Also, fabric painting goes back way further than most people think and is a perfectly appropriate substitute for embroidery if I’m in a time crunch–just watch and use something more like Jacquard Dye-na-flow or fabric markers rather than the acrylic-based paints, since historic fabric paints were mostly dyes that had been thickened (with various natural gums or egg yolk, etc.) and they don’t look remotely the same.

You mostly find the flat felled seams on undergarments so they stand up better with all the washing. The shirtwaists of the late Victorian and Edwardian eras can have flat felled seams too. If it’s a sheer fashion fabric and seams will be visible then I’ll do French ones and they are period appropriate.

Thank you. 🙂 It’s gratifying to discover that much of what you wrote about seam finishes wasn’t a huge surprise – I’m clearly doing my research right! 🙂 The exception the bit about flat felled seams; I didn’t know that! Interesting. I’m working on an 1890s petticoat of cotton lawn, and I’ve been doing French seams, as I always find they look very lovely on translucent fabrics. Would you have done likewise, or would that be the sort of undergarment for which you might use flat felled seams?
The more I work on historical sewing, the more I want to stare inside garments from the time period and inspect them in great, minute detail!

Seam finishes in antique garments include: pinking, binding with bias or lining fabric, and hand whipstitching. French seams were done on the most sheer fabrics. Flat felled seams were also very common but more often kept to undergarments. This is all for both bodices and skirts. 🙂