Tag: checks

Mending: Check

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

My poor old apron. It’s almost– but not quite– the firstarticle of historical clothing I made. (The first was a shift. Infrastructure and fundamentals, people.) It acquired some new wear (actual holes!) in New Jersey, and required mending.

First, it needed to be washed. I hadn’t taken a objective look at my apron in a while, but after we got home from Salem, I knew I had to mend it, which meant washing.

Reader, it smelled.

You get used to smells, and even enjoy them: wet wool, gunpowder, wood smoke. And then there’s tallow. I’ve never gotten used to the smell of tallow, and I don’t remember when this apron encountered hard fat, but the odor is unmistakable.

So is the water.

This past weekend, I had a chance to mend this favorite apron while I peddled luxury goods at Fort Dobbs’ War for Empire event.

Although I have a sturdy plain linen apron, I’m fond of checks, and of the hand this apron has achieved after much wearing and some washing.

It will never be really clean again, but for now, the apron is mended and back in rotation.

Frivolous Friday: Checkin’ it Out

On By kittycalashIn Clothing, Frivolous Friday11 Comments
Costume Parisien 1808 Cornette et Robe de Marcelline
Costume Parisien 1808
Cornette et Robe de Marcelline

One gets ideas. I often get ideas about checks. In particular, I get ideas about loud checks. The gown in the fashion plate is appealing, when you’re looking for checks, and all the more so when you know how similar it is to an extant garment in your actual location.  The cornette I can do without– that’s the headgear, which looks like she’s crammed a sugar Easter egg on her head– but at least it could hide a short hair cut or the melting pomade of humid summer.

Costume Parisien 1808 Chapeaux et Capotes en Paille Blanche et Rubans
Costume Parisien 1808
Chapeaux et Capotes en Paille Blanche et Rubans

But wait! What check through yonder tastefulness breaks? It is the fashion plate, and  the checked bonnet is my sun. My goodness, that bonnet on the lower left is satisfying. It appeals to me the most because it is by far the most check-heavy bonnet I’ve seen, and making it would not involve plaiting straw, which I know nothing about. It’s a direct trip to obnoxious via silk taffeta, and that’s a trip I’ll buy a ticket for.

Top: check silk taffeta, Artee Fabrics Bottom: check cotton, Mood Fabrics
Top: check silk taffeta, Artee Fabrics
Bottom: check cotton, Mood Fabrics

Actually, as the result of a train ticket last August, I am the proud possessor of some delightfully bright lightweight cotton check in search of a fashion plate. The year I’m targeting (which is not 1808, but 1818) hasn’t yet provided published inspiration, but there are more places to search. In any case, an orange check gown with a blue check bonnet is pretty much crying out to be made. Bring your hanky, in case your eyes water, but make sure it’s check, too.

On & Off the Grid

On By kittycalashIn 1830s, Clothing, Living History, making things2 Comments

It’s been a very busy time chez Calash, with many changes underway and to come. It’s hard to keep up with all the writing I’m doing everywhere, but eventually I’ll be back on topics of authenticity, standards, and whimsical Wednesdays.

This week, though, is all about checks. (Most weeks are, in some way, aren’t they?) Not paychecks, silly: linen checks.

We are headed out to Eastfield Village Friday afternoon where Mr Hiwell and the Young Mr will join in the 1833 militia muster, and Mr JS and I will occupy a house as a shop/tailoring business/punch-making and cooking establishment of one kind or another.

Mr Hiwell has been warned to expect a diet unlike his norm, and since his roundabout is white, we will quickly know if he is smuggling Oreos and barbeque sauce.
 For the Young Mr, I have been making trousers. Yes, I do like things to line up. I wasn’t even paying that much attention when I cut these, but apparently that was  was enough.

Yes, even the buttons.


Sigh. It’s a thing.

He’s also got a roundabout in the works, which I must focus on more closely to finish. This is patterned from an original in Henry Cooke’s collection, but… Mr. Cooke and I, on a very sticky Tuesday afternoon, did not have the Young Mr at hand to measure again. The original was too small: that we knew. What we did not know was that the boy had taken on a man’s shape– or, as a friend says, “he’s dude-shaped now!”–and the additions we made were not enough, except (barely) to the sleeves.


