_Bi3xvCKC_c — November 1814. La Belle Assemblee.

Volare Digital Capture — November 1817 Walking Dress. Ackerman’s Repository.

186688347023026494_QoWFeN5r_c — 1823 Carriage Dress

So pink came in with 3, blue and white tied with 2 each, and then there were an assortment of unknown/other. But I didn’t like the idea of pink with my dark pinkish wool (you can see what that would look like in the December 1822 fashion plate: that’s the inspiration for my walking dress), so I settled for the light blue, which I think is delicate and softly Regency. Also, I had just a small amount of that color silk, and it’s a color that doesn’t really complement my skin, so I wasn’t likely to use it for a bonnet or something similar… but with a muff most of my skin is hidden! You can see the predominance of white fur for the muffs in these fashion plates (one of the reasons I chose white fur for the muff and tippet). There are brown, too, but a lot of white! 7 out of the 11 I included are white. Well, there you go. That’s my rationale for the muff and tippet.

All of these images are on my Pinterest pages with lots of other beautiful garments. Specifically, these are on the 1810s Inspiration, 1820-1824 Inspiration, and 1825-1829 Inspiration pages.