A Frolic through Time

Goldwork-Embroidered Petticoat: Progress Report

2012-02-01T10:56:00.000-05:00

Slow but sure progress has been made on the goldwork-embroidered petticoat. A quick look.

I've added two more complete swags in check purl, flat spangles for the bows, and cupped spangles with a tiny transparent gold-colored glass seed bead nested into each one. Beads were used, if not copiously, at this period, for a little extra color. In the original there is a cupped spangle with a tiny piece of purl nested into it: I went for the gold beads instead for a change.

You will see I've made progress in learning to backstitch down spangles on the bows. The leftmost bow at the top of the first swag was improperly done, while the second and third were done as they should be. A properly backstitched spangle shows the thread on both sides of the spangle, so it's held down on two sides. That means the spangle is flat...it doesn't flutter like the spangles on the leftmost bow do. Less shine, but sturdier. It was popular to either add a length of purl to the backstitch to hide these threads or to couch passing thread down atop the threads, but many pieces do not show this extra step, and I have opted here for the simpler effect.

Today I leave you with something silly. Christopher and I folded laundry Monday morning. After folding some pants and napkins on his own, the boy hit on a new way to get the laundry out of the basket.

Whoops-on-purpose!

An Unseasonable Moment: Disturbing or Welcome?

2012-01-28T20:29:00.001-05:00

Our snowdrops

Blooming on the eastward-facing front of our house. Blooming now, when they should wait a few more weeks. No snow this year, either, other than a sugar dusting a few weeks ago, and flurries in December.

What is your weather report?

1790s Convertible Spencer: More Research on How "Bodies" Were Worn

2012-01-25T21:43:00.000-05:00

London and Paris Fashions, May 1799

The sleeveless sort of spencer thingie was known, as mentioned in previous posts, by such names as the "body" and the "corset", and "sleeveless spencer". I start to see it popping up in 1796 and by the end of the decade it's pretty common in fashion plates.

In looking for documentation to go along with the sample Metropolitan spencer, I'd been all over Gallery of Fashion, hoping to find information on what sorts of garments were worn beneath, in words, not just plates. I wanted to make sure that my wearing this sort of thing over a dress was done.

It was discouraging to find that Gallery of Fashion, in 1796 anyhow, the date of my inspiration example, called for these items to be worn with petticoats and "sleeves". So it is for my inspiration garment, anyhow, and for other examples I reviewed.

Was this saying that the sleeves were actually attached to the body, and worn with a petticoat? Usually Gallery of Fashion tells us when a plate depicts a round gown (bodice+skirt together) or a robe+petticoat. Yet was this a new combination of clever little pieces? Or just imprecise wording naming the piece parts of the ensemble without attempting to tell what was attached to what. I do not know.

However, another subscription magazine, The Fashions of London and Paris, of which the Japanese Bunka Gakuen library has a copy, comes to our aid. It tends to tell us when items are dresses and when something else...expect in the cases of Parisian fashion, when often they give plates sans text. Ah well, something is better than nothing.

In May of 1799, in a page describing the latest in Paris headdresses (see illustration above), here is as much of the original description as applies:

Paris dresses.

Fig. 1. [not included here, since it only describes the headdress]

Fig. 2. Velvet toque, (cap) trimmed with lace, worked in gold. -- This is an imitation of the costume of a Venetian actress. Among the elegantes who brought it out, it is always worn with the Swiss, or half corset, of which the most common are white satin, trimmed with deep red velvet.

Fig. 3. [not included here, since it only describes the headdress]

Fig. 4. [not included here, since it only describes the headdress]

...

General Observations Relative to the Paris Dresses...White is the prevailing color, the finest Indian muslins plain embroidered obtain the preference with those rich females denominated elegantes over all other manufactures.

The Espindor, which ladies of the above-mentioned class have lately shewn such partiality for, is a kind of spencer; of a deep color, not turned back, and with short sleeves; it is crossed in before, and edged with narrow slips of lace in gold and silver".

Note figures 3 and 4 are wearing little overgarments as well. From this image and description we learn that there were a variety of little garments (no surprise) and that they could have fanciful names (again no surprise). There is no image of the Espindor, but, remember the German crossed front, short-sleeved, pink spencer? Mmmm?

Plate 10.
Luxus und
der Moden.
April 1796.

Below, for August 1799, the description of figure 2, "...jacket and train of white muslin". Under General Observations, "The Jacket described in no. 2, is generally worn..." No mention of anything under the jacket. I think this one is like the 18th century jacket, worn with a petticoat. I have never been certain what distinguishes a jacket from a spencer in contemporary texts. Danske dragter: moden 1790-1840 by E. Anderson, says that a feature of the spencer was that it was cut straight off at the waist, rather than allowed to have tails like the 18th century jacket. (p. 230.) Merriam-Webster defines the spencer as a "short, waist-length jacket". However, many museums, the Metropolitan Museum of Art included, include tailed specimens under the name "spencer". I wonder if jackets were worn, as they had been in the 18th century, with nothing under them (unless as riding dress), while spencers usually had dresses under them? If anyone is sure, please let me know.

London and Paris Fashions, August 1799.

In December 1799 after describing quite a number of dresses and their accessories in full, they write under General Observations:

Silk pelices are more prevalent than ever. Habits are much worn in the morning. Black velvet spencers or corsets; plain black velvet cloaks, and black velvet handkerchiefs, are general favorites...

Then, in the January number, they illustrate a Paris fashion (dated December 1799 because it could take a bit for the fashions to cross the channel), and they write:

Paris Figure (from the Costume Parisien)
Pointed turban, ornamented with an aigrette, or plume, and a myrtle garland. Spencer without sleeves, of purple satin or velvet, trimmed round with silver, and clasped in front. Scarlet shawl. Silver necklace and earrings.

London and Paris Fashions, December 1799
(but appearing in the January1800 number)
Image Bunka Gakuen Library.

So here we have a variety of interesting evidence, including the sleeveless spencer, so named, over a dress, described in print...we don't know if this is a full dress ensemble although given the fan, and the style of headdress, it's at least afternoon dress.

This small set of examples is a start and probably enough for me, who am not attempting to build a persona per se, but a costume.

1790s Convertible Spencer: The Actual Project Begins

2012-01-24T13:18:00.002-05:00

The shape.

Last fall I decided I needed a new spencer. Do you recall this series of posts? At the end, with your help, I decided on a simple "body" spencer, to which sleeves and different collars might be added or removed at will.

The Look

To the right you see the back of the design, from February 1796, Gallery of Fashion. The original description:

Afternoon dress
...Muslin petticoat, trimmed at the bottom with blue satin in vandyke scallops; short full sleeves of muslin, trimmed with blonde. Body of blue satin, trimmed round the neck with a double plaiting of blonde, and on the back with a chain; epaulettes of the same, looped with a spring chain and tassels of gold.

I will pleat net lace on to the body in lieu of a collar, and make the removeable epauletes to hold up the dress sleeves. However, I will also add a peplum.

I will wear this body in July, to this year's Jane Austen Festival at Locust Grove, as an afternoon ensemble. Hence no sleeves. It can be so hot there at that season! It will go over my existing wrapfront dress. I'd had difficulties with putting something round over something vee-necked, but think it now not an issue, as the spencer is low-necked and I can play with the dress closure.

The Extant Evidence: Inspiration Spencer from the Met

1970.281.1

Recall this funny little garment, an apparent loving hands at home renovation of an earlier umlined garment, now at the Met? She's my inspiration garment, sans collar.

Creating the Cutting Diagram

I had already long figured out many of the details of little Met spencer's basic construction, but had not drawn myself a general diagram.

This morning I had two sunny hours, a doctor's appointment over, the boys at school, and after weeks of sickness and duties of all kinds, thought to play a little, and now was the perfect moment to make that diagram. Here they are.

Here is everything but the peplum.

I am not terribly good with a pencil, but perhaps you see how it is going. I used the original garment photos, looking at both the exterior and what I could make out of the interior to come up with the shapes. They are very simple indeed, except for that peplum.

The peplum caused some muddling around, looking in Costume Close Up for earlier jackets and how they patterned peplums, and a look through all the spencers in the Met's online collection. I came up with two scenarios for how the peplum might be constructed, and decided on the second, simpler version, based on the closest examination of that original that I could manage. My peplum is in two pieces, with points front and back, and in back, a small pleat at the side back seam to give it some puff.

The next step? To drape it in Swedish tracing paper, right over my actual dress so that I get the fitting right. Don't hold your breath: I may not get to that for a bit.

The scene of the planning. It was a pleasure.

Today I leave you with yesterday's news: the boys and I had an alphabet treasure hunt on a walk up the street. Every time we spotted something or some concept that agreed with the letter we were on, either boy or I photographed it. Here we are on "L": they are standing at the edge of a "lake" and floating a leaf boat in it. Two "L"s in one!

Very best to you all!

If I Were To Make This Titanic Tea Dress, Here's How I'd Do It

2012-01-20T17:32:00.001-05:00

If I were to make a Titanic tea dress, this might be it. This is a House of Drécoll day dress, circa 1912, from The Metropolitan Museum of Art (accession no. 1998.253.3). Here is the high-waisted Empire look so very popular at this date, but rife with lots of other historic references.

Here are the references I see:

1770s: the open robe, polonaised, and the tucks in the front of the petticoat. The full sleeve ruffles. the box-pleated ruching.
1790s: the trained open robe, pulled back to the sides. The fluffy wrapfront dress underneath the robe. So is the wide lace trim edging the robe. The sash effect.
Late 1860s: the sash tied in a low bow at the back with the robe boufed up inside the bow. In 1868, for example, the Harper's Bazar Baschlik Mantilla wrap ties up the skirt in back in a very similar way. See Cornell's HEARTH site, Sept 5, 1868.

What historic references or ideas do you see?

Wouldn't it be a treat to wear?

How I Would Construct This Dress

Like many ornate Edwardian gowns of this date, the dress construction is layered and rather devilish. On this dress, it's not that the basic pieces are that oddly shaped, it's that there is just so much to think through and so much to sew and connect.

-----A Short Interjection To Rant-----

This era mastered draping and fit, but at the cost of flexibility. Here is a dress with clear references to earlier eras, but as with most backwards-looking designs, only superficial ones. Its construction is clearly of its time. Looking at it, I can nod in pleasure with the ingenious way it's made, but another part of me sighs that so much of the work is plain unncessary and that if the wearer were to grow or shrink, if something needed remodeling, or if the wearer loved part of the dress but hated the rest, she was pretty much stuck with the designer's entire ensemble or an expensive and potentially unsuccessful redo.

Step back a century or more and the landscape is very different. Not only do the customers rule (for the most part) on design, but the actual garments are cut and closed with methods that allow for changes in weight and even wearer, while the essential fit remains good, and the garments are made to layer and often can function as separates to be mixed and matched in fashionably appropriate ways.

Mmmppphhh.

-----End Rant-----

Here is how I might construct the dress. I am not saying that this is how the designer did it, but it's how I would use typical Edwardian shapes and methods to do it.

Let's start from the inside out. Refer to additional pictures at the bottom of the post for visual information.

A bodice ("waist") lining;
The Dressmaker, p. 90

This dress may look unfitted, but given how smoothly the lace wrap-front portion of the bodice lies, the layers you see likely are mounted onto a tightly fitted lining. That lining helps to ensure that the dress retains the draping wanted, and doesn't just hang heavily from the shoulders, even with an interior belt to help hold the ensemble up.

Using one of the resource books from the last post, especially Butterick's The Dressmaker (Chapter XVI, Lined Waists), I'd find a fitted front-closing low bodice lining pattern and draft and cut a toile from strong cotton. Given that I do not have a corset for this period, and not everyone wore them at this date anyhow, I'd tack multiple bones to it at front, sides, and back to create the shape. Then I'd adjust the seams and once it fit tightly, I'd stitch in the bones for real and attach hooks and eyes to the front center. If I had a proper corset, I might forgo all but a back bone or two, and depend on the interior belt (see below)to create the shape.
Next I'd create an interior petersham belt, 2.5" wide preferably, to which both bodice and skirts are stitched to. I'd close it at front side with large, heavy hooks and eyes. The belt was a super common construction aid. It helped high-waisted skirts have no visible waistband, allowed connection of bodice and skirt to a firm foundation, especially helpful with soft, tearable fabrics like net or heavy passementerie and beading. Follow the directions in the Butterick The Dressmaker book (see last post), and if it's unclear, you can refer to analagous directions in the other manuals. Make sure to set the belt above the natural waistline, perhaps two inches. It's really hard to find modern petersham in this width. You can butt narrower widths together and whip stitch them to approximate the width needed.
I'd stitch the tight lining to the belt.

