Category: Clothing

Fabric Selection Resources: Printed & Online

On By kittycalashIn Book Review, Clothing, Living History, making things, Reenacting1 Comment

Jackie asked about fabrics: how do you choose?

I’m going to start with prints, cottons, linens and silks; the second part will cover wools and sutlers.

There’s no substitute for feeling up the real thing, or samples, and while I do not have the book, I’m told by a very reliable source that it is worth buying Swatches from Wm Booth or from Hallie. I also order Burnley & Trowbridges swatch sets, which are often  more extensive than what’s on their website. Those samples help me gauge fabrics online– comparing the actual square with a thumbnail online is helpful.

Barbara Johnson: a typical page
Barbara Johnson: a typical page, this from 1803

Where else can you look for guidance? One of the best books that spans a wide range of living history time periods is the Barbara Johnson book of swatches. Owned and published by the Victoria and Albert Museum, A Lady of Fashion is out of print, but the pages have been scanned and are available online. The print version is better– it’s big!– but you can download the images and get a better sense of the scale of the samples.

What is particularly useful is that Barbara Johnson dated the samples, and wrote down how they were used. You can’t get better than that!

Susan Greene’s Wearable Prints is neither small nor cheap, but it is extensive, covering 1760 to 1860. This is a very hand book to have to help sort out typical looks for different time periods, and the likely range of colors.

Textile Sample Book, 1771. Metropolitan Museum of Art. 156.4 T31
Textile Sample Book, 1771. Metropolitan Museum of Art. 156.4 T31

Other museums have digitized sample books: the Met, for example, has multiple images of woven fabrics from a 1771 sample book online.

What you need to remember here is fibre: those homespuns at JoAnn will not behave the way linens behave, even if they look the same. Hand and drape are everything, and cotton, or cotton-poly will not do want linen does. Buy the linen, it’ll look, feel, and wear better.

There are many more sample books, but you have to be careful: some are dated only “19th century.” Great. That’s where Susan Greene and Barbara Johnson can help you sort out which *part* of the 19th century you’re looking at.

Swatch book, 1763-1764. Victoria and Albert Museum, T.373-1972
Swatch book, 1763-1764. Victoria and Albert Museum, T.373-1972

For silks, you can see a very specific and detailed range of silks in Selling Silks, which reproduces another sample book at the Victoria and Albert. Not all samples are 1763-1764; you will need to read the descriptions, but this can be helpful in figuring out how to use fabrics. I have come into some red silk damask that I can make into a gown; it’s vintage silk from France, probably pre-World War II. The pattern is large, replicating a 1740s fabric, but when I make up my gown, I think it can be 1760s, but not a lot later.

Part of looking and buying is understanding how textiles might be bought, saved, made up, reused and repurposed over time.

 

Good Enough Coat

On By kittycalashIn Clothing, Events, Living History, making things, Research3 Comments
The great coat is nice, but how ’bout them gaiters?

Winter is firmly here, with the snow, fog and ice that marks the season in the Ocean State. It’s not fun weather for living in the past, though there’s not a lot of that happening right now. Even so, there’s a February program on the horizon and what better excuse for fastening on a garment and making it?

Even if I’ll likely spend the day in a kitchen interpreting life below stairs in 1820 (while the light infantry occupies my living room and denudes my kitchen), an early 19th century event on a winter weekend seemed a worthwhile excuse for making a greatcoat, and, eventually, gaiters.

IMG_2733

With no pattern, and only 2 and 3/4 yards of thick, soft, grey double faced wool*,  I’m adapting my standard Spencer pattern. I didn’t upsize this too much, because women didn’t have frock coats and waistcoats to wear under their greatcoats or Carrick [carriage?] coats or Reding cotes. (I’m too engrossed with sewing to parse garment names.) The skirts will be attached at the waist, with a belt to hide the seam. At my height, cutting a back in one piece takes yardage I do not possess. Happily, the Taylor’s Instructor describes Redingcoats or Habits for women with attached skirts.

It’s a new collar shape.

The collar shape diverges from my usual 1790s collar, and is based on another fashion plate, this time from 1815. The program I’ll be doing with Sew 18th Century is set in 1820. As a maid, I think an 1815 coat is pushing it a bit, since red wool cloaks hold up well, but I’ll take any excuse for some tailoring, I suppose.

1815, with a round collar that can stand up.

I plan to use this button arrangement, too, stylish as it is in not-quite-double breasted. Bring on the button-making– we all have to go death’s head sometime, and this wool is too thick for covered buttons without much heartbreak.

The lower front pins are there from the moment when I realized the front was hanging strangely — because I had neither marked nor sewn the bust darts. That oversight, and the pain in my ear, do suggest that the delightful cold I’ve had for weeks may be affecting me more than I think– but that’s just another argument in favor of a cozy wool coat.

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The sleeve pattern (again, not upsized) is once again the old standby two-piece sleeve from Henry Cooke’s 1770s unlined man’s frock coat, so of course it fits well.

