Tag: common dress

Bonnets, buttonholes and boilers

On By kittycalashIn Clothing, making things1 Comment

When all else fails, sew! The Harvest Fair at Coggeshall Farm Museum approaches and quite aside from the real work that’s gone into a quilting frame, and buttons on breeches, it’s been an excuse for a new bonnet.

A few weeks ago, I found the modern, not-as-fine bonnet based on the KCI bonnet, and similar to one sold by Meg Andrews.

In a 1794 fashion plate, there is a similar bonnet with blue ribbons and an enormous feather. I don’t rate a feather as John Brown’s maid, or the Continental Army veteran’s wife, but blue ribbons seemed OK. Plus, I had them already.

The bows and the band and the strap don’t match, and my dress isn’t blue, but I think that’s all fine. The most I can say is that I’ve found two extant examples of this bonnet, and the fashion plate, which predates the farm’s interpretive year.

As a striving resident of Providence, Rhode Island’s busy port city, I’d have access to more goods than a Greenville woman. Bristol (where the farm is located) was also a thriving port, and again, boats from Rhode Island are sailing around the world bringing back china, silks, teas, spices, shawls and other goods, as early as 1787.

Now, pass me a boilermaker, please, because I’ll need a drink when the mechanical contractor tells me what the boilermaker will charge for a new Library boiler.

 

ETA: Aaand there’s this painting, Mme Seriziat, by David, 1795. Click for larger version, but she’s the reasoning behind the choice of blue ribbon.  The placement seemed to agree with the KCI and fashion plate ribbons, and joy! the color was in my ribbon box. I tried to get my ribbon to do what her ribbon is doing, but the bows and loops looked like sad blue silk dog ears– not so nice. So I switched them around to the back, based on the other images.

 

Quilting Plots

On By kittycalashIn Clothing, Reenacting2 Comments

I’ve been planning and plotting a quilted petticoat for some time (since standing outdoors all day at Fort Lee in November, actually) and while the debate continues on the listserve, I know what was worn—and survived—in Rhode Island. There are quilted calamancoes and I think a black satin quilt that are run off with, either on the body or in the arms of the fleeing servant. So there were clearly wool and silk petticoats in the colony, and that fits with what I know lives in textile boxes in museum storage, where there are glazed wool domestic petticoats, blue silk satins from France, and a black silk satin with a murkier origin.

My favorites are really the woolen ones, scratchy as they are, and for some, it is replacement waists, or the linings, that are scratchy, and with multiple layers between wearer and wool, what would it have mattered? I love them best because they are in the color family that includes the “Providence Green” color that lies somewhere between gold/khaki and sinus infection, and I love them for their imagery.

The one I think I like best is this calamanco petticoat: 

The catalog decription says cream, but I don’t know, it really looks gold. The lining is definitely lighter in color, and the thread much clearer to see. What’s interesting as well is that many of the linings are pieced (it didn’t matter!) and they’re striped. 

I bought some of the last of the cinnamon “camblet” from Burney and Trowbridge last year, and did a fast quilting test on a sample.  I chose a squirrel because they’re in the wallpaper and the woodwork at work, and because they are hilarious. I keep thinking I’ve seen one in a quilted petticoat, but I can’t find it again. They are not the easiest objects to handle, either, so finding the rodent again has proved challenging. When I do quilt up squirrels and birds, it will be with a diaper background, not the vertical lines shown here. Overall, the silk-wool blend with wool batting and linen backing quilted up nicely, and should work out fairly well….I think…though it will be lighter than the ones in the boxes.

Now that I’ve got two days to spend down in Bristol, making a quilting frame and quilting up a petticoat (which would look like a quilt, and not a petticoat, on a frame, os could pass for a 1799 activity) seems like a winning proposition. All I have to do is find an appropriate pattern for a portable frame for Mr S to make. If I finish that shirt for him, he might look more favorably on that activity.

A bit shirty about shirts

On By kittycalashIn Clothing

Fantastic seams around that gusset,seams I can really only dream of. (click for larger view)

I’m trying to be a finer seamstress, but I can tell when I’m tired and the seams wobble and the stitches get larger. Of course, I can’t always tell when I’m running on pure will power alone, so I don’t see the wobbles until the next morning.  That’s when I feel a bit shirty about how tired working can make me, since I would rather be sewing!

