Styling the bustle

Gathering up a dress with magnets

I sew historic bustle dresses and I was looking for a solution to gather up the top coat, where it is not necessary to attach it to the petticoat. The reason: I want to be able to wear the pretty petticoat alone also. Then I had the idea of placing sew-in magnets from supermagnete.fr on the inside of the top coat. I decided to sew eight little pockets, in which I can place the magnets, and then attached them to the coat.

First, I cut the fabric pieces for the "pockets" based on the size of the magnets. Then, I hemmed all open sides of the fabric.

Thereafter, I sewed the magnets with the plastic cover onto the fabric, so it won't be able to move around much in the pocket. You need to be careful during sewing, since generally many parts of the sewing machine (needle plate, sewing foot, needle) are ferromagnetic and therefore adhere to the magnet.

Since my top coat was very heavy (over 600 g) and the gathers had to withstand quick movements, I quickly realized that one magnet per pocket was not sufficient. So, I changed it to 2 magnets per pocket. Just place another magnet onto the sewed-in one and sew it together again.

With a lighter dress, one magnets may be sufficient.

I sewed the pocket shut and sewed it onto the inside of the top coat.

I sewed all eight pockets on the desired places on the inside of the top coat. It is important to consider the correct polarities, so the actually magnets attract each other.

Now, I could attach all magnets and received the desired result.