An example of an interior belt on a dress in my collection.

I'd find a wrap-front kimono bodice pattern from the same list of books for the lace portion of the bodice. The kimono design was hotter than Louisville in July and featured no shoulder seam, and sleeves in one with the bodice. The lace portion of the bodice does not need sleeves, so those do not need to be included from the pattern.
To get the gentle wrapping motion of the lace on the front of the bodice, I'd toile it in lightweight, drapey cotton, then cut the lace for real. Make sure the waist short, for this dress is high-waisted. Give the back a gentle neckline point, pretty deep, to match the original.
Once the toile fit, I'd cut the real lace, preferably a net with a loose needlelace pattern on it, seam it with very narrow French seams, hem the armscyes, and gently mount it to the underbodice and to the belt. Closure? Multiple hooks and eyes at both sides, eyes attached to the lining. The Butterick book The Dressmaker details how to drape a bodice atop a fitted lining. This layer is tacked to the belt, too.
Then I would use the same kimono bodice pattern and toile the open robe bodice, this time in a crisp or starched cotton imitating the crisp silk taffeta. The sleeves are included this time. You will notice that when the sleeves are cut, the stripe will automatically run horizontally when worn! Make sure to allow for the deep cuff on the sleeve.
The front of the open robe has a dart, perhaps a two-ended dart, to the right and under the bust. This helps to pull the robe back in a curve from the bust. Make sure the back neckline curve is very deep to match the original, and that it has a few scant gathers.
Then I'd cut the silk, seam it with French seams or open seams finished with binding.
Cut the blue ribbon trim, mount to the underbodice up just near the bust, as in the original.
Mount the robe bodice to the underbodice, and right over those ribbons.

Section of The Dressmaker about draping the
outside bodice fabric to the lining. p. 93

Attach robe bodice to the belt, too. Again, refer to those manuals. They illustrate this, as do some originals. Sometimes the tacking is plain messy and can even be seen on the exterior of the dress! It was covered with a sash, hence the slapdash work.
Cut and tack the sleeve flounces. I'd want to toile the shapes.
Then I'd pattern the underskirt in interfacing. It's hard to tell on the original, but this looks like a one-piece skirt, so called. There are plenty of patterns for them in the books I have referenced in the previous post. If I could get net with an integral loose pattern, that would be great, as the pattern at the bottom was not only almost standard on nice dresses at this time, but is a reference to the 18th century habit of embroidering petticoat hems with deep bands of embroidery. Otherwise, plain Jane. Sigh.
I'd add the tucks.
Next, the skirt would be cut and sewn with narrow French seams, and tacked to the interior belt. Handy thing, that interior belt.
Now for the open robe skirt. This I would drape right on the dressform, from a single piece of fabric, gathering some at the sides and heavily in the back. I'd hem it and, yes, tack it to the belt!
Next, cut, scantly gather, and tack the lace flounce to the edges of the open robe.
Make box pleat trim and tack onto the open robe.
Now it's time to connect the underskirt to the robe. I'd use doubled thread and connect the two layers with long tacks that leave an inch or so loose inside, so that the robe can move. I'd tie the ribbon bow at this point to, and tack where necessary. This is a matter of playing. The complex Edwardian garments I own use a lot of these sorts of connections to preserve draping just so, even when the wearer was in motion. These are works of sculpture as much as they are dresses and even their overall movement is controlled.
Next, the sash. A single layer of the silk, pinked with a tiny pinker, and backed with cotton to help it cling to the silk. Hooks and eyes to attach it at the front.
Next, fun with high-quality vintage paper and silk flowers. The posy can be tacked to the front of the belt.

Whoo. That was a process, wasn't it?

What do you think? Is this something that you'd try?

Titanic Fever: 1912 Garment Construction Resources

2012-01-11T20:26:00.001-05:00

From my collection: a damaged teens-era
lingerie dress with bretelles and interior
belt.

If you've been living under a rock, you may not be aware that a goodly proportion of the costuming world is bewitched, befevered and bebothered about the upcoming 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic. There are so many circa 1912 ball, tea, and travel ensembles underway that I am sure the fabric stores have noticed an uptick in sales of chiffon, satin, handkerchief linen and seed beads.

I have not caught the disease and do not plan to; time's too precious this year. However, having spent a number of years in the Edwardian costume era, I've accumulated some construction resources that ought to help you when you start your designing and draping.

First, an extant garment, analyzed. I have an early teens era lingerie dress, in terrible condition, that I analyzed some years ago, specifically for the interior waist belt or waist band that is the linchpin of its construction, as are so many garments from this era. My post, Edwardian "Lingerie" Dress Diary, Part 6, contains an analysis, full of photos. It even shows how the bodice draping was attached to that waist belt!

Cutting Guides

Thornton's International System of Ladies' Garment Cutting. 1912. Here you go! A go-to place for the pattern basics for 1912. Excellent for suits. I've drafted from here and the drafts work fine. Thank you, Costumer's Manifesto, for making this treasure available.

The American garment cutter for women's garments. Gustav Engelmann. 1913. Pattern basics for 1913, but with some nice extras in the way of kimono cuts. From archive.org.

The elements of dress pattern-making: Magyar dress-cutting for technical classes, home workers & professionals. Reeve, Amy J. 1912. A rather different way to approach cutting. From Cornell's HEARTH site.

The Ladies Tailor, Vol. XXVII. No. 3. March 1911, London . Titanic-era suits! From the Costumer's Manifesto.

Sashes, from the American System of Dressmaking, 1912

Dressmaking Manuals

This was the heyday of Home Economics, and there was a massive proliferation of dressmaking manuals, especially for schools. Some of them are very well written and include the minutest of details on draping and seams and dealing with the all-important waist belt. You will notice that school manuals did not keep up with high fashion; it would not make sense. Therefore, the dates of some of those I include are later than the Titanic, but their advice will still be useful.

The American System of Dressmaking. Merwin, Pearl. 1912. If you read nothing else, read some of these 1000+ pages. This correspondence course includes draped bodices over fitted linings, kimono sleeve cuts, sashes, many of the details that you need. Lots of photographs and illustrations. The course was published in multiple editions, and some content dates to 1906 or so, but there is much that applies to 1912. From Archive.org.

Dressmaking in the school. Cooke, J. C., Kidd, H. M. 1913. Great for details on fitting and on applying trims.

What a newspaper can show you. Evening Standard, Ogden, Utah, 04/20/1912

The dressmaker: a complete book on all matters connected with sewing and dressmaking from the simplest stitches to the cutting, making altering, mending and caring for the clothes. Butterick. 1916. The classic kept being updated, year after year. There are still some early Edwardian images left in this 1916 edition, but it includes information on belting and hanging skirts, including circular skirts, that apply to the teens era.

Newspapers

The Sun. April 14, 1912. If you read
the article very carefully, there is construction
information included.

News reporting during the late Edwardian and teens era frequently included heavily illustrated, photo-rich "women's pages" with lengthy articles on fashions, millinery, hair dressing, ettiquette, and sometimes even tutorials. Chronicling America, from the Library of Congress, is STUFFED with such articles. I can't stress enough just how good a resource this is. You'd be nuts to miss it.

Take for example the article from the New York Sun, April 14, 1912, titled "Tucked Up Drapery Marks New Gowns". If you read it carefully, look at extant garments for comparison, and then use the pattern drafts for the basic dress or waist and skirt underneath the drapery, you can work out the fabrics, cuts, and additional drapings and trims on top.

Use the keywords "fashion", "drapery", or other specific words to find appropriate articles.

Other

Dressmaker's Dictionary. Curtis, Homer S. 1916. Fabric names, explained :} From Archive.org.

Edwardian-era content on my blog. Hairstyle information and more, almost always including the research sources I included.

I wish you all the luck in the world!

The Epiphany Pageant

2012-01-11T11:09:00.001-05:00

In the Episcopalian world, the Christmas season lasts 12 days and ends with Epiphany, also called Twelfth Night, which celebrates the visit of the Magi to baby Jesus. Each year our church holds a pageant, in which the story is played out by the children. This year the boys took part for the first time. They took their roles as an angel and a shepherd very seriously, so much so that any smiles at all were only in evidence when they processed up the aisle to the "shed" of made of wood and magnolia branches, a moment when cameras are not appropriate, or this fond parent would have taken some!

A note on their costumes, constructed from stash materials. I used the age-old "pattern" for a T-garment for both the angel robe and the shepherd's robe. All that meant was folding the fabric longways, laying the boy down on it with his arms held out, and measuring for his height and arm length. Then I folded twice the needed length in half crossways so I had four layers, cut a hole for the head, and in Christopher's case, cut open the front. I used selvages where possible and hemmed the rest. I made 6-inch hems so that the boys can wear their robes for a few more years. Some belts, two ties to close Christopher's robe and a headdress for him and we were done...Noah's wings and halo were courtesy the church.

Noah tests his halo.

All shepherds, and one little angel who wants to be
next to his brother, line up for the
festivities.

Christmas Day Moment

2011-12-28T16:19:00.000-05:00

After the Christmas Eve Service, after settling down for the night, after Christmas morning's excitement at the foot of the tree, a little peace while cousin Tommy, Christopher, and Noah consider their new books and toys, and parents and grandmother take it easy for a moment. Before brunch, naps or no naps, Christmas dinner, and family visiting...

Goldwork-Embroidered Petticoat, Back at It To Ease Stress

2011-12-21T16:50:00.002-05:00

For those of you for whom messing with teeniney, wee bits of beadlike wiggly wire, minute spangles, and small motifs stresses you out, read no further, for your blood pressure may rise.

For those who find doing very precise, small-scale work actually relaxing, you may find the below a bit fun.

Do you remember the goldwork-embroidered petticoat I made last summer? The one with little sprigs all over it in a variety of motifs? Here it is as worn in August.

As a first effort, it is nice, but...it needs more work, for a couple of reasons.

First, a look at it laying flat in decent but night bright light reveals a lack of brilliance. The work is executed only in spangles and purl. Spangles are flat sequins; purl is tightly wrapped gilt (or 2% gold, for those with more cash) wire, formed into long hollow tubes.

Now, some fashion plates and originals, for example the pretty French 1790s muslin in the Napoleon and the Empire of Fashion exhibit (which spaces its motifs on the upper part of the dress), or the dress from the Met, below, do widely space their motifs. That was the effect I was going for initially. However, because the motifs are composed more of faceted purl than of spangles, the shine factor isn't as high as I'd like it to be.

Metropolitan Museum of Art, accession number

1995.5.5.

Second, I am not happy with the motifs that outline leaf shapes, but leave the interiors blank. I've looked at a lot of extants since designing the petticoat, and so far as I can tell, only very tiny sprigs are made with their leaves barely outlined. In spriggy designs, purl leaves of any size are usually filled in with the purl running obliquely. Here's my silly drawing:

If you have a copy of 18th Century Embroidery Techniques, and look at the goldwork section, you will get a better drawing:}

Third, the bottom of the petticoat lacks a transition between the spriggy motifs and the fringe. Sure, some dresses were just sprigged, but I like the versions with a wide repeating band of embroidery about the bottom, especially when the motif is composed of swagged floral motifs. By 1800, swags weren't as hot as they'd been earlier, but they were still about, and I like swags, and don't get to have swaggy fun very much, so I want swags here. Want to see 1790 swagged petticoat emvroidery designs? Check Gallery of Fashion (enter the periodical name into the search box). Also search for "embroidery designs" on the Victoria and Albert museum site. There aren't overmany actual embroidered petticoats extant, at least that I can find.

Fourth, Christmastime, and the state of having young children, is stressy, so that some some sort of quiet release, some quiet place to retreat to that has nothing to do with Christmas Preparations or Productivity, becomes a Restorer of Balance. Some activity in which the brain can focus on something pretty, and for which the creation process is somewhat repetitive but does command the conscious mind almost 100%. Something that can be taken up and put down in a moment. Embroidery is perfect for that, and sparkly embroidery in the depths of short days is perfect.

Enter a rework.

After all, I've put too much work into this petticoat to chalk the effort up as Learning Example #1 and move on. With each motif consuming upwards of 20 minutes, you do the math in terms of hours, and I am betting you would rework the piece if it were in your hands, too.

So, What Changes to the Petticoat Lie Ahead?

Fill in the leaves, of course. That means snipping off some of the old motifs and redoing them. Second, add a band of embroidery to the bottom.

You can see the tentative first results of both below.

Here is a shot of the position on the petticoat that I am working on: the center bottom. I have set the embroidery hoop over a sprig in the bottommost row of the sprigs, and under that I have started a swag that will be some 5 inches high. There is actually a decent amount of room between the sprig motif row and the fringe. That's what will be filled in.