Oh, well. There was just enough to make it all work, and after some trials I realized it needed a lining. What kind of lining? A checked lining, of course!

It seems okay, but these collars are strange to  me.


Well, at least he will be clad.

Let you think  I’m sewing only for the lad, I am in fact working on a gown for myself. There’s a hopeful yard or so of another check’d  linen from the stickiest fabric store on 39th Street lurking, but I do not think that apron will happen this week. Perhaps John Brown’s housekeeper will finish it someday.

At least there are already gowns and aprons ready-made that can travel with me. Someday soon I’d like to finish my new stays… winter will come soon enough, and more sewing then.

Checked Linen Aprons post-1800

On By kittycalashIn Clothing, History, Living History, Museums, Reenacting, Research6 Comments

Not that this is an exhaustive or final chronicle, but Jackie asked about the apron.

Spring Cleaning, 2012
Spring Cleaning, 2012

I first encountered this form of apron at Old Sturbridge Village, on display in the Firearms and Textiles exhibit space, which I think of as “Muskets and Muslins.” The accession number given on the exhibit label was 26.39.4, but the object does not appear in the OSV online collections database (they do warn that it contains just a selection of their total 60K-plus object holdings). The original at OSV, as sketched and described by me in April 2012 has a drawstring at the neck, straps that button, string at the back opening, and is slim, without gathers. That means the bodice is very similar to the gown bodices of the early part of the 19th century.

Smock, Checked cotton, Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association. #2000.01.869.
Smock, 2000.01.869 PVMA

There is another original checked bodiced apron in the Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association collection in Deerfield, MA. This original appears in color in The Needle’s Eye by Marla Miller. As you can see in the images of my apron, I mashed the two styles together to suit the amount of material I had on hand, the skills I had three years ago, and the amount of time I had between seeing the apron and the day of the program, which was probably two days during which time I had pleurisy.*

This is also wrong, but funny.
This is also wrong, but funny.

To refocus: I chose to wear this apron at Whitehorse House in 1820 for a really wrong reason: it was what I had.

Prints in the British Museum show a maid in a yellow gown with a black apron, no bib; there is another, with a maid in a green gown, in a wikigallery, that I could not fully track down; a London Market scene; and a French print from 1818 that does show a bibbed black apron on a shop assistant. The visual research I’d done for the 1820 program suggested that black aprons were the height of fashion, and that they did not always have bibs.

Papering the Saloon at Tickford Hall, watercolor by Diana Sperling, 1816.
Papering the Saloon at Tickford Hall, watercolor by Diana Sperling, 1816.

Since we deal in confessions here, I will tell you that I did buy material for a black apron, and I planned to make a strapped or bibbed one, much like the one Sabine made. The appearance of the dark apron in Diana Sperliing’s watercolor of the ladies papering the saloon at Tickford Park put the dark strapped and sometimes bibbed apron the in English-speaking world. And still I did not manage to make one. If I were to do an 1820 program again, or even an 1813 or later millinery shop again, I like to think I would find the time to make a black strapped and possibly bibbed apron. I do think they were the height of fashion, and are likely to have been worn by women in shops, and by maids.

Do I think the checked apron is wrong? Given that I can rationalize anything, of course not! I think a checked apron is probably reasonably appropriate within the context of a kitchen, even in 1820, especially in New England. Since we did not cook on Saturday, the black apron would have been ideal, but I think the checked apron passes. To make it pass with a higher grade, I will freely admit it requires button and tape upgrades. Since the next dates on the horizon are 1775 and 1780, chances are good those upgrades won’t happen anytime soon. * Do not attend an all-day outdoor event in the cold when you are not well. Do not attend said event without your cloak, or in stays you have laced up a little too firmly. Do not deny that the cold you have might actually be the start of something bigger, when it includes a productive cough. Lo, the lessons of living history are many.