Tag: authenticity

Brown Gown

On By kittycalashIn Clothing2 Comments
Gown, ca. 1765. CW 1985-117,1
Gown, ca. 1765. CW 1985-117,1

The very first dress in the Costume Close Up book matches my measurements pretty well, so I thought I’d be quite clever and pattern it up for my own use. I want a stomacher front open robe for Battle Road and a 1763 event this summer, so what better place to start than with an original ca. 1756-1760 gown?

I laced up my stays on Friday and spent much of the day measuring, drawing, cutting, and sewing. By mid-afternoon, I had a muslin with the devil’s own sleeve and a large measure of frustration.

Yes, I ate, it wasn’t just low blood sugar that caused all this unhappiness. For the public safety, there are no photos of the ensuing debacle. But the situation was not irreparable, as I have been in this miserable place before.

Patterned up from the little illustration.

( To add to the fun, my stays have stretched, and now give the impression that they slip down throughout the course of the day. They do this even while I am not especially active: I’d dismissed the sensation at Fort Lee. Oh, it’s the hours in the non-18th century seat, it’s running around the site, it’s one more lame excuse I’m making up. Nope. Suckers have stretched and will require attention. Also, for being slightly more than one year old, ought they to have wear marks from tying on petticoats? Next time, I’m using cotton, since it doesn’t stretch like linen.)

Gown, 1750-17651988-223, CW
Gown, 1750-1765,  CW 
1988-223

I got out the basic bodice block I’d patterned in June, and adjusted that to have a straighter, more horizontal waist line and made the bodice fronts narrower. The robings with be pleated to have a layered look, for which this Norwich wool gown at CW is the inspiration. I stitched up a muslin of the altered bodice block, and wouldn’t you know, it fit. It’s a relief to know that some measure of frustration eventually pays off. Maybe.

By Saturday night, I had the lining sewn up and Sunday morning, I attached the lining sleeves (I like to check the fit and have something to beat the fashion fabric sleeve against.) That meant I was ready for the terrifying step of cutting and sewing the actual wool. I have enough of it that I can mess up and redeem the problem, what I don’t have enough of is time. Certain gentlemen have garments in need of alteration, and creation, you see.

The back, with pleats sewn down, and skirts on their way.

Since this is the third or fourth or fifth time I have wrestled with the 18th century gown cut en fourreau, I know what I am getting in to. I know about the three hours for four pleats. I know the heartache of hand stitching the back only to realize you have introduced a wiggle. What I don’t know is how to keep this in perspective.

I followed along with Koshka the Cat’s en fourreau tutorial, which I found incredibly helpful. It won’t keep you from introducing a wiggle into your seams, but you will get the seams in pretty much the right place, as long as you’re honest about your measurements. It’s only a little bit Richard III up there in the center seam….

It’s good to be a perfectionist, but sometimes you have to just let go and sew. I’m still learning how to live with that.

Three sticks, two kettles, no matches

On By kittycalashIn History, Living History, Reenacting2 Comments
Soldiers Cooking, 1798 National Army Museum (UK), 1983-11-63-1

Here’s some visual evidence for why we travel with three sticks, two kettles, and no matches. (We bring the sticks as we suspect the sites where we camp & cook don’t want amateur logging on their grounds.)  I stumbled upon this at the National Army Museum in the UK. Here’s what they say about the image:

Soldiers from an unknown unit attend to their cooking pot on a break from their duties during the Wars of the French Revolution (1793-1802). They are accompanied by their womenfolk. Although only a few men from each unit were officially allowed to marry and have their wives and families accompany them, women would have been found in almost every British military camp. Some worked as cooks, laundry women and sutlers (camp followers who sold provisions), while others were prostitutes.

One of the things one learns when reading about women who followed the armies of the Revolutionary War is that prostitution–at least for those following the American army– was not high on the list of occupations for women.

Why not? Lack of ready cash, folks.

Working for the Army would get you rations, and that literal meal ticket was desirable in a time of shortages and want. If you’d been burned out of your home or farm (I’m looking at you, 54th Reg’t of Foot, Aquidneck Island torchers) what would you eat? What would you do? It depended, of course, but one thing to do would be to follow your husband if he had enlisted.

I know less about the women who followed the British Army, but for a Continental Army start, I recommend the following books:

Belonging to the Army. Mayer, Holly A. USC Press, 1996.

Liberty’s Daughters. Norton, Mary Beth. Cornell, 1980. (My edition, 1996)

Revolutionary Mothers. Berkin, Carol. Vintage Books, 2005.

In Pursuit of Liberty. Werner, Emmy. Potomac Books, 2009.

The last title is about children in the time of the Revolution, not women, but considering who was left home with the children, and in trying to understand what the time might have been like for the Young Mr, I’ve given it a read as well.