The design is a row of swags made of a rope of tiny leaf sprigs all done in purl, and tied at the top with bows in spangles. At the middle of each swag, a second spangle-and-purl bow with tassel tails dangles. Underneath, a second set of swags, this time in silk chenille and silk embroidery thread.

The design is a take off of a pattern in a pocket of a man's waistcoat, found in 18th Century Embroidery Techniques in the goldwork section, and is roughly the same dimensions, perhaps a little larger. I'd show you the original design but since Gawthorpe Hall hasn't posted an image of it, and the only images I have are in a copyrighted book, sorry, guys.

You are looking at a motif in the bottommost row of the sprigs, and the first bow in a series of swags.

Now for the detail shot. Mmmm. Needs work. Let's examine what is going on.

What's the deal with the sprig motif riding so close on top of the bow? A bit of explanation. I did that work before deciding to add the swag motifs, so yes, off it will come, to be repositioned higher. Thankfully, the silk-cotton voile weave is widely spaced enough to allow redos without leaving holes, and all of the sprigs were freehand-embroidered...there is no drawn pattern on the fabric.

What about how rough the floral sprig leaf looks when executed in purl?

First, I haven't laid the purl obliquely enough. Have to redo it.
Second, close up, purl often looks rather imperfect, as if it just won't sit where you put it. In fact, it is hard to manage purl. First, you have to cut each piece before you lay it, so close measurement is important and tough to achieve. Second, no, it won't lay down easily: it is wire, and likes to bing-bong around, and only couching stitches hold it in place. All but the best of the best trained professionals had those issues, and so purl easily looks wonky and heavy up close. Don't believe me? Have a look at All That Glisters Goldwork, in Stitch with the Embroiders Guild. Look at the purl laid on top of the spangles on this German 18th Century professional example. See how it wanders a little? Okay then. Makes me feel better. Plus, practice will help.

What about the band of swags at the base of the skirt? What's the design, and what's going on with the elements?

The design must be drawn because the design success depends on consistency in the pattern repeats. Here you see the bow tying up two swags.
The bow:

The spangles are backstitched in place, and overlap heavily. However, guess what. I backstitched them backwards. Each thread should lay of the part of the spangle that is not covered by the spangle before. That helps the spangles lay flat and in place. Oops. I had no directions on how to do it, other than that I knew such lines of spangles were backstitched. Another lesson learned. The only pity is that riding free as they do now, the spangles reflect a lot of light. Pooh.
The spangle at the center of the bow is overlaid by a piece of purl.
The original laid a line of purl atop the spangles, but I found that this addition diminished the brilliance of the spangles so much that I left that element out of the design. Spangles were often left plain.

To the left of the bow, the beginning of a purl-and-sequin leaf swag: the central stem and each set of leaves are of purl only, each piece of purl strung and attached like a bead, and then couched down. Each leaf set is divided by a cupped spangle filled with a tiny piece of purl.
To the right of the bow, you can see the penciled design.

Since goldwork was usually accompanied by silk embroidery, another phase of this project may be to add some small floral motifs in yellow and cream among the swags, again per the original. The original had more naturalistic color, but some designs were very restrained in color use by this date, and did not aim at naturalism. I won't touch that for at least a year. Meantime, I can still wear the petticoat!

So that is what I am doing this season, and into January. It should be a pleasant process and even is now, right in the learning phase.

This Evening, I Leave You With...

A cozy wintertime scene. The boys playing with their Legos under the gardener's bench in the family room. Little ones like corners and hidey-holes. Do you remember?

Making the Wrapfront Dress Do Double and Triple Duty

2011-12-04T10:33:00.001-05:00

Given how little time and funds I have to sew, I am learning to make what I have stretch in a lot of ways...a method popular "back then". Not to mention with my modern wardrobe.

First, we know that the wrap-front dress can be worn with a "body", to make an afternoon ensemble, or an evening ensemble, depending on how it is accessorized. 18th Century Sewing Techniques has an example used for evening dress.

Second, I can simply wear it like an open robe, with a petticoat peeping out underneath. Here is a 1799 fashion plate from The Fashions of London and Paris, from the Bunka Gakuen library collection in Japan. This particular example is full dress, meaning that it would be suitable for dinner or an evening out. Memo: the fabric the model is wearing around her arm is not a shawl, it's the train from her dress.

The description:

London Full Dress

Hat of lilac crape, looped up in front; with silver loop and button; ostrich feathers; robe of muslin; petticoat of lilac crape; both trimmed with lace. Lilac belt, trimmed with silver; gold chain.

A handsome hat, small plumes, sash and matching petticoat, and necklace--oh, and shoes--, and voila, we have yet another ensemble. In my case, I already have everything to hand. Just need to mix it around a bit. Or I can take fabric from my stash and run up a petticoat in another color. No expense whatever.

That hat...Polly and Jenni, what do you think? The original is felt.

Just A Reminder to Put Your Best Foot Forward: You Don't Know Who Might be Watching

2011-11-30T12:59:00.001-05:00

Portrait of Georgiana, Duchess of
Devonshire, by Sir Joshua Reynolds.
Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons

"...Hetty and I took a walk in the Park on Sunday morning, where, among others, we saw the young and handsome Duchess of Devonshire, walking in such an undressed and slatternly manner, as, in former times, Mrs. Rishton* might have done in Chesington garden**. Two of her curls came quite unpinned, and fell lank on one of her shoulders; one shoe was down at heel, the trimming of her jacket and coat*** was in some places unsown [sic]; her cap was awry; and her cloak which was rusty and powdered****, was flung half on and half off. Had she not a servant in superb livery behind her, she would certainly have been affronted*****. Every creature turned back to stare at her. Indeed I think her very handsome, and she has a look of innocence and artlessness that made me quite sorry she should be so foolishly negligent of her person. She had hold of the Duke's arm, who is the very reverse of herself, for he is ugly, tidy, and grave. He looks a very mean****** shopkeeper's journeyman."

Fanny Burney's comments in a letter to her friend and second "Daddy" Mr. Crisp, April 1776.*******

Ow.

*Mrs. Maria Rishton, Fanny's close, flighty, spirited friend.
**Chesington, the private, rural home where Mr. Crisp boarded, and where Fanny and Maria often stayed.
***"jacket and coat": jacket and petticoat. "Coat", the 1880s-era editor of Fanny's early journals tells us, was an old term for "petticoat", and when Fanny edited her journals later, she often corrected the word to read "petticoat".
****"rusty and powdered": "rusty" was often used to describe black garments of which the dye, never fast, had faded in spots. "Powdered", I am guessing refers to some of her hair powder having fallen on it. Ugh.
*****"affronted". In this case, may mean something on the order of being snubbed, or worse.
******"mean". In that day, mean usually meant poor, penurious, of low means.
*******The Early Diary of Frances Burney, 1768-1778. Vol. II. Edited by Annie Raine Ellis. London: G. Bell and Sons, Ltd., 1913, pp. 138-139.

1790s Convertible Spencer: A Collar Construction Issue

2011-11-25T13:28:00.001-05:00

Our poor little Metropolitan Museum "body" may have been the salvagey product of, let's be honest, not the finest of seamstress work. That's Mrs. C's take and the longer I look at the item, the more I am inclined to agree. The collar is attached so oddly! Remember this interior detail? Where at least one side of the collar is simply rolled over the neckline and hemmed down?

It makes me wonder if the original garment was some sort of collarless bodice that received a quick update. Rather like this one:

Well, if I were to design wrap-front body, perhaps along the lines of the 1796 Luxus und der Moden model, below, how to construct that collar? The wrap-front would "go" better with my wrap-front dress. Much as I'd like to replicate the Met item (shout out to Sabine!), it would just look plopped on top of the wrap-front dress, and I haven't energy or time to make a gauze chemise.

Over the last few evenings I roamed through Nancy Bradfield, Janet Arnold, etc., etc., finding nothing useful, then remembered the exceedingly detailed dress diaries of Brocadegoddess, produced for her thesis, Rockin' the Rococo. She had made a riding habit, and was focusing on garments she believed, after in-person examination, had been made by seamstresses, not tailors.

So I visited, and, happy sigh, there is the collar construction, illustrated. Mrs. C., you may be glad to know that the construction is much as it is today:

Sew the underside of the collar, right sides together, to the neckline edge.
Hem down, with slanted slip stitches, the upper side of the collar to the lining.

She even has photos, which I take the liberty of reproducing here:

Underside of collar stitched right side to right side
(lining side stitiching shown here). Courtesy Rockin-the Rococo.

Upper side of collar hemmed down to lining.
Courtesy Rockin-the Rococo.

Collars on Extant Spencers

I know that sewing techniques began to alter as the nineteenth century progressed. However, later eighteenth century collared items not made by tailors aren't too plentiful, and not many other garments featured collars, so, perforce, I look at spencers...all of them at the Met, which appears to have the best selection online, at least with zoomable photos.

To start, an c 1800 example, and my favorite of the lot, a snappy muslin item picked out in black...appears to be cotton yarn? I must make this one. Gee, if I cut this one out at the same time as the silk body, it shouldn't be too hard to finish two of them, eh?

Metropolitan Museum of Art
1991.239.2

Second, an 1805-1815 unlined muslin spencer, whose primary decoration consists of tucks and piping. It's a tour de force. Sabine, this one's certainly for you. Look at the little manchets at the shoulders, the neat treatment with the piping, and the eyelet embroidery.

Metropolitan Museum of Art

1986.114.2

Third, a spencer dated 1815, fawn colored. In the detailed view you can see that the lining and collar are slip-stitched on the interior, although it isn't clear to me whether the lining is slip-stitched to the collar, or the collar to the lining.

Metropolitan Museum of Art
1975.34.9

Yet another Met example, a sleeveless jacket-spencer from 1818-1819. It reminds me almost of a waistcoat. The Met seems to have the widest selection of spencers with large photos online, by the way, that I have found.

Courtesy the Metropolitan Museum of Art
1982.132.3

Here's the same shot, blown up to show the collar detail.

Thus endeth our tour of spencer collars.

Next step, making sure that shawl-style collars could be handled that way right down the front, even in very lightweight fabrics.

Spencers and "Bodies": the German Luxus und der Moden Viewpoint

2011-11-20T19:05:00.001-05:00

Plate 10.
Luxus und
der Moden.
April 1796.

1790s "bodies", those sort of spencer-like, jacket-like sleeveless items I've been fussing over lately in order to make one, appear to be pretty thin on the ground in museum collections. Sigh. Perhaps they were easily made over, perhaps they were too high fashion to be really popular. Whatever, I will keep looking, in the interest of being thorough.

Yet, a little fatigued with museums, I've gone back to the fashion plates for a break, but to a different source, the German-language Journal des Luxus und der Moden. I looked up the very first plate at random, number 10 in the April 1796 issue I looked up, and by chance it showed just what I was looking for. Further, the accompanying explanation in the journal's monthly article, "Moden-Neuigkeiten" is helpful in several respects. Ill be looking at more examples, and in several other magazines, too, but let's start with this one.

Here is a young lady in Half Dress. She's ready for a concert, or visiting, or other semi-formal occasion. Her ensemble features a rose-colored body. It always seems funny to write that word, because of course, everyone has a body, or I sure hope so, anyhow, but I am using the name of the garment as it was then referred to. Language: funny stuff.

Here is the body in detail, and even more detail, below.

Now let's read what the magazine says about it. The original German:

My English translation*:

The first (plate 10), a young lady in elegant Half Dress, in which the pretty Miss von R-- here appeared first, and since at large has found applause and imitation. A rose-colored ribbon, tied on the right side in a bow , runs through the pretty lightly curled hair, that is dressed behind in several long braids. Above, on the hair's parting, bows of the rose ribbon lie between the parted sections of hair, down the braids from front to back. The lady wears a Chemise dress of white satin or taffeta, with short sleeves, and with a lace collar behind. The Chemise has a body [Leib] of rose-colored satin or taffeta, with narrow folds nearby [lapels?], and half oversleeves, which are laid in flat pleats. On the white collar of the Chemise white ribbons are on both sides, which are laid over the shoulders, crossed over the breast, run around the waist, and are tied lightly on the side. At the base the Chemise is fixed twice with rose-colored satin ribbons.

*Sorry if my translations seem labored, but I try to keep the wording as close as possible to the original, in case there are nuances of meaning that I had not discovered. A loose translation would obliterate these.

Our young lady's man, from the
same issue.

Like the Met example, this body (or Leib, the term for body in German) has a collar, but this one flows down into a wrap-front design that I find more appetizing and more natural than the Met example. Not sure about closures...I don't think the white wrapped ribbons do anything to actually hold the body closed. Perhaps there are internal ties? Pins?

