Tag: failure

Pouting over Putnam

On By kittycalashIn Events, Fail, Reenacting2 Comments
James Malton, 1761-1803, A Military Encampment in Hyde Park, 1785, Watercolor with pen in black ink, with traces of graphite on moderately thick, moderately textured, beige, laid paper, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection
James Malton, 1761-1803, A Military Encampment in Hyde Park, 1785, Watercolor with pen in black ink, with traces of graphite on moderately thick, moderately textured, beige, laid paper, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection

This Saturday is the BAR event at Putnam Park in Redding, CT. This is an event with an early set-up time, one of those “early enough to be worth packing the car Friday night” events, as Mr S will need to depart at the time he usually gets up. I’m pouting not because of the early departure time, but because I won’t be going.

The Young Mr has his first swim meet Sunday, so Saturday he’ll have to get his homework done. That means someone has to stay home, or he’ll sleep till noon and spend the rest of the day eating meat and playing video games, all normal for a 15-year-old, but not helpful when most of Sunday will be spent marinating in chlorine.

I did a strange and awful thing to my back in an altercation with the face plate of an UPS unit for a server, and find that two weeks on, I still have a mis-aligned rib and occasional searing pain when reaching for Amelia Simmons’ cookbook to find something for Mr S to take with him to Putnam Park. At first, it seemed that it would be like Fort Lee, where one does not cook.

However, it seems that a camp kitchen is planned and there could be cooking, if only someone could tend the fire during the tactical, but no. I will not be there to stir meat of any kind, in any way, and the gentlemen, if one can call them that, will have to scrounge in the corners of their haversacks, take pot luck from the Boy Scouts, or find other means of nourishing themselves. I’ve also been told that it might be as well for me not to lace up my stays and push my ribs around, though on the whole, I think I might be better off wearing them more often. No matter what, home I shall I be, and the gentlemen will have to shift for themselves. Having seen them in action, I have no doubt that they will do well for themselves, and I might still bake them a pie.

The ‘Bigger’ Issues

On By kittycalashIn Clothing, Fail, making things, Reenacting4 Comments

What of those wardrobe issues?

1. The Cross-Barred Gown is Too Big. I will have to take it apart and make it smaller as it is too wide across the back in general and the shoulders. This is fairly simple.

2. The stays are Too Big. I can lift them up and do the shimmy inside them. Seriously. Eighteen months ago, when they were made, I had a two inch gap at the back and the front did not lace closed. Now I can lace them shut front and back.

Whether I have some body image issues or am just a crack-addled monkey can be debated among impolite company some other time, but to solve these problems, here’s the half-baked scheme plan I have in mind:

I re-cut and re-fit my bodice block for an open robe and made it smaller. (For the sacque, I need only trim the sides of the back because I haven’t gotten any farther than that, thank goodness! Now I have a better sense of the shoulder width I need to fill with pleats, also good.) For the Cross-Barred Gown, dis-assembly and re-construction can happen in the spring. Simple enough, and adjustable, too but…

Stay pattern mock-up, measured.
Stay pattern mock-up, measured.

The stays are a little different, and much more serious. I’m not yet sure what to do. I could unstitch the binding and the panels and remove some bones, re-stitch the seams and re-apply the binding…or I could start all over, but make the stays a size smaller. The cardboard mockup measures 33 inches across. With a tape measure snugged up, I measure 37 inches around. Seems like all should be well, no? Two inches, front and back?

32 inches, but they don't fit.
32 inches, but they don’t fit.

It is not. Here you can see the green stays and the yard stick: 32 inches. I should have five inches altogether, right? No. These lace shut front and back (see the back lacing, kindly trust me on the fronts).

How did I not notice this before?
How did I not notice this drop before? (The pale line is the tide line of petticoat waistbands & ties)

Then I compared the mock up and the stays. Curiouser and worser!

Somehow when I assembled this hot mess, I mis-aligned the pieces,and the fronts are lower than they should be. This explains much about the increasingly poor quality of fit as these slide down my ribcage…as you can imagine, the stays can’t do their job when they’re not in the right place to do their job.

If I am to reclaim these and my decorum, the first step will have to be dis-assembly simply to get the various panels into the their proper places. I think it would be fairly simple to do to the fronts, and then I could end some of the madness by sewing the front panels shut and converting these to back-lacing stays. It might be only a temporary fix, but that alone would be worth the effort. Fortunately, I won’t require these until November 23, and in the meantime, I know which gowns are too big, and need to be smaller. With open fronts, at least they’re pretty adjustable.

Catastrophic Wardrobe Failure

On By kittycalashIn 1763 Project, Clothing, Events, Fail3 Comments
Table at the Bostonian Society, infant stays to the lower right.
Table at the Bostonian Society, infant stays to the lower right. Photo courtesy Sew 18th Century

Several weeks ago now, Sew 18th Century and I went up to Boston to be part of the People of 1763 event at the Bostonian Society. I hope she knows how grateful I was and am to her for her help and thoughtfulness in preparing an excellent table of examples. The infant’s stays were, by far, the most interesting thing people found all day. (While Sew 18th Century ate her lunch, I did hear about how a woman from California was appalled there were not more Boston terriers in Boston, and when I suggested that perhaps the financial district wasn’t where you’d find dogs, in general, but that the Common and the Garden might have more dogs and terriers in particular, I got to see cellphone pictures of her Boston terriers. I’m still intrigued by this conversation.)

Too big, and destined for re-making
Before total failure. Photo courtesy Sew 18th Century.

But all day I fought with my gown, which proves you should not wear something in public until you have fully tested it at home. Finally, packing out, the fronts and the straps separated with a flourish of leaping pins, and all decorum was lost. I began to wonder about exactly what had prompted earlier male compliments on the gown, especially when I discovered the loose stay lace at the top of my stays…and then found the lace had come untied and was unlacing itself from the bottom up! And of course, while outside looking for my husband (reportedly carried off by bears), my hat and cap blew off, and since the gown was coming undone, they were all the harder to catch, adding to the wardrobe mayhem and my discomfiture.

I have since re-looped and double-knotted the stay lace, so I hope it will not come undone again at the base (and of course I had no bodkin handy that day). But still, there were other, “bigger,” issues, to be explored tomorrow.

Found: Limits

On By kittycalashIn Events, Fail, Living History3 Comments


I try to have good sense, but I am sometimes overwhelmed by my intentions. On Saturday, I was supposed to go up to Boston to the Paul Revere House, and I was planning to take the train. It’s an easy trip between the commuter rail and the Orange Line, followed by a short walk. How hard is that?

Too hard, it seems. I’m not sure how it happened, but I missed the commuter train, and made it to Smith and Canal just in time to see the train pulling away from the platform. Regular work day? Forget 11:20, try 11:23. You have a cushion. Weekend? Those trains run right on time, but still about 90 minutes apart, which means missing the train will make you three hours late for a three hour event, and then you are not “really reliable and right on time.” The guys had the car for the day, so it was train or nothing.

I had a period lunch, and planned to take my stool. I had shirts-in-progress packed into a knapsack along with documents about what garments soldiers were issued, the average cost of those garments, as well as a finished blue check shirt typical of those worn by New England men in the last quarter of the 18th century. I’d re-read the The Needles’ Eye, and was prepared to talk about the difference between seamstresses, tailors, mantua makers and milliners.

Take some time to snooze under the sofa– Mr Whiskers

Instead, I went back home and slept most of the afternoon. Mr Whiskers had the right idea, as usual.  You cannot burn the tallow candle at both ends while the farm cat gnaws the middle. I feel bad about missing that train, but I think I’ve learned my limits. At least for this month.