As for the camp gear? We keep it at a minimum based on period images. We don’t all sleep in one tent, but we pack as light as we can. It’s nice when authenticity and ease are the same.

On Baskets, and Authenticity

On By kittycalashIn Clothing, Events4 Comments


I have been thinking a great deal about Surprise Number 4, issues of authenticity in reenacting, and what is really important. As tempting as it would be to post an image of Surprise Number 4, I remember how ticked I was at the comments about an image of someone’s unkempt tent at Fort Frederick, so I can’t. It would be wrong. I may have missed the Dalai Lama today (HVAC will be my undoing, I think) but I didn’t miss the point about “doing unto others.”

So instead of philosophizing, have some photos.

The large one actually captures the entire Kitty Calash family, from Mr S at the right of the rank of soldiers to the Young Mr, in close proximity: a rare sighting indeed. Mr S’s calves stand out nicely in his new overalls, if I say so myself. Two more buttonholes, two more buttons, two more straps and those suckers are done. He did a good job, too, getting them dirty before Nathan Hale.

Yes, that’s my attempt at the “Ale House Door” jacket.  The fit is OK, the style a little late for RevWar, but it’s what I have in wool for now, made from a Wm Booth Draper remnant, and that’s the first wearing of the Sharon Burnston apron.

Sew 18th Century has a nice post on baskets, and where to get them, but wondered about the documentation of the market basket. What I can find is 1732, Plate 1 of Hogarth’s series, The Harlots’ Progress, based on Moll Flanders.


Would these have been out of use by 1770? Hard to say—I think I may have seen this form in catchpenny prints, but I have only a print source for those and it’s buried in one of the many stacks of books at home.

Still, I love my newly-arrived basket, ordered from Jeanne Beatrice for $24.

And there I am running away. Coventry, Connecticut, here I come!

Runaway! Ambitions

On By kittycalashIn Clothing, making things9 Comments
The Met, ca. 1774

Regular readers know I have a tendency to make things, especially clothing, especially for events. So another event–actually two: What Cheer Day! and Nathan Hale–approaches, and the question, as ever, is what to wear?

I like to start with the runaway ads for inspiration and documentation. The ads for Rhode Island runaway women can be limited, so I look in Boston and New London as well, and sometimes Philadelphia. My mother lives outside Philadelphia, and I know that trade connected Providence and Philadelphia in the 18th century, in particular through the mercantile house of Brown and Francis.

Of course, I do also have a fabric problem not unlike my bonnet problem. I buy fabric, and stash it. Most sewers do, and after regretting a pair of very-marked-down red leather Andrea Pfister pumps I did not buy at Marshall Field’s one winter, if I like something, I buy it. It is often red, viz:

I know what merchants were selling in Rhode Island, and as early as 1768, Samuel Young in Providence at the Sign of the Black Boy, is selling “Chints, calicoes, and patches of all figures and prices.”

When I found the ad for the runaway wearing the red and black chintz gown, I knew I wanted to make that gown.

“Run away, on the 30th of last March, from the subscriber in Fourth street, near the Post office, an apprentice girl, named Anne Carrowle came from London with Captain William Keais, in the year 1769, she has a fresh complexion, brown hair, near sighted, left handed, round shouldered, and about 16 years of age; had on, when she went away, a green silk bonnet, an India red and black and white calicoe long gown, a blue halfthicks, and striped lincey petticoat, a white apron, and new leather shoes; she has been seen trolling on the Lancaster and Gulf roads, on pretence of going to service at Esquire Moor, and the Bull Tavern, and then at Carlisle….” [Pennsylvania Gazette, 27 April, 1774]

To add to the fun, I know Lancaster and Gulph, and this could be close to where my mother lives now. Too bad I am so far from 16.

Moving on…Here’s the dilemma: front closing or not? Open robe or round gown? The last one seems easier, as the petticoat is described, and thus probably showing, so an open robe. But the bodice, what about that? Stomacher front or closed?

There is a gown in the National Trust dated ca. 1770 with a closed front. And there is a gown with a missing stomacher in the National Trust dated ca. 1770. There are many gowns in the Snowshill Collection with closed fronts, but what is documented to New England? Before 1773, it seems, only stomacher front en fourreau gowns.

PMA, ca. 1775-1780s

I think the answer is that the runaway in 1774 is not wearing the height of fashion–though at 16, she will trend as new as possible, and could be wearing a closed front gown. For me, as a middling to lower sort, I think the best choices will be a stomacher front gown with robings. I have a bodice block for a front-closing gown, know the fit works, and have a back a like and a sleeve I can live with. So on to a muslin for the stomacher front, I think. The center front closings of the striped cotton gown in Philadelphia are probably too modern for what I’m doing, and for my age.

Really, it should be brown linen. Sober. Mature. Not running away. But what are costuming and living history, if not a kind of running away?