Note that that a body could also have sleeves; such garments weren't always sleeveless. Hmm. I am wondering if in England this garment would be termed a spencer instead of a body? Sabine, or other German-speaking readers, your thoughts?

As was so common during that period, this particular fashion -- the wrap-front, the ribbons -- started with someone in high life showing off her new design in public. The magazine makes sure to let us know that she is a person "of quality" by saying that her surname begins with "von". After that, it spreads everywhere as the newest taste.

In this fashion plate it's clear that the body could be a key part of a suite..a suit or Anzug. The design and coloring of dress, body, and hair are all of a piece. The body/bodice concept is also smart and flexible: it stretches the uses a Chemise dress could be put to. An Undress dress becomes dressy with a more elaborate coiffure. Of course, the hair takes serious time to pull together, but other than that, there's little fuss involved, and little extra expense. Our In Style analog today? Throwing on a handsome jacket, popping on some more formal shoes or boots, and upping the makeup factor takes a day outfit out for cocktails, a nice dinner, or a play.

* * * * *

Gee, that's something I'd like to do this season, a concert, dinner, a play! The Messiah is to be performed with a chamber orchestra at church, and I bet the Studio Players or the Opera House will have something fun on, and I hope the Singletary Center comes up with a good concert. Then it's just a matter of choosing, and finding the evening, and a sitter, and planning the boys dinner, and and and :}

Meanwhile, we've celebrated my 48th birthday at a winery bistro this past weekend. It was a pretty day, if hard on the hairdo, and we walked outside among the chickens and vines and the workmen taking grape must to the fields to mulch. Little black jacket and heels here, too...and the boys in their favorite sweaters. All of us happy after such a very good lunch. Who can argue with wild mushroom ragout over a single handmade ravioli (almost a Maultaschen), fall greens with cold roast duck and vinaigrette, and a torte with bourbon and black walnuts?

1790s Convertible Spencer: Examining Extant Articles, Part 2

2011-11-20T10:16:00.001-05:00

I've spent a little while peering nearsightedly at the Met's "spencer jacket", and my peregrinations along the seam- and hemlines may have uncovered a little more of how it was constructed.

Walk along with me now, and see if you see what I do.

First let's note that this little gem was likely a remake using fabric from an earlier garment. I say this because the embroideries are sparse and random, rather than planned to the garment.

Front Closure

The center front meets edge to edge. If we look at the left side, for instance, we can see two vertical rows of stitching. There may be a tape or something behind to help strengthen the fabric to take the strain of the lacing.

At the neckline edge the fashion fabric is folded back to the underside, and is stitched down to create a channel for the drawstring, of tape, that you see still tied. The stitching for this channel is covered by the gimp trim.

The lacing is made of multistrand cord. Its gleam makes me think it may be silk.

Inside Construction

This is a detail of the inside of the left shoulder of the garment.

Please be sure click on the photo above and really look at it or you probably won't understand the below.

A: This is actually the underside of the collar, not a part of the shoulder strap. The fashion fabric has been turned to the underside of the collar, turned again to enclose the raw edge, and stitched down. On the exterior, the seam would be hidden by the gimp trim.

B: This is the armscye edge of the shoulder strap, seen from the inside of the garment. The fashion fabric appears to have been turned in once, and then covered by a narrow cream tape or ribbon, which is stitched down along each long edge, apparently with the blue silk thread used elsewhere on the garment.

C: This is the shoulder strap where it attaches to the back piece. You can see that the strap is laid atop the back piece, the raw edge turned under, and hemmed down. You can barely see a line of prick stitching about a quarter inch above. On the outside, this would be the seamline of prick stitching (my guess) that fixed the back piece to the shoulder.

D: This is the upper edge of the back piece, just peeking out from below the shoulder strap. Its raw edge has been turned under too and hemmed down. You can see the continuation of that neckline hem at F.

E: This is the neckline edge of the shoulder strap. Here the fashion fabric has been turned under twice and hemmed down. Thick, isn't it?

F: Here is the neckline edge of the back piece. It's treated the same way.

G: This is the collar seam! The collar appears to be simply brought to the inside of the already finished neckline, the raw edges turned under, and hemmed down. See where the neckline turns? Note how the collar has a little wrinkle there. Was perhaps the collar a later addition to an earlier, plainer jacket? Or did the maker simply not care to fuss with a facing? Given how the rest of the fabric is finished, that would just add bulk.

The garment is, to my mind, happily casually finished, almost ill-thought. It suits me, for some reason, perhaps because I am continually process-challenged as I learn all of these methods, and my mistakes lead to such collar "issues" as we see here.

Next time, we look carefully at the rest of the garment.

Readers, if you take exception to my dissection, I beg you write and let me know what you think. Together we may be able resurrect this puppy!

1790s Convertible Spencer: Examining Extant Articles

2011-11-09T19:23:00.003-05:00

Late 18th century spencer/jacket from the Met.

1970.281.1

Convertible spencer research time! The first step, a look at originals out there. At the Victoria and Albert I could find nothing, but elsewhere, paydirt. Here's the first find.

As always, please click on the images to see larger versions.

Jacket-Spencer from the Metropolitan Museum of Art

A beautemous article, so beautiful, in fact, it might become my inspiration piece. They call it a "jacket (spencer)" and date it to the late 18th century. That's rather a wide timespan, but this garment clearly is high-waisted, so I am confident of its being made around the 1790s.

The front-closing, light blue silk item features spiral lacing: you see this in some fashion plates, and tiny skirts, so it's almost more a jacket than a spencer. The very narrow shoulder straps are almost covered by a collar. (Thank you, Sabine, for catching that...I first thought the straps twisted.)

I wonder if it was remade from something else; the embroidery is scattered and in no way follows the design of the piece.

It's trimmed with cream gimp and embroidered, more on which below.

The picture at right will tell you a lot about the construction. Those seams to the right and left of the center opening: do they conceal a separate-closing lining? However, the inside is kind of a puzzle so far.
Here's a picture of the back.

The trim is yummy. Just cream gimp, and embroidery with a few spangles for glitter. Here's a closeup, from the back of the garment.

Then a real closeup. You can really see how the embroidery is done. For me, very doable, although I'd scatter the sprigs around a little better. Hmmm, will I stick with chenille, as in the original plan? Hmmm..

Uh-Oh, the DREAM DRESS

2011-11-09T14:02:00.000-05:00

I know from following the blogs of online acquaintances that many of us have at one time or another fallen, plump, in pit-deep infatuation with a particular dress, and have decided, come what may, to create their own version of it. Demode's Maja dress, Diary of a Mantua Maker's 1790s plum embroidered evening gown, and The Aristocat's block print polonaise ensemble -- with handmade shoes -- come to mind.

It happened to me not so long ago. Here she is; meet my dream dress from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, accession number 1995.5.5.

She dates from the late 1790s, is made of cotton, and is lightly embellished. I think she is not well mounted on the model, because, looking at the detailed shots, I believe the loose pieces falling to each site were meant to cross over on the front and hide the front lining and especially the rather rough waistband. Yes, the lining is embroidered, but the fabric being so light, it would have shown through the upper layer in an attractive manner. In back, she appears to have a falling collar.

Unlike the V&A, the Metropolitan Museum of Art has not published much about her other than the above and some excellent pictures. You can zoom in decently on the dress to see details, although the original resolution is not terribly high.

So, what makes her so desirable, a real dream? Her combination of simplicity and the elegance of the feathery, limited-palette embellishment. Let's have a closer look at the latter.

Above, a photo from the back of the dress. Two of the back seams are embellished with close backstitching in yellow and cream silk, which I find effective, if not entirely in keeping with the rest of the embellishment design.

The whorl pattern made of spangles and silk embroidery is actually a stylized floral design, with a flower or leaf at the top left and a leaf at the bottom. It is executed with flat, untwisted silk, probably reeled and not spun, given its brilliance. By reeled I mean that these are long silk filaments reeled up from the unwound silkworm's cocoon, several lengths being twisted together to form the thread. They are not short bits of silk spun together to make a thread.

Because so many of the satin stitches are so long, and perhaps due to storage problems, in places the embroidery has really begun to degrade. See below.

Here's a detail of the embroidery pattern at the dress hem. The stems get their density from the spangles being overlapped. I think there is gold detailing around the spangles dotting the arrow-headed leaves.

Gorgeous, isn't it?

So, can I do this, from a technical standpoint? Mmmm. The dress itself is not so different from the wrap-front dress I made last year. I've done spangling and that is more fiddly than difficult. Nor is the backstitching embellishment an issue. It's the flat satin stitch that will give even accomplished embroiderers pause. It's slow to do, because one needs to lay each thread with the laying tool. Thankfully, the design is so stylized that one need only plan the direction of the stitches once for each type of motif: this is not a wandering, naturalistic design in which stitches would have to follow individually designed flowers or leaves at any of 360 degrees 'round the compass. Still, that is many, many months of embroidery...

What Would I Change, if Anything?

This needs research, but I have several ideas.

Replace the cream satin stitch embroidery with ribbon embroidery. There is documentation for ribbon embroidery on Regency-era evening dresses. I just have to see if this was done in the 1790s. I am thinking not so likely...
Replace the satin stitch embroidery with silk chenille, couched down. Now, there's an obvious choice. Chenille embroidery was popular, in part, no doubt, because it was fast and flexible. The issue is that the effect will be far less shimmery. You cannot see the shimmer too well in these photos, but I assure you, it is there. That's one reason embroiderers used the more expensive, harder-to-work flat silk. It is just lovely to look at. So, I would end up with a slightly less elegant, high style effect. It's something to ponder.
Make the dress slightly less poofy, especially in front. This dress exhibits the extreme end of pouf of the fashion plates. If the Met has dated it correctly to the late 1790s, it would be no later than 1797 if worn in highest style circles, because poofiness, especially in front, was being slenderized. Now, 1796 was a poofy year, and there were all kinds of jokes abroad about the look of pregnancy that a portion of the bon ton sported. Certainly the front of this dress is just right for someone in maternity clothes :} Since I am no longer entirely a spring chicken, erm, well, it would be a case of mutton dressed as lamb. So some slimming is in order.

Will I Take the Plunge?

Again, mmmmnnn. It's a dream dress for now.

A Real, Extant 1790s Cloak

2011-11-04T17:33:00.000-04:00

My cloak.

Remember that hugely long voile cloak I made for this past summer's Jane Austen Festival? The kind that's pictured over and over and over in 1790s fashion plates?

I've located an extant example. They seem incredibly rare, perhaps because they were so long that they were easily stepped on or otherwise damaged and also easily reused for other items once they went out of fashion.

Diane Thalmann, dealer in English and French antique textiles, http://www.antique-textiles.net, sold a netted one dated 1790-1795. It's looooooonnnnngggg: 120 inches by 21 inches. Heavens.

Example of cloaks: left one is white,
right one is black. From Gallery of Fashion

As she described it: "This rare hand netted long scarf or stole would have been worn round the neck, crossed over under the bust and tied at the back.... Alternatively, it would have simply been placed round the neck and allowed to hang down – nearly to the ground. I have never had such a stole/scarf, and because they were of fine muslin, lace or netting are almost impossible to find, even in fair condition." See http://www.antique-textiles.net/shawls/1790-1795-white_long_scarf.html.

Netted Cloak, Diane Thalmann

Do have a look at this item, and her other shawls and textiles. I guarantee you will learn a great deal and if you are in funds, you might find a bona fide treasure.

Inside a Story: The Eighteenth Century Market Fair at Locust Grove

2011-11-01T10:45:00.000-04:00

Autumn playsThree Graces with a little girl
from The Kentucky History Club

"We're inside a story, Mama," Noah remarked, his hair outlined in copper and gold against a sun-warmed log-cabin wall. A good choice for a story, and an excellent choice for a day. Clearest sunshine, air cool in the lungs but not biting, Locust Grove's trees at full color.

All around us, a busy market. It was the smells that made it most real: sides of pork spitted and roasting, Carolina rice in a giant kettle, the charcoal from multiple braziers and the blacksmith's forge, the fires from the big kitchen and the woodworker's cabin, cheddar cheese, roasting pumpkins, apples, unfiltered cider, crushed grass, straw, horse dung, and sometimes the odd scent of slow match or black powder.

Then there were all the sights, and the people to talk with and the stories to fall into. And the music: from military bagpipes to penny whistles to the human voice.

Trying yoyos.

Not one of us wanted to leave, and we had been there nearly the entire day: three of us were four years old and three, Jenni, Laura, and myself, were adult, and all six were as blithe as blithe. I want to go back inside the story!

Our Day, Narrated by Christopher and Noah

The bread and cheese wagon arrives.

