Category: Clothing

Some Velvet Morning

On By kittycalashIn Clothing, Living History, making things, Reenacting4 Comments

Sewing velvet is a strange experience. I’m working with a cotton velvet from a remnant table; it has a nice hand, but still crumbles and covers the table with fabric soot when I cut it. It’s not easy sewing black fabric with black thread, even in strong morning light, and “Some Velvet Morning” is an unhelpful thing to have stuck in your mind (especially the Lydia Lunch rendition).

With just one yard of 44″ wide stuff, cutting a Spencer took a little doing and some minor piecing. I borrowed techniques from some waistcoats I’ve seen recently, and pieced in linen at the back collar lining. That seems to be pretty common, and makes sense from a wear and hair perspective.

I patterned this on Monday morning before work, basing the pattern shapes on an 1810 fashion plate and an original at the MFA Boston. The MFA’s Spencer is particularly satisfying because of its connection to Lexington, Massachusetts. A New England-made Spencer is a happy find.

Frivolous Friday: Silken Cone of Shame

On By kittycalashIn Clothing, Frivolous Friday, Research, Snark3 Comments
La famille Anglaise à Paris.Plate 11 to 'London und Paris', x, 1802 [1803]. Explanatory text, pp. 90-5. Copy of No. 11 in 'Le Suprême Bon Ton' series, see BMSat 9957. An English John Bull stands stolidly full face with clasped hands, a grown daughter on his right arm, his wife on his left arm. With them are two tiny little girls and a grown-up son, also stolid. A Frenchman and a lady attitudinize elegantly on the left. 1802 Hand-coloured etching. British Museum 1856,0712.605
La famille Anglaise à Paris.Plate 11 to ‘London und Paris’, x, 1802 [1803]. Explanatory text, pp. 90-5. Copy of No. 11 in ‘Le Suprême Bon Ton’ series, see BMSat 9957. An English John Bull stands stolidly full face with clasped hands, a grown daughter on his right arm, his wife on his left arm. With them are two tiny little girls and a grown-up son, also stolid. A Frenchman and a lady attitudinize elegantly on the left. 1802 Hand-coloured etching. British Museum 1856,0712.605

Mr JS and I have amused ourselves of late not just with thimble chatter, but with this satirical print of the English family in Paris.

I’m not nearly as funny as Mr JS, who pointed out that the bonneted girl on the far right is “I literally can’t even right now.” I think of her as Lisa Simpson, 1803. That’s the voice I hear reading the line texted to me: “I just want to pull this chemise dress over my head and die. Could someone with yellow fever cough on me?”

The father is Homeresque in his proportions, and nearly as befuddled. The artist is clearly mocking this poor family, contrasted with the graceful Parisians at left, but only the two youngest are aware, hiding in their cones of shame.

That deep coal-scuttle-like bonnet is mocked in other engravings; it is probably closer to the actual form of Julia Bowen’s cold scoop of 1799 than my approximation this fall. Julia would surely have known the shaming purposes of those grandiose and over-sized calashes: “Go sit in your calash and think about what you’ve done!” Mr JS quipped.

Appropriately enough, the silk I ordered to make my own calash of shame has arrived at the post office. Dark green taffeta envy lined with the bright magenta of embarrassment: clothes are so emotional.

Frivolous Friday: A Feather Kerfluffle

On By kittycalashIn Clothing, Events, Fail, Frivolous Friday, History, Living History, Reenacting, Snark3 Comments
Miss Caroline Vernon by François-Xavier Vispré (c.1730 – London 1790). pastel on paper. ©National Trust Images/John Hammond.

I troll the interwebs in the fishing and not the under-the-bridge sense: there’s a lot to read out there. Still, I’ve kept one eye on the feather-and-flower kerfluffle that erupted in certain circles this week, but have been much more interested in documentation of one kind and another.

Miss Vernon is really my favorite image of feathers on hats, and I wish I could say that a) I have replicated this fabulous creation or b) that I have seen such a thing, but alas! I have not.

Still, scouring sundry repositories for tayloring manuals (more on that another time), I found this delightful broadside. We can’t use 1782 to document 1780, and no means of using any of these items is mentioned or implied. Still, there they are, those inflammatory terms: Feathers, Flowers.

1782 Broadside. Early American Imprints, Series 1, no. 45771 (filmed)
1782 Broadside. Early American Imprints, Series 1, no. 45771 (filmed)

To paraphrase Max, Let the wild rumpus continue.

Shark Tank

On By kittycalashIn Clothing, Living History3 Comments

I’ve been thinking a lot about Watson and the Shark, at least when I am not thinking about the Raft of the Medusa, make of that what you will.

Here’s why: Waistcoats. Shirts. Open Jackets.

Detail, Watson and the Shark. MFA Boston 89.481
Detail, Watson and the Shark. MFA Boston 89.481

As you would expect from recent reports, the Young Mr has outgrown almost everything he owns, with the exception of his shirt. I put a lot of time into that blue wool jacket, so I’m not ready to sell it on Etsy yet, but I do have to replace it. Sewing new things means I get a chance to look again at sources for inspiration, and to do better this time around.

Since we’re in summer, I’m thinking blue linen, since I have access to very local inspiration in the form of Oliver Hazard Perry’s short jacket. But for earlier ideas, there’s Copley. I particularly like the horizontal stripe on the waistcoat, and what seems to be a striped shirt. Striped shirt! How exciting is that?

I’m thinking striped trousers, based on a Massachusetts letter, but we’ll see how far I get with that. The final deciding factor in wearing, of course, could be striped trousers are better than no trousers.