After my blonde silk gauze mantelet, I reckoned I’d step back a little in time and show the first mantelet i sewed for myself! Back in 2020, a friend in Chile gifted me a pair of sheer voile curtains that she’d intended to use for a robe chemise. Unfortunately, there wasn’t enough fabric in the set for a gown, so she passed them along to me to see what i could make with them! One of the curtains became a ruffled 1780s apron and the other became this white muslin summer mantelet.
(You can see my blonde silk gauze mantelet HERE and my ruffled 1780s apron HERE!)
This was intended to be a very quick project. My starry-eyed-summer-child past-self had just learned to properly roll a hem, and I was feeling all hopeful and optimistic about how long it would take me to roll the hems on an entire garment.
For the base pattern, I used the net mantelet on page 50 of the Costume Close-up book. I’m taller and more broad-shouldered than the wearer of the original garment, and I adjusted both front and back so that it would hang as i wanted it to.
The construction of a mantelet is fairly simple. I hemmed both the hood and the body. Then I gathered the neckline of each part, and stitched each gathered neckline to a neckband. Then I whipped down a facing to cover the raw edges. Voila.
Garment constructed, It was time to start decorating. I wanted a ruffle from the same sheer fabric as the body of the mantelet, and that is a lot of ruffle. Given that i was still building the muscle memory to do it both neatly and quickly, it took a fair while, and there was a period of time there where my room looked like i was rolling bandages for a very neat, prim Halloween mummy. And all of her friends, too.
Once all of the rolled hems were completed, I had to practice one more skill I wasn’t yet very good at. I had to whip gather my ruffle and stitch it down. Having one wrist in a brace after a fall did not help my speed or my efficiency, either.
But i got there. (Bibbity-bobbity-BOO!!)
The cross-barred nature of the fabric meant that I could break down a 2:1 ruffle ratio with great ease – 4 squares of trim to 2 squares of body. By the time I hit the curves on the mantelet body where the grid broke down, I had both pretty good muscle memory for whip-gathering and I could eyeball the volume of a 2:1 cotton ruffle without needing a ruler.
Of course, it would have been even nicer if I had stitched the ruffle to the correct side of the fabric.
I unpicked, and started again.
And then, of course, I ran out of ruffle, so I hemmed more ruffle and whipped that on too.
I fastened the mantelet at the neck with a wide mint-colored silk ribbon and then it was done. My definitely-very-quick, absolutely-only-one-week white muslin summer mantelet project was complete at last.
This net mantelet in Costume Close-up has proved a good base for many costumers. The construction is very simple, and then the opportunities for trimming are endless. You can spend a lot of time happily hand-stitching trims or you can run a gathered ribbon for a quick effect.
The Lady of the Wilderness made a lavender silk version with a pinked trim.
A Fashionable Frolick made a warm winter version in black wool.
Festive Attyre made a long-fronted mantle in red wool,
And Lauren from American Duchess made yet another wool mantle – this time in blue!