Miss Autumn joins in the country dance.

Playing the drum and fife for stray coins.

Excited to buy good bread and cheese. They came wrapped together
with a twist of paper.

Munching on the bread and cheese...a second lunch,
hee hee.

The country dance.

A Continental soldier.

A German woman on her way to her camp.

They said the horses were a little spooked today.

The Braunschweigers with their German Shepherd.

When the boys saw these girls race to explore the springhouse,
they raced there too.

The pair of girls try to explain that the door
lock beneath was unpickable :}

The boys find water at the springhouse. We think that you
could store milk pails here.

Noah looks at the water. Just feet from the springhouse,
the actual spring bubbled from the earth, guarded closelt by trees and underbrush .

Noah explains that he thinks that the stream goes under
the springhouse.

The boys watch the blacksmith make
a double hook to hang from a ridgepole,
as Christopher explained to me later.

Christopher says the blacksmith was pumping air
with his bellows into his forge.

Chukka-chukka-chukka, sings the spinning wheel.

Demonstrating drawing the yarn. The spinner then
explored how all yarn is twisted, using roving and
willing pairs of children's hands.

The juggler on his ladder. Noah and Christopher
say that he had to take little steps with his ladder
forward and backward to keep fom falling over.

The soldiers were getting ready for a battle, says Christopher. And there I
am looking, says Noah, but I wasn't really fond of the soldiers.
In fact, we did not watch the battle...but when we thought it was
over, and came to peek, it was not over! Oops, away we went again.

Leading the way to the big kitchen, where a very large fire
burned in the enormous fireplace. The room was full of
vegetables, fruits, and cooks. Then the rat catcher arrived,
and said, "I heard there were some rats here in the kitchen."
But Christopher says, I think he thought the potatoes were rats.
[Sadly, I did not catch a shot of the kitchen.]

A view of the Continental camp. Christopher says he wishes
I had a picture of the candy shop. They bought maple sugar candy and
licorice but not gobstoppers, because they were too big.

Where our first lunch was cooked: we had Carolina rice cooked
in a giant kettle, mixed with roasted pork from a spit. There
were pumpkins roasting, but those treats were not for us, sigh.

Late afternoon cider.

Fun with Noah.

Exploring underneath the table.

More exploration, throughs cracks in the table.

The soldiers' retreat. Right now they are letting their prisoners
go, says Noah.

The very last scene...the day ends for us, while the soldiers and
their families get ready for an evening of feasting, singing, and company.

The day is over, says Christopher, and now it's time to go home and have dinner.

Spenceration: The Hive Mind Speaks and We Have a Rough Plan

2011-10-28T13:39:00.000-04:00

Start with lapels
and sleeves.

Thank you all for considering the spencer issue...with your help, we have a solution.

Here it is:

lapels, from the blue wool spencer, because they look so good, but a little smaller than the 1794 example, so they won't look silly for evening wear
sleeveless base, to take care of Kentucky summertime ridiculous heat
optional add-in sleeves, from the blue wool spencer, to take care of the cooler seasons
optional add-in epaulettes in gold braid to hold up the sleeves
trimmed at the cuffs and around the collar with chenille embroidery in a Neoclassic design, to complement the add-in epaulettes, in a faintly military style -- a takeoff on your Museum of London pelisse trimming, Mrs. C :}
made of my existing 1.5 yards of periwinkle silk, so that I don't have to spend for fabric

Add the "body".

sewn with yellow silk sewing thread to add some pop to the seams (see Nineteenth Century Fashion in Detail for an example)

All I have to spend any money on is for chenille embroidery "thread", and some braid, and yellow silk sewing thread, to add some pop to the seams.

Next, Planning the Project Execution

Let's do this right, and have a proper plan:

Examine extant garments, and check written sources in diaries and magazines. This refines understanding of how the garment is worn, constructed, and trimmed.
Search for extant chenille trimmings. I already have a pretty decent idea but want to show you pictures.
Get chenille in soft yellow from Hand Dyed Fibers. Get yellow silk thread (check Mary Corbett's Needle 'n Thread for best source: it could be Hedgehog Handworks.

Design a Neoclassic embroidery pattern.

Find braid or use chenille to make it.
Work up toile in muslin and refine fitting over the dress, especially the sleeves.
Take the toile pieces, and draw them on the silk.
Draw the trim design in pencil on the silk. Do not cut the pieces. This is how I understand 18th century embroiderers would have worked.
Stretch the silk in a hoop, and work the embroidery*. I do not have a proper "slate" stretcher such as would be best for such a project, but embroidery hoops galore, so there you are.
Cut the linen lining, cut the pieces.
Construct the body and sleeves.

*Eighteenth Century Embroidery Techniques has a chapter of how-to that can help teach you, and see also Maureen's Vintage Acquisitions blog article titled Using Silk Chenille for an illustrated tip on handling the chenille thread.

So there is my wintertime project: small, portable, but rife with social history research opportunities, and incorporating the chance to bone up again on an old favorite skill, embroidery. Plus, pretty summery silk, but warm fluffy chenille.

Apply it to collar, fronts, sleeves, as here.

Now that was a pleasant effort as a lunch break during an especially busy work day. So nice to think of something entirely different from work-work, housework, house projects, and children.

Spenceration

2011-10-26T21:28:00.000-04:00

I need a spencer. Okay, I don't "need" a spencer, but as I develop at 1790s-early 1800s set of garments, a spencer, or a garment with some spencer-like features, would be a next likely project candidate.

Done well, it could be convertible, used in multiple situations:

if a lapelled spencer, with my little white wrap-front dress as morning dress; then with a matching skirt, and a high linen stock, and a hat, as a habit; with the informal cotton cream print dress as a walking-in-the fields ensemble;
with the wrap-front dress again as morning dress, then retrimmed for afternoon or evening.

A spencer has the advantage of using little fabric and being a small, portable project just right for doing a seam or two as I feel like it. Here at home we have so many important house projects going on that I while I'd like to be working on something as a change of pace in the evening from reading, and as a brain-freshener, the project needs to be one that requires little in the way of especial energy, and next to nothing in the way of expense.

Herewith, a few ideas, all from the full span of Gallery of Fashion.

Option 1: a blue wool spencer.

March 1794, Gallery of Fashion. Morning dress
Figure XLVI (on the right). ...Petticoat of worked muslin...Spencer of dark blue cloth, edged with scarlet. Ruff of white lace round the neck. Plain muslin handkerchief. York tan gloves.

This spencer will have been of wool. A pattern for such a spencer is available from Sense and Sensibility. It would be straightforward to work one up and then later make a matching skirt. I would have to purchase wool, however, and could not wear it in summertime. Mmm, no. A project for another year...

Option 2, a green cross-over front spencer.

April 1798, Gallery of Fashion, morning dress
...Petticoat of white muslin, with an embroidered border. Spencer-corset of green satin, with plaitings in the front, and plaitings with a gold trimming at the wrists. Yellow sash, with gold tassels, tied on the left side. Triangular gold earrings. Four small gold chains round the neck. Yellow shoes, trimmed with blue fringe.

Here's a handsome spencer, of a color that can be worn year round. I cannot admire the "Minerva bonnet", but the "spencer-corset"! (Interesting terminology.) The effect is handsome and understated, and that Regency green just sings, doesn't it? To make it, it is nothing but the top from a wrap-front dress with some pleatings on it, and tight sleeves. The sash, a nice length of my silk, painted or dyed, with silk floss tassels.

Another look:

Still, with long sleeves, this one doesn't really work for very hot summertime wear -- which is when I tend to dress, anyhow, and it cannot convert to a habit style, for a more rugged look. Hmmm. Must think. Is this the one anyway, despite the limitations? Or does that wait, too?

The "Body" Option

What about another option, the "body", a sleeveless bodice? Even less fabric is needed, and but a bare few seams, and it is easy to wear in the summer to give a blast of color to the ubiquitous white dress.

Why yes, I think I can see that easily. I would need less than a yard of fabric, and gee, I have some lovely periwinkle silk, just waiting in the stash, left over from a shift dress I made to wear to a wedding some years ago.

July, 1795, Gallery of Fashion, morning dress
...Round gown of embroidered muslin, flounced at the bottom. Short full sleeves, drawn in the middle of the arm. Body of lilac taffeta. Yellow handkerchief, crossed in the front, and tied behind.
The yellow handkerchief adds yet more color. Let's borrow her friend's hat though, shall we? Her own reminds me of a corona of straw.

To make it, the pattern from my cotton dress for the back, and a wrap front, which will look the best with the underlying dress.

As for convertability, as you will see in the example below, the "body" can be worn for evening dress as well, when it is trimmed a little more.

February 1796, Gallery of Fashion, afternoon dress
...Muslin petticoat, trimmed at the bottom with blue satin in vandyke scallops; short full sleeves of muslin, trimmed with blonde. Body of blue satin, trimmed round the neck with a double plaiting of blonde, and on the back with a chain; epaulettes of the same, looped with a spring chain and tassels of gold.

This one is funky. Perhaps originally the bodice and sleeves were sewn attached to one another, but it could be easily treated as a separate body, with lace tacked on. The full sleeves of my dress could be pulled up with braided braid and tassels, and the ends tacked with lace as well. The chain in back, more braided braid, set with small buttons at each end, and again, tacked on as needed.

For right now, this tiny garment of four seams might just be the thing. Mmm, I see too that I could do plaitings to the front of the periwinkle body, then make removable sleeves that tack in, as was so often done, and voila, have a periwinkle spencer. The ultimate in convertibility, for it would go from sleeveless undress to sleeveless evening wear to sleeved daywear. Wow. Really, how can you beat that? The next question, will that fabric eke out?

Yet...

The Half-Jacket Option

Here is a handsome summertime option. Jackets never fully went away; in a few issues previous to the plate below, there is a Hungarian fur-trimmed jacket, for example.

In this case, the jacket...a jacket because it has skirts -- or what we might call a peplum today -- is sleeveless. I like this one especially because it's in black gauze, and so it let's the dress show through, and is as light as light. Don't you enjoy the seaside view, as well? I think it's an effective picture.

October 1800, Gallery of Fashion, morning dress
...Round gown of white muslin, short full sleeves, tied in the middle with a coquelicot riband. Half jacket of black gauze, trimmed with broad black lace...yellow gloves.

To make this one, I would use the pattern from the bodice from my cream robe, which has the same back. We cannot see the front, but I would do a wrap front, using the pattern from my little white dress. The peplum? I'd drape that to see what would work best. I already have some sheer black cotton, rescued from a cutter garment, a gift from a friend, and black lace, ditto.

Because of the lace, the jacket could work as well for afternoon or evening as morning, especially if dressed up with jewelry. It is a fussier design, but sweet.

Mmmm. What to do? Which would you choose?

Croup

2011-10-20T18:00:00.002-04:00

Two weeks of it, and counting. First the boys, with seal-like coughs, flushed faces, fevers, then colds, and throughout, lethargy and pain in the chest. Now both parents, ditto, excepting a trade for the terrifying cough with a sort of laryngitis.

Are we blessed to live in the days of modern medicine. This year 2011 may be spilling with every kind of sadness, tragedy, carnage, and venom, but we understand what germs are, do not bleed our already weakened patients, or apply blisters or other heroic treatments. Some of us, anyhow, can nurse each other with plentiful steam baths, plenty of clean air, good food, carefully controlled temperatures, real rest, isolation from further germs.

Thank God.

If you wish to know what croup used to portend, read William Buchan's notes on croup in his 1790 book, Domestic Medicine, pages 557-559.

In other news, lately this blog has received two very lovely awards; more on them anon, when I have time and energy to write.

The Cotton Is Ripe and Bursting from the Bolls

2011-10-10T22:05:00.002-04:00

The first cotton boll bursts open.

Here in Kentucky, we grow cotton on the back 40 and it's ripe now. The bolls, like enormous acorns minus the caps, become too full to hold their contents, and burst one by one into puffy white quatrefoils. It's quite a sight.

Okay, only kidding, sort of. Yes, we are growing cotton, but in two large pots in the back garden, so our crop is minute, a jar full of fresh, soft cotton balls, perhaps, and enough seed for a short row next year in Mamaw and Papaw's much larger garden on a real back 40 acres. Curte was keen to show the boys two iconic crops from Georgia, where we both used to live, so we have both cotton and peanuts back there.

It turns out his grandfather did grow cotton, for real, here in this state, where I never knew it to be farmed. It was for home use, I understand. Now, I knew his Mamaw (grandmother) made their clothes -- I have her treadle Singer machine -- but did she spin, too? Unsure. She was a big quilter so I am betting the crop was more for sale and for batting to fill quilts and pillow or mattress ticks. Must ask.

