Category: Clothing

Can’t Type: Sewing!

On By kittycalashIn Clothing, Events, Living History, making things, Reenacting

What has kept me so busy I can’t blog? Mostly preparing for the millinery shop in Salem, which I am really looking forward to!

Cassandra attempts a Regency Wedgie

In just about a week, I managed a gown, now needing only a hem.  This based on the roller-printed serpentine stripe gown at Genessee Country Village and Museum, documented nicely at the 19th US site.

This was an easy gown to build up from a shoulder and back piece, once I did the math to scale it up to my size, and with the generous help of Sew 18th Century, who gave me the sleeve pattern I started from. This isn’t a drawstring sleeve, so the gown is not an exact copy of the GCV&M gown. I’m OK with that, since–as far as I can tell– it fits. It may be a little large, but that’s what an apron or sash is for. No, I don’t know when I’ll get the apron made.

Mr S saves time by modeling *both* coat and new bonnet

There should also be a coat, and many bonnets.

Mr S’s coat seems to be working, and is now faced on the right side, leaving the left, the sleeves, and just a few buttons. He was excited about helping with button manufactory until he realized that the largest tool required was patience. But what are facings and buttons and buttons holes, among friends?

Bonnet Number I Forget

Another bonnet is in the works- can you ever have too many? I think not. It is in the prickly phase, while I work this evening on taking apart a waistcoat that must be altered for the Young Mister for this weekend at Stony Point. Bouncing between 1779 New York and 1812 Salem, when one is also considering 1765 and preparing for 1800 can make telling time a little challenging!

Six Toiles, a Coat and a Bonnet

On By kittycalashIn Clothing, Events, Living History, making things, Reenacting2 Comments

14557116394_73c2d5ea9f_zYes, six toiles.
That’s how many it took to get a coat pattern to fit Mr S the way I thought it should. I finally built the pattern around a sleeve and arm scye that I knew worked and suited the period. From there, I built out the back, altering the center back seam curve to suit Mr S’s figure. Arm scyes are still hard for me to figure out, although sleeves are often my favorite part of a garment. I like how flat pieces become three dimensional in a sleeve, and I enjoy setting sleeves– go figure.

Thanks to the three-day holiday weekend and sitting out a parade to pad stitch, I have a coat body.

I’m not thrilled about the size of the lapels, though I have found extant examples and fashion plates showing lapels this size, and sleeves, too. While I’ve pinned up the sleeves in the back, thinking there’s too much fabric there, I can also see from the images that the subject’s posture was not the best– and that was the moment when I realized that I really did want a mannequin for menswear as the subjects are hard to catch at any age, and variable in posture and wiggliness. They also object to being pinned accidentally.

But there is at least a coat body on the way to being done, so I took a break and made a bonnet, which is really the point here <ahem> milliner’s, not tailor’s, shop, after all.

IMG_1738

Pasteboard brim, blue silk taffeta lined with white silk taffeta (they had new things at the fabric store, very exciting!), trimmed with silk ribbon from Wm Booth and paper flowers from the V&A.

Now, more bonnets, two waistcoats, a gown, an exhibition, a lecture, and Stony Point are all that stand between me and the milliners’ shop in Salem…

Fashionable Friday: Floral Embroidery Galore

On By kittycalashIn Clothing, Frivolous Friday, History, Museums, Research
Colonial Wedding dress altered 1830
Elizabeth Bull Price’s Wedding Dress. Bostonian Society, 1910.50.35

On Tuesday evening, sensibility won over sense as my friend and I boarded the T for Boston to make a long day longer. The trip was worth it, though, for the One Night Only engagement of Elizabeth Bull’s wedding dress at the Bostonian Society. In truth, I bought the tickets for the event before I was even back at work and navigating our Fair City on my own– and who wouldn’t? That dress is amazing! (Tons more images of the embroidery are in the catalog record.)

Perhaps even more wonderful than the 14-year-old ElizabethBull’s needle skills is that the dress remains with us today. Kimberley Alexander and Tricia Gilrein reminded us on Tuesday of the many ways this dress, and other remnants of Bull’s wardrobe (oh, the petticoat, and the wonderful kerchief) connect us to the past in surprising ways. Elizabeth Bull was wealthy, married to Roger Bull, a Church of England official 22 years her senior: though they lived in Boston, they were British. (They were married in the 1730s, and Elizabeth died in 1780 at about 67.)

It’s a little hard to see past the 1830s alterations, but the embroidery of the gown helps chart that course, as well as the petticoat. As important to remember is that this wedding gown was not white: it has faded from a celadon green to its current off-white color. Wedding dresses weren’t white in the 18th century, or even long into the 19th, and it’s helpful to remember that as we look at what remains and reconstruct this in our mind’s eye.

It’s easy to forget we were British first here in the United States, and that the American War for Independence did not have a foregone conclusion. We forget, too, that churchmen and their wives were socialites as much as they were people of the cloth. Put Mr Collins out of your mind, and remember (my favorite minister & fashion maven) Reverend Enos Hitchcock and his pink satin waistcoat and suits of black silk.

Photograph of the altered gown. Bostonian Society, 1910.0050.057
Photograph of the altered gown. Bostonian Society, 1910.0050.057

Like many 18th century gowns, this one was remodeled in the 19th century, its shape altered to reflect the current fashion. We are lucky to have so much preserved, not just in the gown but also in the petticoat. Paths to understanding of women’s education, the customs and habits of Boston’s colonial elite, and the persistence of past can all be found within this object.

 

The Taylors’ Instructor

On By kittycalashIn Clothing, History, Living History, making things, Reenacting4 Comments
Title page, The Taylors' Instructor
Title page, The Taylors’ Instructor

So who else was wondering what Mr Cooke meant by Lapsley and Queen? Wonder no longer, frustrated toile-makers and cuff-detail mavens, it is available on the vast interwebs of knowledge.

Go! Download the PDF and immerse yourself in an 1809 American tailors’ manual published in Philadelphia, with Eight Appropriate Engravings. We may note that there was excited squeaking when I located this, altering my nearest companions to A FIND, and letting them know that yes, I am back, and probably will continue to squeak on and off for some time to come.

From the introduction:

“…there is no situation more awkward than that of a TAYLOR who has cut and mutilated his own or his employer’s Cloth which will frequently be the case when a man has nothing to depend upon but the poor resource of chance or hope, that his clothes will fit.”

The Taylors' Instructor
The Taylors’ Instructor

I can tell from the text on Coats that my subjects will have to be further apprehended and measured, even against their will, but the results will undoubtedly be better than before.

Happy Reading, Historical Sewing Enthusiasts, and a big thank you and hat tip to Henry Cooke for the reference.