I’m hoping to stitch up the sleeves this evening, and set them later this week. I’m still pondering lining materials– there’s just enough silk “persian” to do the body and sleeves–but I have some twilled wool that would increase the warmth and still provide some ‘slip’ in the sleeves.

And those blue gaiters? They’ll come in time, from the scraps of blue wool a friend is making his first ditto suit from. I’ll spot him some remnant table chintz for a summer waistcoat, and expect greater sartorial splendor will grace the spitting stamp inspector in Newport this August in exchange for my blue wool ankles.

*Holy burned hair smell, Batman! Mr Cooke’s right when he says this almost feels like foam, but put a flame to it, and you might as well be smoking sheep.

The Unbearable Sameness of Dressing

On By kittycalashIn Clothing, Living History, making things, Reenacting, Research9 Comments

One of the arguments I hear against changing the way people dress as civilians at reenactments, particularly the women but sometimes the men, is that “if we all use the same pattern, we’ll all look alike, and that’s not how people dress now or then.”

I have news for you: that is how we dress[ed].

I know, we can’t apply modern thinking to the past– that’s crap historiography. But why do we resist using the same correct patterns for historic garments when we are clearly dressing alike today?

Mrs Samuel Browne by Smibert, RIHS 1891.2.2
Mrs Joseph Mann by Copley, MFA Boston, 43.1353

I’ve not yet read a paper on the similarity of women’s dress in Robert Feke or John Copley’s portraits that really convinced me, but if you look at enough of them, you might think there’s only one woman and one dress in all of British North America, because Badger and Greenwood are painting her, too.

Even if those clothes are studio props, what does it say that the sitters wanted to be portrayed in the same clothes? Look, if that’s the only means of getting myself into a Charles James, you bet I’d take it. Or, for a more contemporary analogue, Alexander McQueen.

Luxe et Indigence. Le Bon Genre, 1817
Luxe et Indigence. Le Bon Genre, 1817

Dressing is about status as much as it is about self-expression, and in the 18th century, dressing signaled refinement, sensibility, and status through the quality of fabric as much as through the cut of clothes. Air Jordans do the same thing today, or North Face jackets, or Kate Spade purses. They show what you can afford, even if you’re eating oatmeal for dinner behind closed doors.

We dress the same now, and we dressed the same then, with variations according to pocketbook. We can’t all afford K&P superfine wool today any more than we could have bought the best wools or prints in the 18th century. But using accurate patterns and fabrics appropriate to our station will create the best impressions possible– even if my gown is cut to the same pattern as my wealthier acquaintance’s.

Gingerbread (in the) House

On By kittycalashIn Clothing, Food, making things, personal2 Comments
Illustration by Tasha Tudor
Illustration by Tasha Tudor

Here we are again, at the time of year known as Impending Parental Visit, which causes a variety of reactions ranging from full-on repaint the kitchen and both baths freak out (whilst nursing an 8-week-old Young Mr) to Eh, she’s got a dog acceptance.

This year, Mr S had the freak out, and has undertaken a living room painting project which he has carried out on weekends since Thanksgiving. It does look good, and I am grateful for his persistence, because this year’s late fall and early winter brought me a serious case of the blues.

That's a happy cat!
happy cat!

I’m in the midst of trying to finish a dress before my mother arrives (my sewing area is really our dining table, with the Strategic Fabric Reserve stowed in sideboards and cupboards). Yesterday, I tried it on: it fits, and looks rather nice (grey wool, and when it’s done, you’ll see it). But it fails in intention: clearly, it is no maid’s dress.

But I felt so much happier in my stays and petticoat that I dug up the wool dress made for farm adventures, put on my apron, and made ginger bread.

The cat approves of my reading material.
The cat approves of my reading material.

The recipe, which I shared recently with a friend, is an old Rhode Island family receipt, and very similar to the Tasha Tudor cookbook receipt. (The Howling Assistant approved of Tasha’s Roast Chicken receipt. She is a poultry fan.)

When copying over the receipt for my friend, I forgot the hot water, and failed to warn him that this gingerbread cake is best eaten with a fork. Delicious, but sticky, here it is:

1/4 cup butter, room temperature or a little softer
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup boiling water
Combine the last two ingredients and pour over the butter & sugar.
Add 3/4 cup molasses
Combine well.

Sift into the liquid mixture:
1.5 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon ginger (I use a heaping 1/2 tsp)
1 teaspoon cinnamon
pinch salt

Combine gently. Into the mixture drop one unbeaten egg.
Beat the whole with a hand-cranked eggbeater or whisk.

Pour into greased 9×13 pan, and bake at 350F for 35 to 40 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean.

Gingerbread cake
Gingerbread cake

Good with tea, coffee and clementines. I’ve made this perhaps a dozen times, once without the egg, and it’s always edible. (The egg provides some leavening, so made without it, the cake is dense and extra sticky.) Baking it makes the whole house smell good and it’s a simple, one-bowl receipt. For an easy holiday treat to share, I recommend this Rhode Island Gingerbread Cake.