So is the cotton a veritable sight? It is, in veritas. The plants themselves are all shriveled and stalky and unattractive, and their rough leaves harsh on the skin, but those bolls and the pure, pure, pure cotton, its surface faintly sheened, a wee bit like silk in a mellow yellow October light, all balled up inside. Come see!

Look for two cotton bolls in this blurry photo.

Here in the garden, almost all of summer's flowers are cut or pulled, the leaf mould underneath working its way into the ground, and black walnut leaves are fluttering down by the hundreds every few minutes. Our tree will be bare too soon. The walnuts come carronading too from the branches, their great size and density enough to raise a bump on a person's head, or to really injure a small child. The boys may not play back there without their helmets.

But here's a cotton stalk, bearing two bulbous bolls, acorn-shaped, as I wrote earlier.

See the quatrefoil pattern?

Here is the brother boll, burst, cupped in my hand so that you can see it is indeed big. The four-sided husk, when it opens, pulls the cotton into four separate puffs. Let's pull one out, shall we?

A gentle tug to release the cotton puff.

Here we go; I just take the top of a puff in my fingers and a light pull is enough to get it out of the smooth inside of the boll husk...

The husk's inside: smooth.

...which is sorry, I am sure, to lose part of itself. I will take the rest before the next rain. Do you see the faint glow on the fibers? Detect their whiteness, note that the fibers are all balled up, truly balled up inside, not lying all flattened and ready to spin, no, not by a long way.

Stretching the puff.

Here, let me stretch out that puff for you to inspect. You see, some fibers when I pull them, show that they have grown parallel to one another, but not all do. I must inspect other puffs to see what they do. However, this puff that I now hold in my hand, late this evening, under the lamp, why, part of it looks just like a pharmacy cotton ball, it's that tangled, but other bits are in parallel groupings, like wool roving, really, only the fibers are so short, that when I pull on each end, the roving readily narrows and thins. I have yet to measure the length of an individual fiber to understand the staple -- the fiber length which will help to define how the cotton will behave when woven -- must do that tomorrow.

The puff is lumpy, so I tease apart the fibers, and they give me some resistance; they do not like to come away from their seeds. Here's one. It's big and greenish and roughly a triangular shape, each edge rounded, and as long as my pinky finger nail, perhaps 3/8" inch. The fibers appear to originate with the seeds? For they grow on it and the close ones are too tightly on there for me to even rub them off, and they grow on it like hair on a head.

A cotton seed.

I find some seven seeds in just one puff; thus if there are four puffs per boll, that's 28 seeds. Five or so bolls per plant, and we have four, and yes, I can grow a short row next year, which we will do, I think. Although it's important to be careful. Cotton is a heavy feeder and quickly depletes soil of its richness.

Meantime, we have the softest, cleanest cotton balls imaginable; perfect for little boys' boo boos!

In Other News

Yes, I will report on the Edwardian skirt again soon. The last weeks have been full of family things and work work work and a hunt for a new sofa as well as good upholstery fabric to cover my Great Aunt Marion's chaise longue. Matelasse, perhaps? Or an Italian-made chenille stripe in a natural? Mmmm...

The Long Day of the Second Keeper of the Robes

2011-10-03T19:25:00.001-04:00

Portrait miniature on ivory of Fanny Burney
by John Bogle, circa 1783.
Image from Artnet.com.

Lest you should be tempted to complain of your own long hours, hear now how Fanny Burney spent each day from mid-1786 until 1790, when her health began to fail...

MONDAY, JULY 24TH. Let me endeavor to give you, more connectedly, a concise abstract of the general method of passing the day, that then I may only write what varies, and occurs occasionally. I rise at six o'clock, dress in a morning gown and cap, and wait my first summons*, which is at all times from seven to near eight, but commonly in the exact half hour between them. The Queen never sends for me till her hair is dressed. This, in a morning, is always done by her wardrobe-woman, Mrs. Thielky, a German, but who speaks English perfectly well. Mrs.Schwellenberg*, since the first week, has never come down in a morning at all. The Queen's dress is finished by Mrs. Thielky and myself. No maid ever enters the room while the Queen is in it. Mrs. Thielky hands the things to me, and I put them on. 'T is fortunate for me I have not the handing them ! I should never know which to take first, embarrassed as I am, and should run a prodigious risk of giving the gown before the hoop, and the fan before the neck-kerchief.

By eight o'clock, or a little after, for she is extremely expeditious, she is dressed. She then goes out to join the King, and be joined by the Princesses*, and they all proceed to the King's chapel in the Castle, to prayers, attended by the governesses of the Princesses, and the King's equerry. Various others at times attend; but only these indispensably. I then return to my own room to breakfast. I make this meal the most pleasant part of the day; I have a book for my companion, and I allow myself an hour for it. At nine o'clock I send off my breakfast things, and relinquish my book, to make a serious and steady examination of everything I have upon my hands in the way of business in which preparations for dress are always included, not for the present day alone, but for the courtdays, which require a particular dress; for the next arriving birthday of any of the Royal Family, every one of which requires new apparel; for Kew*, where the dress is plainest; and for going on here, where the dress is very pleasant to me, requiring no show nor finery, but merely to be neat, not inelegant, and moderately fashionable.

That over, I have my time at my own disposal till a quarter before twelve, except on Wednesdays and Saturdays, when I have it only to a quarter before eleven. My rummmages and business sometimes occupy me uninterruptedly to those hours. When they do not, I give till ten to necessary letters of duty, ceremony, or long arrears; and now, from ten to the times I have mentioned, I devote to walking. These times mentioned call me to the irksome and quick-returning labors of the toilette. The hour advanced on the Wednesdays and Saturdays is for curling and craping the hair, which it now requires twice a week.*

A quarter before one is the usual time for the Queen to begin dressing for the day. Mrs. Schwellenberg then constantly attends; so do I; Mrs. Thielky, of course, at all times. We help her off with her gown, and on with her powdering things, and then the hairdresser is admitted. She generally reads the newspapers during that operation When she observes that I have run to her but half dressed*, she constantly gives me leave to return and finish as soon as she is seated. If she is grave, and reads steadily on, she dismisses me, whether I am dressed or not; but at all times she never forgets to send me away while she is powdering, with a consideration not to spoil my clothes, that one would not expect belonged to her high station. Neither does she ever detain me without making a point of reading here and there some little paragraph aloud.

When I return, I finish, if anything is undone, my dress, and then take Baretti's Dialogues, my dearest Fredy's Tablet of Memory, or some such disjointed matter, for the few minutes that elapse ere I am again summoned. I find her then always removed to her state dressing-room, if any room in this private mansion can have the epithet of state. There, in a very short time, her dress is finished. She then says she won't detain me, and I hear and see no more of her till bedtime.

It is commonly three o'clock* when I am thus set at large. And I have then two hours quite at my own disposal: but, in the natural course of things, not a moment after! These dear and quiet two hours, my only quite sure and undisturbed time in the whole day, after breakfast is over, I shall henceforward devote to thus talking with my beloved Susan, my Fredy, my other sisters, my dear father, or Miss Cambridge.; with my brothers, cousins, Mrs. Ord, and other friends, in such terms as these two hours will occasionally allow me. Henceforward, I say; for hitherto dejection of spirits, with uncertainty how long my time might last, have made me waste moment after moment as sadly as unprofitably.*

At five, we have dinner*. Mrs. Schwellenberg and I meet in the eating-room. We are commonly tete-a-tete: when there is anybody added, it is from her invitation only. Whatever right my place might afford me of also inviting my friends to the table I have now totally lost, by want of courage and spirits to claim it originally. When we have dined, we go upstairs to her apartment, which is directly over mine. Here we have coffee till the terracing* is over: this is at about eight o'clock. Our tete-a-tete then finishes, and we come down again to the eating-room. There the equerry, whoever he is, comes to tea constantly, and with him any gentleman that the King or Queen may have invited 1m the evening* ; and when tea is over, he conducts them, and goes himself, to the concert-room. This is commonly about nine o'clock.*

From that time, if Mrs. Schwellenberg I never quit her for a minute, till I come to my little supper* at near eleven. Between eleven and twelve my last summons usually takes place, earlier and later occasionally. Twenty minutes is the customary time then spent with the Queen: half an hour, I believe, is seldom exceeded.

I then come back, and after doing whatever I can to forward mv dress for the next morning, I go to bed and to sleep, too, believe me: the early rising, and a long day's attention to new affairs and occupations, cause a fatigue so bodily, that nothing mental stands against it and to sleep I fall the moment I have put out my candle and laid down my head. Such is the day to your F. B. in her new situation at Windsor; such, I mean, is its usual destination, and its intended course. I make it take now and then another channel, but never stray far enough not to return to the original stream after a little meandering about and about it.

Madame d'Arblay, nee Frances (Fanny) Burney, in her lifetime a celebrated author and playwright, is today best remembered as one of most prominent chroniclers of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in England. The massive repository of journals and letters she left us, written in a toasty warm, lively style and giving minute details of all she experienced, have offered readers almost since her death an unparalleled window into the worlds of the English court, life in Bonaparte's France, and much, much, much more.

In 1786, in her early thirties and unmarried, she was offered the position at the English Court of Second Keeper of the Robes to Queen Charlotte. In bare essence -- minus the honor of service at Court -- she served as a lady's maid; she helped the Queen on and off with her clothes, as many times a day as the Queen needed to change them.

This Court position would offer her a much-sought position of honor, money, rooms and perks and influence, but knew it would exhaust her and leave her little time to write. Reading the above, anyone could see why...she almost keeps the hours of a mother with a month-old baby! I count perhaps a little over six hours' sleep per night?

*Summons by a bell, which she hated as being a sign of a menial position.
*First Keeper of the Robes. Apparently she was ill-tempered and somewhat crude. Nice.
*George the Third and some of his many children
*We learn that the old palace at Kew was the smallish and most favored of King George's homes.
*I believe she means getting her own hair ready.
*"half dressed": Fanny's rooms were relative close to those of the Queen; I wonder how much privacy she had?
*I believe the Queen took 1/2 hour to dress for breakfast and Chapel, then two hours plus for the day, which by our schedules seems to start very late.
*Fanny had not wished to take the position at Court; she did so for the benefit of her family.
*"terracing": As Constance Hill writes, "The 'terracing' refers to King George's well-known custom of walking with his family in procession each evening, when the weather was fine, up and down the Castle Terrace to the gay sounds of a band of music. The King would walk first with the Queen leaning upon his arm, followed by the youthful Princesses, and their attendants bringing up the rear. The public, who gathered eagerly on these occasions to witness the sight, were honoured sometimes by a friendly nod or a gracious curtsey, while the musicians received from the King upon his retiring a profound bow with the words, 'Thank you, gentlemen.'"
*Her "mid-day" meal. Note that it's followed by hours of coffee and then of tea. Caffeinated they were, and I think they all needed it.
*According to Constance Hill in Fanny Burney at the Court of Queen Charlotte, men could never sit down in the presence of the Queen; therefore men could not have dinner with their Majesties. p. 26
*Good grief, concerts just beginning at nine. Those are college hours; nowadays I am getting ready for bed about then.
*We use this term for a late dinner even today.

Google Is Acting Up: I Cannot Leave Comments on Many Posts

2011-09-29T12:35:00.001-04:00

Something odd is happening on a number of Blogger-based blogs that I read regularly: the comment feature isn't working!

For example, Sabine of Kleidung um 1800 has a wonderful post on antique writing desks...and I wasn't able to tell her how much I loved hers and its purple writing surface, and that I have one too, which once belonged to a young woman of my hometown. She had signed in her name in several spots inside the box, testing her handwriting skills, and left her pen nibs inside. To that collection I've added childhood letters and cared, and I've carried that writing box with me most of my life and hope to pass it to my children to add their memories to.

Or Hallie of At the Sign of the Golden Scissors, with her post about muslin gowns embellished with silver plate embroidery and other "goldwork". Those gowns are so hard to find...the only picture I'd seen of one until she wrote was a drawing in Gail Marsh's 18th Century Embroidery Techniques. Good sleuthing as always! Again, I couldn't comment.

So, if I seem silent, or you do, please know that it might be Google kicking its heels a bit...

Very best,
Natalie

Cue the Solo Cello

2011-09-21T20:58:00.004-04:00

Noah and Christopher on the beach, while Daddy, out front, has a swim.

Bye-bye, summertime.

It's fall.

From the Collection: An Utterly Fabulous Edwardian Formal Skirt

2011-09-17T21:58:00.003-04:00

Skirt front.

Do a train and a trumpet silhouette, sheer silk, peekaboo construction of laters of white and colored sheer silks and lace insets, and a shimmery satin fluff at the feet, encrustions of beaded motifs, and four -- count them! -- four underlaying flounces, make your heart flutter-flutter?

