Tag: sewing

Make Mine Menswear: The finished banyan

On By kittycalashIn Clothing, Living History, making things, Reenacting2 Comments
Banyan, 1750-1775. T.215-1992, V&A Museum
Banyan, 1750-1775.
T.215-1992, V&A Museum

Banyan or wrapping gown, either will do to wear as the year winds down. This project took longer than I wanted it to, mostly because I have a tendency to take on too many things at once and promptly get sick. I like to think of this ability as a gift.

In any case, this is a simple garment to make, made more fun by piecing– it’s the challenge that keeps you awake, when the majority of the work is in teeny-tiny back stitches.

I measured the subject and made up my own pattern, using the chintz banyan in Fitting and Proper and this one at the V&A as models.

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Patterning is a simple thing, really. Maybe too simple. Measure the gentleman’s chest, bicep circumference and arm length, neck, and back length. With those, you know how wide to made the body, the center back length you need to achieve, how wide to cut the neck hole, and how wide and how long the sleeves need to be. Really, not that hard.

You can use a diagram like this to start you off. I did wing the bottom width, guessing at the angle to give the garment a fullness similar to the chintz at the V&A.

Pieced more than once.
A lining in two colorways.

I didn’t have quite enough fabric to accommodate the recipient’s full height, nor could I get enough of the red print lining material; I had to piece both the stripes and the lining.  Trying to match up the stripes was remarkably satisfying, both when I succeeded and when I was  little off. Life Goal: Dizzying, please.

Again with the two color lining.
Again with the two color lining.

It contrasted well with a blue woven coverlet, making a nice bright note as the rooms were prepped for What Cheer Day. This was the effect I had hoped to achieve waaay back in April when I failed to finish anything I wanted for the After Dark program thanks to a bout of strep throat.

By October, though, I was able to finish the entire item and make a matching cap, allowing Billie Bowen to recuperate in style from an evening at the Cold Meat Club.

Next up, using this as the base pattern: a wool bedgown, lined in wool, and pieced. More mis-matched stripes, please!

Frivolous Friday: Fashion Flashback

On By kittycalashIn Frivolous Friday, History, making things, personal, Research, Thanks3 Comments

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I don’t know about you, but the past ten days or so have been surreal in a way that I haven’t experienced in a dozen years or so. Numerous creative folks I know are working hard to find new, engrossing projects and sharing what they find with others. As always, Satchel Paige has excellent advice: Don’t look back, something might be gaining on you.

What project shall I take up again, to distract myself from the shorter days and colder temperatures?

This is actually making reasonable progress, and might even be done by early December.
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It’s satisfying work, pleating and stitching this lightweight cotton, tiny stitches in white linen thread. I’ve made some modifications to the pattern, but not many, aiming for a 1780-1782 style. Judicious cutting and generous friends will, fingers crossed, even yield a matching petticoat, which is very exciting indeed– and an unusual fashion statement chez Calash. Here, we focus on clash, but the fabric itself takes care of that for me.

Now, if only I had bright red morocco leather shoes to wear with this, that would be a sight indeed.

Friday’s Fright: A Dress in White

On By kittycalashIn Clothing, Events, History, Living History, Uncategorized1 Comment
The Frightened Girl, oil on canvas by Cephas Thompson ca. 1810. MFA Boston, 1986.397
The Frightened Girl, oil on canvas by Cephas Thompson ca. 1810. MFA Boston, 1986.397

Two paths crossed for me this week, both in the early Federal era. Cephas Thompson, a self-taught New England painter, recently became very interesting to me. Although he grew up in Massachusetts, Thompson painted extensively in Virginia, but also in Providence, so of course the story resonated with me. But even more than the story, I loved the images. What a show the portraits would make– and he seems to have painted miniatures as well– so when I met with a local preservationist who turned out to be a fellow art school fugitive, wheels began to turn.

“What clothes!” my new friend said.
“I can get you a room full of people in those clothes,” I replied. And what fun would that be, a gallery opening where the people in the portraits appear to have come to life? Beats the pants off mere mannequins, but keep your Cossacks on: this one’s gonna take a while. In the meantime, what about those clothes?

Salem Register, July 14, 1803.
Salem Register, July 14, 1803.

Saturday marks the third time I’ve been part of the Salem Maritime Festival, and once again the West India Goods Store will be the base of operations for a mercantile enterprise. Millinery has its charms, but this year, the park historian shared fascinating notes on “She Merchants” of Salem, and the Hathorne sisters really intrigued me. Drunk Tailor dug into online newspapers (harder than ever to access remotely) and found an 1803 issue of the Salem Register

That’s an incredibly helpful list of goods to sell (and to pack from the Strategic Fabric Reserve), but a new year means a new dress, of course, and for reasons still not entirely clear to me, this seemed like exactly the right time to wear white. That’s sort of where Cephas Thompson comes back into play: white dresses.

Mrs. Cephas Thompson (Olivia Leonard). Oil on canvas by Cephas Thompson, 1810-1820. MMA, 1985.22
Mrs. Cephas Thompson (Olivia Leonard). Oil on canvas by Cephas Thompson, 1810-1820. MMA, 1985.22

There’s a pile of white cotton and white linen on my table, ready to be packed up this evening: with the dress on for a fitting, I felt like a bowl of whipped cream, the red silk Spencer and scarf the cherry on top. Happily, white and red are documentable to New England, though I would be mortified to be as frighted of a garter snake as the girl in Thompson’s painting. Strawberries and coffee are entirely different, and I shall probably require a bib for Saturday, lest my whipped cream be spoilt.

Bloody, Bratty, Boning

On By kittycalashIn Clothing, Fail, Living History, making things1 Comment

File_000Sometimes I am a terrible brat, as in this past weekend, when the autocorrect on my phone insisted that the proud four-letter Anglo-Saxon words I was typing were not what I meant to say. Darn tootin’ they were.

This is not my first rodeo with stays, but somehow I’d forgotten about the special stabby hell of boning the beasts. I’m machine sewing the channels for these, mostly because I calculated the time required to completely hand-sew them and realized I would not finish them before I needed them. I’ve rationalized this by acknowledging that I’m not using the hand-woven brown wool sateen I covet, but instead a dark blue wool twill.

A bloody, messy business
all around

I know, I know: there’s a reason staymaking was a man’s trade. My hands are pretty strong, but it took some doing to figure out how to slide the pieces in neatly without jabbing the ends repeatedly into the freshly re-opened split on my thumb.

d'oh! surgical tape made this *much* better later.
d’oh! surgical tape made this *much* better later.

It takes discipline to keep doing this, the way it takes some discipline not to eat ice cream for breakfast just because you can (though I did, just this week). Spencers and dresses are so tempting, but there’s not point to making a new dress of wonder unless I have the stays to wear it over: infrastructure is required.

The stomacher and the two front pieces are boned… six more pieces plus whipping and eyelets and binding, oh, my! It’ll be a race to have them done by June 24th:  Discipline’s the thing.