1858 Morning Cap of Spotted Muslin

 The London and Paris Ladies' Magazine of Fashion, January 1858.

I found this one while looking for dotted muslin sleeve designs a few years ago, and noted it for its simplicity, but never made it because the shape is so unprepossessing. The description of this cap is pretty sparse: "Second do. [morning cap] of dotted muslin, trimmed with scarlet roses and ribbons of the same colour." Fortunately, the structure itself looks fairly self-explanatory: a round flat crown, edged in a ruffle of varying width.

It honestly doesn't look any better made up.

But I needed a quick cap for an online event, and decided to give it a try. It turns out those graduated ruffles are just the thing for ~1859 maximum-width side-braids. It's almost as though really wide side hair is the prevalent look of the time...

Cap doing its floaty thing.

I estimated the proportions from the picture the picture (1 ruffle "header" towards the crown = 1 unit: rest of ruffle is 1 unit at the center top, 3 units at center back, cap is 4 units visible diameter or ~6 units including the part covered by the ruffle). I initially used millinery wire to make a base for the crown, shaping it into loop around the back of the head. However, I really didn't like the way this made the crown either poof up like a mob cap or pull weirdly taut. So, the wire was not used in the final version. Instead, I just hemmed the circular crown, gathered the ruffle 1" from the sloped side, and basted it around.  I figured that using the straight edge on the outside would give a neater finish. 

I cut the ruffle as a single ~60" width of fabric, 5" deep at the center back join, 4" at the sides and 3" at the center front. This included 1" for waste after scalloping both sides on the pinking machine, though the actual waste was closer to 1/2".  To fit my head properly, I ended up enlarging the crown to 8"-9" diameter (it's a little taller than it is wide), though 

I was skeptical of the roses at first.

I used two velvet roses out my stash (originally from Timely Tresses) and the ribbons are two 18" long and 1.5" wide strips of remnant silk with pinked edges. Looking at the image again, I think I could have gone for slightly bigger and wider ribbons to better match the hints of a bow in the picture. However, I actually like how these fit over my hair on the sides. I tacked them in asymmetric 2-loop bows with trailing ends--one side has distinctly longer tails, the other more generous loops. The illustration doesn't show both sides, but wanted to go for the 'asymmetric but balanced' feel of other period headdresses.

Two straight pins at the upper back kept the cap neatly on my hair, but also fashionably far back on the head.