Then I have the formal skirt of your dreams, an Edwardian confection, a tour de force bought some time ago in totally unwearable, and without major reconstruction, unmountable condition, from a dealer liquidating another dealer's estate. The bodice is missing. Most collectors would call this skirt a cutter; I call it a researcher's and pattern maker's dream.

Over the next several posts I am going to review the materials, the construction details as I understand them, and finally, the measurements. This will all take some time, so be patient, for this skirt is a monument to the Edwardian love of luxury, of layers and of the seen, the suggested, and the hidden, of plays of light and shimmer and soft color. It is also an interesting admixture of the classically curved with the linear and almost medieval, some of the patterns on the skirt seeming to herald the beginning of the very modern era.

As always, click on the images for a larger version, but now it may take two steps to get there. If Google is implementing the slideshow feature for images, on the black slideshow screen that will appear, and towards the bottom left, the phrase "Image from" appears, followed by a Blogger web address. Click that Web address. A new window opens, containing the original image, sized for the window. If you to see the original as big as originally designed, click the image itself and voila.

Actually, in this case, I beg you to do the work and click, for you cannot see the plays of light and detail if you do not.

Skirt Design

Skirt back.

The back of the skirt tells you much about the skirt design. This skirt is shaped like an enormous trumpet. There is so much on the floor that I think the lady who wore it was quite tall, somewhere over 5 feet, five inches, my height. The skirt would have puddled around her feet in any case in the fashionable manner, but not so much as is shown here.

The waistline is shirred all the way around, but most heavily at the back, and as we will learn, would bunch more at the back than is shown, for there are three tiers of interior ties that gather the back together rather like a Natural Form dress of the end of the 1870s.

Further puddle control is a series of long tacks connecting the various layers, holding them together with an inch or so of give, but sewn such that the top layer falls into folds. The entire experience is controlled to maintain the silhouette, but in a flowey manner. Amazingly complex.

The top of the skirt, except the belt, is sheer silk. It shows the a second skirt beneath, of a very pale green silk gauze. Underneath both? Another layer opaque white silk. The skirt from knee down is a light satin, embroidered with cut steel faceted fat bugle beads and glued-on, (yes, glued!) cut steel faceted nailhead beads sans holes, and cut through at sections with lace appliques made of a combination of tape lace with brides and tape lace on net.

Final control over the flow and swish and puddle? Four layers of flounces that help hold the skirt's trumpet shape, that thicken the folding and puddling, that offer swish and a peep of froth. But I hurry myself.

Trim
Here is the front waistline, below. The skirt band suggests a belt, and the hanging applied applique, which functions as a Medievalesque extension to the belt. Note the quatrefoil designs. All the beads and nailheads are cut steel, but in two tones; they vary in the light, too.

The front hem is a happy, or uneasy, depending on your taste, mix of the Medieval, the modern, and the Classical Beaux Arts. The lace joining the upper, sheer part of the skirt to the satin part? Classical. The appliques set at intervals all the way around the skirt? Ditto. The cut-steel patterning, and mix of Medieval quatrfoils and Classical acanthus-esque motifs (the pointed ones), and the very nineteen teens lines and the mirroring curve shapes, like wings or...I don't know what they are called...they have a name: you can seen one hanging from a quatrefoil at the lower right of the image below.

A view of the skirt towards the back shows more motifs, in the central motif -- peer closely now, please -- there is what appears to be an "M". Whether this is symbolic of the owner, the maker, something else, or nothing all, remains a mystery to me.

Back bottom of the skirt.

Furbelows Below

I had to say it., had to. Furbelows are frills, and heavens, there are frills aplenty under this skirt! In order, top to base:

Pale green gauze gathered frill, with applied narrow self ruche.
White gathered gauze frill, with applied narrow ruche of a gauze ribbon.
Satin knife-pleated frill.
Deep flounce of light crinoline or some sort of stiffened cotton or linen, tucked.

So what do you think? I know I'll have a great bit of fun over the next while, uncovering with you how this lovely thing was put together. I hesistate to say it, but each individual element is in itself not difficult, as you will see, and while good care was taken in the construction, nothing is entirely spot-perfect. It's the sum total that renders it not only an amazing thing to look at, but a dressmaker's tour de force. If only we could see it in movement!

By the way, this is the only time I plan ever to mount the dress, and I had it up less than half an hour, unless I give it to an organization that can conserve it. The top layers are sound, but the underneath is a mess, and the skirt is so heavy that it would soon pull itself apart.

Oh, and why am I pulling this garment out just now? There is a reason, and it doesn't have to do with Halloween, but with modern sewing. We shall see.

Heads Up: Blogger Has a New Way of Displaying Images

2011-09-16T19:13:00.000-04:00

Edited on Thursday, September 29: It appears that the slideshow function was a test, for as of a day or two ago now, when I click images on Blogger blogs, Blogger displays them the regular old way. So much for all that :}

Dear readers,

This evening I discovered that when you click an image in a Blogger blog posting, instead of seeing the original image in larger format, you get a slideshow function in a black screen that lets you look at all the images in your post...in a rather small size.

Like many bloggers, I put smaller-scale images in the main text body, allowing text to flow around them so readers can keep the flow going, and only click on images when they want to look at bigger versions.

This slide show is convenient, but isn't so great for costumers who love to offer their readers really big image versions so they can look at fine details like seams and individual stitches. Terrible for people like me who love blogs that show fine details in giant images!

Don't despair: you can still get those mega images. Here's how.

Towards the bottom left of the slideshow screen the phrase "Image from" appears, followed by a Blogger web address, or part of one. Click that Web address. A new window opens, containing the original image, sized for the window. If you to see the original as big as originally designed, click the image itself and voila. View all the details!

Here's a screen capture of the lower left corner of the slideshow screen with the link I am talking about, below.

Happy viewing,

Natalie

From the Collection: An 1880s Wire Bustle Pad

2011-09-10T17:25:00.001-04:00

Earlier this summer the boys, my mother, and I visited a nearby antique store and I came home with a wire bustle pad, a gift from a favorite dealer. He had a collection of long standing that he was slowing purging, and was pleased to find an appreciative home for something he admitted would find love only from a narrow niche of people.

What a treat, and I was delighted. Here it is, in detail and measured for you, so that together we can enjoy its fascinating construction and wonder who might have worn it. A small woman at the end of the 1880s, when bustles were falling out of fashion? Or a young girl? If the latter, we might imagine how she felt to wear such padding, light though it might be. If children then are anything like they are today, I imagine some girls fancied the grownup experience of looking fashionable, if uncomfortable, while others felt it a silly and inconvenient impediment to their fun and movements. I would certainly fall in the latter camp!

As always, please click on the images to get larger versions of them. (Edit as of Friday, September 16, 2011. Blogger seems to have turned on a new image function which produces a slideshow effect. The images in the show are rather small. To see the original large-scale images, click the string of characters after the phrase "Image from" that sits just below the image. A new window will open and you can see the original image, plus click on it to get a mega view. Phew! I thought that Blogger had removed large images altogether, which would be hard news for detail-loving costumers.)

Like I have, I think you'll find the construction ingenious. It's also a good example of economy of materials and labor. The materials are high quality and the construction sound and sturdy, but there is stitching and stapling only where absolutely needed. Manufacturing elegance, here, and awareness of labor time spent, but still a secure, quality result. Sure wish my microwave was as sturdy...our less than year-old machine broke, the manufacturer gave us money for replacement, but the first replacement was dented inside its multitude of undented wrappings, and the second has a defective face panel. Quality control went down the tubes there. Sigh.

Materials

The bustle itself is made of wire. It's probably steel wire, though it shows no signs of rust. The wires have some "memory" to them; that is, if you apply a little pressure to them, they resist the pressure rather than denting. The strength of the shape is assisted by the way the structure is made: the wires are woven almost like a very wide window screen (do you feel an idea coming on, bustle lovers?) However, the memory isn't that strong, for there are some small dents in the structure.

Of what the tapes are made, I do not know; they feel like cotton, but I've never felt linen tape and so cannot tell. The tapes themselves are pretty, if discolored. The central part of the width is herringboned, while the edges, to some 1/4 inch, are tabby-woven selvage. The effect is discreetly architectural.

Total weight? An ounce or two.

There are no labels or other manufacturing marks on the bustle.

Construction, So Far as I Can Tell

The bustle appears to have been made as a wire tube, which was then bent into a crescent and a fold introduced into the wide side. Each end was then squashed into a nub perhaps 1/4 inch thick, and capped like this, so far as I can tell:

A length of the same tape appears to have been wrapped about the nub. I cannot see it except where the outer covering, described below, has worn away.
A length of the same tape was folded. At the end of one long side it was sewn into a seam the width of the bustle nub. The tape was then turned inside out to protect the seam.
The nub was inserted into this little pocket.
The covering was stapled twice at each end of the forward edge of the tape, where the bustle itself starts.

The bustle was then attached to a tape belt, like this:

A length of tape long enough to go around the waist was cut.
The bustle was laid alongside it, off center, so that the tape belt would buckle at the side! That is accounted for by the fact that one end of the tape is longer than the other, and the short end is cut raw, folded once, and stapled. The other end is raw. The buckle is missing.
Another length of tape with a tiny seam allowance on each end was laid underneath the waist tape, so that it doesn't show when the bustle is worn. It's like a facing. It is as long as the distance across the interior edge of bustle where it would sit at the waist, but measured straight across from nub to nub. This means that when worn the bustle wire may not touch the wearer too much. Instead, the tape comes under stress and pulls each end of the bustle closer to the wearer.
Both short ends were turned and sewn under.
The long edge was sewn to the waist tape at the edge closest to the wearer.
This made another, very long pocket. The end of the outer nub wrapping tape was stuck inside, and stapled with one staple close to the nub. I cannot tell for sure, but I don't think the side of that tape is caught in with the facing each seam, and there is no other stitching holding it to the waist tape.
The other long edge of the facing was not sewn; you can see in the images that part of it has folded back.
In the middle of the facing pocket is another nub of tape, stapled. The edge is broken off and it doesn't stick out of the facing pocket. What it was for I do not know. You can see it in the image where I am holding the waist tape, just below.

I do not believe the metal itself would touch the wearer's waist

The Bustle's Age

An example of this very model of bustle was sold by Augusta Auctions some time ago as part of Lot: 521, March/April 2005 Vintage Clothing & Textile Auction, New Hope, PA, labeled as bustle pads from 1880 to 1890. That bustle pad was in better condition than mine is. If you look at the other examples, you can see some of the variety of bustle pads out there.

Was It Meant for an Adult or a Child?

I did a little experiment. I carefully wrapped the waist tape to the mannequin. The tapes wrapped with an inch or two to spare. However, the result is just eeeny-weeny, and although the skirt would puff out a little, the bustle horns don't wrap well around the waist; you can see this on the back view, especially. Very out of proportion, sitting so awkwardly that it feels tippy. The horns of the bustle pad don't stretch to wrap the waistline enough so that the tension on the belt helps hold it close, but not too close.

If worn by an adult, the tournure given to the skirt would be narrow and miniscule. If the waist was 24 inches, and not my 29 inches, the pad would fit better, and so perhaps would suit the very tail end (sorry, couldn't help the joke) of the 1890s.

Look at the variety of bustles sold in that Augusta Auctions lot. "My" bustle pad is at the far right and is smaller than the others.

However, it might fit a young girl nicely, because the waist and hips would be narrower than an adult and the horns of the bustle wrap naturally and in proportion.

Not being a bustle expert, I just am not sure. I'd want to try it on a properly sized and fitted dress of the era to see. Can anyone illuminate this further?

How It Was Worn

Let's have a look at a few fashions.

Augusta Auctions sold this skating dress from the 1880s in lot 205, November 2009. One might expect smaller padding for this activity, but the tournure produced is still sizeable. The auction page has multiple pictures for you to peruse.

This September, 1890 Godey's fashion plate shows the very last gasp of the bustle era. Perhaps in this year my modest bustle pad might have worked?

Here's a girl's bustle dress from the 1880s, sold by Augusta Auctions, lot 326, April 2006, New Hope, PA. See that little bump on the back? Bustle...

Here is a fashion plate from Godey's, 1874, showing a girl in a bustle dress, with a similar bump-out on the back. Neither bump is extreme, it's just there. Were bustles similar to mine worn for the First Bustle era? I know that adult bustle pads of this sort existed. Whether this make and model was in circulation at that time, I don't know, but the effect in children's wear was very similar. Here below is a Godey's example from February of 1874.

What Can You Do with This Information?