Mr S needs a new shirt; the one I made last year is holding up well for him but it is a small blue and white check. The check is the most common pattern in the Connecticut River valley so I’m confident in its authenticity for the period…despite murmurings about the size of the checks…but it is a “shirt from home,” compared to other shirts. Check shirts are documented to the Rhode Island Regiment in the inventory of clothes of a soldier killed at Fort Mercer in 1777. But by the later years, that shirt would have worn out, so another seems in order. I chose linen that is too heavy for a fine shirt, and probably too heavy for a not-fine shirt, but it was cut and assembly begun before the shift linen arrived on Saturday. So onward we go, and with pressing and washing, perhaps it will be OK. The placket and side slits are sewn, the neck gussets attached, and one shoulder strap. It is slow work, but a train trip next week might get it finished.

The Young Mr’s shirt, of the same check fabric and construction, has been mended twice in the  past year. He has not outgrown it, thanks to the volume of 18th century shirts, and while he has evidenced all the activity of a slug at events, he still managed to undo seams and essentially deconstruct a shirt in one day. It is a gift, I am sure.

Put a Lid on It!

On By kittycalashIn Clothing, Reenacting3 Comments
Yes, I have a bonnet problem.

I don’t know how I find all the sites and blogs I find, but I came across another interesting one today while waiting for data to load: An American Seamstress, finishing a waistcoat and struggling with a bonnet.

Have I fought with bonnets! I love bonnets, and I come by this honestly: my grandmother had a shoes thing and a hat thing, and the hat thing came with “hat face,” a particularly foxy-grandma face she make when trying on hats. So while I thought I ought to write about tent research, or the cool ad I found for a shop in Newport selling dry goods and haberdashery, now I think the heck with all that. Bonnets!

Here’s what I’ve learned, and what I’ve used. (for all images, click for a larger version)

Buckram. What they sell at Jo-Ann’s is not what you want. It is too thin to be much use unless you glue it to chip board (today’s equivalent of paste board). For more on chip board, see Kannik’s Korner on bonnets. I buy mine at Utrecht because  they’re in town. Dick Blick has it, buy the single ply.

Better buckram. I ordered a kit from Timely Tresses just to get my hands on a proven pattern and real millinery supplies. They’re hard to find in real life, and ordering online when you can’t touch stuff is hard. I did find some very sturdy buckram locally at Ryco, a mill store selling quilting fabrics, and lots of other stuff.

Millinery wire. Accept no substitutes in wire. Just trust me. I have successfully used cane originally purchased for stays. I had left overs, it curves, it worked when stitched to buckram.

Silk. The difference between taffeta and dupioni is visible and tangible (dupioni left, taffeta right). Use taffeta. I don’t always, and I still like my dupioni bonnet but most of why it works is its size and the fact that my impression is middling-trending-lower. (And saucy. I sometimes think a raised eyebrow and a loud handkerchief can make up for a lot, especially crooked petticoat hems.) But the runaway ads include stuff (wool) and linen bonnets, so read them closely for ideas.

Make a muslin first: we all know, it applies here, too. For cauls, bigger is usually better for the 18th century. For some of the bonnets, I use the lighter weight buckram to sew an insert between the caul and the lining to keep the crown more erect and poufy. At the end of the day, you might deflate, but why should your fabulous bonnet?

Trim it up. I often use strips of self fabric folded over and looped to make “bows,” because that’s how the Williamsburg bonnet looks to me. I’ve also used ribbon, so this: use silk. Less silk is better than more poly, really really, it will handle and feel and look better, and so will you. I use Burnley & Trowbridge  and Wm Booth Draper silk ribbons, and bought some from a sutler who sold herbs and hand-dyed silk ribbon.

My next bonnet will be a black silk lined with red with the red-hand dyed silk ribbon trim, based on a runaway ad. Will it be done by OSV? Probably not, but once you have it down, a nice hand-sewn bonnet is about a day’s work.