As I examined this little bustle bad, methought, one could take an old window screen or other wire, and do something similar with it, for either a child or an adult. The result would be a modest bustle effect, but light and less uncomfortable than a full tail would be.

Sure hope someone takes this idea and runs with it!

In Other News...

I am rethinking the Madame Cobweb 1869 dress project. For some reason, despite initial enthusiasm, I became sated with the style after researching it during vacation. Since 2008 I have aged some, and what seemed handsome then, now, after years of Regency wear and looking at robust 18th century originals on which the early 1870s inspired themselves, feels prettified, rather child-like, and out of my current mood.

Further, there are some house projects burning to be done: a cushion for the big early 19th century Empire settee in the upstairs hallway, curtains. While I am at Mom's, I could make at least one of those projects.

Hard to say.We shall see.

Entering the Silly Season: An 1869 Madame Cobweb Dress

2011-09-06T11:29:00.001-04:00

The silly season is upon us: time to design for Halloween! Having looked at so many sacques and polonaises these last weeks on Hallie Larkin's blog, I've conceived a sudden desire for floof and pouf, and bethought me of the First Bustle era, and my unfinished Dolly Varden project.

Since Christopher wants to be a cowboy again this year, I think I will accompany him as his mama, Madame Cobweb. Noah will be my black kitty cat -- he wants to be a kitty again this year, at least for the moment. They've grown so that I will need to make new outfits for them again, but those are easy and lots of fun. Madame Cobweb will actually make two appearances, since our tea society is having a Ghost Tea here at the end of October, too.

This dress will not be a Dolly Varden per se*, since those dresses were made up in eye-popping floral prints and date to 1872-1873. No, this will be a charcoal gray dress trimmed with black ruching. The design? The dress on the right in the image at the page top. You can read all about the pattern on page 77 of the January, 1869 issue of Peterson's, but I'll make some bodice changes, to be discussed in another post.

* Curious about the Dolly Varden phenomenon? See some research I did on it in the post A Brief History of the Dolly Varden Dress Craze.

Materials: All from the Stash, and Some Found Time

I have the bustle all ready, and a chemise, and a half-finished petticoat. I have the Truly Victorian patterns for the bodice and underskirt, and the pattern for the overskirt from Peterson's, and the fabric, a length of black cotton bought ages ago, and grey fabric, content unsure, purchased for a song long before the boys were even born. I even have black lace from my friend Curtis Grace and antique steel boning found in a grab bag I've been holding on to for some six years. It will be nice to thin the stash.

Better yet, the gift of time. The tots are getting their chickenpox booster shots in a few weeks, and since I have a chronic condition, have been told to be away from them for a week. Therefore, I'll be over at my mother's and make the costumes up in the evenings (the days are devoted to work, and if I am lucky and can get the fabric, to a curtain project).

Very little handsewing on this one, either...time to pull out the period handcrank to speed the construction, and time to use the pinking sheers to avoid having to finish interior seams. Plus, I've learned a great deal about seams and trims since 2009, and have a couple of damaged garments from the mid to late nineteenth century to refer to when -- it's not a matter of "should", but when :} -- I get stuck.

Anyhow, this will be the last project for this year, and a fun, quick one that results in a dress I can pull out annually for Halloween parties.

Stay tuned :}

From the Collection: Morally Minded Buttons, and Pins and Laces, Moral or Not

2011-08-27T10:23:00.011-04:00

Thought to change gears a little. Over the summer I have been collecting quarters and with this little mad money stash, I've found a few little tidbits of material culture which give us glimpses into women's lives.

As always, please click on the images to see larger versions.

So, what have we here?

Buttons Most Morally Minded
At the top of the collection shown here, are seven small brass buttons. They are studded with cut steel, faceted for a brilliant effect. This is true cut steel, for on the reverse of one of the buttons you can see the rivets, and you can also see the shanks. The quality of the workmanship is very high: consider all the detailing and those minute steel rivets, all packed into a button less than three-quarters of an inch in diameter! I think the design is an illustration of Aesop's fable called The Fox and the Crow, for a fox is up on his hind legs and appears to be reaching towards a bird on a branch.

Here is the tale in full, courtesy of Aesop's Fables.org.

A Fox once saw a Crow fly off with a piece of cheese in its beak and settle on a branch of a tree. "That's for me, as I am a Fox," said Master Reynard, and he walked up to the foot of the tree. "Good-day, Mistress Crow," he cried. "How well you are looking to-day: how glossy your feathers; how bright your eye. I feel sure your voice must surpass that of other birds, just as your figure does; let me hear but one song from you that I may greet you as the Queen of Birds." The Crow lifted up her head and began to caw her best, but the moment she opened her mouth the piece of cheese fell to the ground, only to be snapped up by Master Fox. "That will do," said he. "That was all I wanted. In exchange for your cheese I will give you a piece of advice for the future. Moral of Aesop's Fable: Do not trust flatterers.

From their size and style, I put them in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. They would have looked marvelous on one of the front-buttoning dresses then so fashionable. Was the button maker toying with irony, as he studded a fable about flattery with flashy facets? Or was he clueless? How about the dressmaker? Was she teasing her client or attempting to teach her? Or was mama offering a continual reminder to her daughter through her dress buttons? Or did nobody even bother to look and wonder?

Pins
This was an exciting find: hairpins still in their original brown paper wrapper. The paper is still quite strong, although I am trying not to handle it much. It is crisp and fine-grained, if that makes any sense, but there is no true gloss on the paper.

Kirby, Beard & Co. was a British company of long standing that made pins and needles, razors and much more. See Grace's Guide for the basic facts, and this PDF article, "Gloucestershire Folk Museum and the Mechanisation of the Pin Industry", by Nigel Cox, from the Gloucestershire Society for Industrial Archaeology Journal, 2005.

The pins are the ordinary pins used for eons and still available today. I have pulled out the wrapper gently so that you can read the labeling; like so many pins and needles, they were made in England.

Let's peek inside. I have shown the how the wrapper closes; the hairpins are grouped tightly inside, so tightly that they are almost interlocked. For those of you interested in selling hairpins at a living history event, knowing how things are folded is most helpful.

I am not quite certain and need to ask my friend Curtis Grace, from whom I purchased the pins and laces, but think these are from the attic of a former milliner and her sister. More on them in a moment: it's a tasty tale.

Laces
These laces are still tied and wrapped just as they were found. Like many of the reels of ribbons in that same milliner's attic, some of the laces are tied with cotton thread, of a thickness that reminds me of buttonhole twist.

I am not sure what type of laces these are. The leftmost are flat tapes, loosely braided. The right laces are tubular, and also braided. At their ends both sets of laces are crimped with black-painted metal.

Haven't estimated their length, but they do not seem long enough for corset laces. Boots, more likely.

The Milliner Sisters
Curtis goes to estate sales and has done so for many years. At one of these sales he visited the attic of a lady who, with her sister, had been a milliner. She was a hoarder, oh, was she a hoarder, he laughed. She had stuffed purses with all of her bills, and he found her grocery lists. Then there were the stocks of millinery supplies: rolls of silk ribbon on specially made cardboard tubes. The wide ribbons were wound on the rolls between very thin sheets of paper; I shall show you an example some other time. The narrow ribbons didn't always get this treatment. Some of the larger rolls of ribbon were tied closed with that same thread you see above, and shorter lengths ditto. There were rolls of ribbon from a quarter inch to three and more inches wide, moire, edged, picoted, or printed. Many were stained from their years in the attic, and a few were shredding, being made of weighted silk, but many are still strong.

Now for the fun part. The sisters shared their business, but split at some point, and every little item they owned, Curtis explained, split too, in exact halves. Even ribbons were divided right in half! Whether the split was amicable and the division the decision of two very precise ladies, or a tragic and angry separation, I cannot suppress a smile, these years later. Certainly the items don't retain any sadness, like some items do, preventing me from even handling them. Instead they seem to be happy, sunny things, telling their story to us afresh.

Material Culture and Social History Blogs
Are you interested in reading about material culture and social history? Then I have several more blogs for you that I follow regularly. They are all quite different, but I think you will dip into each one with joy.

At the Sign of the Golden Scissors
Specifically eighteenth century dress. A really wonderful journey into textiles, stays, portraits, and more. American.

Picking for Pleasure: Understanding Antiquing Acquisitions
Examining a wide range of American items through the lens of material culture studies.

Zho Zho's Textile Adventures
Textiles, history of costume, historic houses, fashion, from New Zealand.

Today I leave you with...
...Muffin and Ladybug snoring, apropos to the Cat Days of Summer. Why should the dogs get all the press?

First Day of Nursery School

2011-08-19T10:14:00.003-04:00

Yesterday morning was iomportant. The boys sang a made-up song about a coffee house after we helped them dress for their first morning at nursery school. Then they picked up their backpacks, and off we went with grandmother to Immanuel Baptist.

All four of us were excited, but only two were nervous, and those two didn't include the boys. They had worked out their worries by clinging to Mama and Daddy the night before, a night culminating in a nice early morning thunderstorm. Parents out there, do you feel a giggle rising, suspecting who slept well, after lots of cuddling, and who didn't?

Once in their Pond, the suite of rooms they and their other boys and girls will call their own two mornings a week, Miss Donna showed them their cubbies, and they began to follow their noses, inspecting everything else and glancing at their classmates. Grandmother and I tagged along, and I watched the wet morning sunshine peep into the windows and spotlight a pretend grill.

"A gree-ill"!

"Two kepuchs [ketchup bottles]! And this is an ice ceem, Mama! It needs to go into the freezer." Noah tested the pretend freezer door. My plan for long hugs evaporated and I backed away gently. They are growing up and I won't smother them, but boy, did I want to reach down, nab whoever was closest, and squeeze him tightly, and then squash the second one equally tightly and leave his nose damp with kiss marks.

"Goodbye, Noah! Goodbye, Christopher!"

Waited.

"Goodbye, boys!"

"'Bye-'bye, Mama!" with some waves and smiles from both of them.

"Thank you so much, Miss Donna; I can see they're pretty happy, and oh, Curte will be here to pick them up...". Miss Donna smiled and I knew she knew what was going on; Curte was not the only Daddy who would arrive early upstairs and sip coffee, a floor away from his children, waiting.

Out the door we went, and a new stage of their lives began. I suppose for us, too.

By the way, yes, I did hug them lots later. When yesterday evening they rode their bicycles back to grandmother's from the ice cream shop, they were taller. I am positive of it. Sigh.

Volunteering for the Costuming Society of America at Ashland: A Success!

2011-08-12T22:30:00.006-04:00

Dramatis personae: Jenni (middle), Polly (right),
me (left). Also, look! My plumes are standing forward,
the way they are meant to be. They soon swung backward,
the bums.

This evening the Jane Austen Sewing Society/Bluegrass Regency Society volunteered at the kickoff of the Costume Society of America's Summer Symposium, at Ashland, the Henry Clay Estate.

Polly, Jenni, and I demonstrated trapunto (wadded quilting), goldwork embroidery, working with plumes, and rolled hemming for symposium participants, while they nibbled on hors d'oeuvres and when they weren't touring the Ashland estate house or looking at its costume collection. Jeannie took all the pictures; thank you, Jeannie, you were so sweet to do it, especially as you were not feeling well.

It was such a delight to listen to, learn from, and talk with kindred spirits, people who have made costumes, fashion history, and textiles their life's profession or passionate hobby. They were all such kind, interesting people, so willing to share information about themselves and their work. It was a treat to meet students and their professors, docents and researchers, professional theater costumers, and conservators, to learn about fabric conservation, and oh, so much more, all set in such golden-green beauty. There is nothing like Ashland's grounds on a handsome summer evening.

Thank you, CSA and Ashland, for having us. We so enjoyed helping out and spending time with you, and we hope that the rest of the symposium is a grand success, and that your dinner cruise goes off like a happy dream.

After having a chance to think about it all more, I'll write more, but here are some of the pictures.

The only costume notes for the moment: yes, that's a new hairstyle, one closer to the real deal for 1795, and it features innumerable curls made with a combination of rollers and a good curling iron, and the addition of a massive looped chignon in back, of artificial hair. I still haven't figured out how to get curls to stay on top of my head. Have tried pinning my curls up, etc., etc. and may resort ro adding tiny rows of artificial rouleaux. Still, this style is close to some fashion plates and some prints and portraits, so I am happier with this evening effect than I was with the effect last round.

The bandeau is a strip of buckram wrapped with silk, which is then manipulated with stitches to introduce some pleats and folds, and then tied in front and pinned with a vintage brooch set with brilliants. The necklace is a double strand of potato-strung freshwater pearls, with ribbon closure.

Finally, no, the plumes did not stay right way round on my head for long. This iteration I just plunged the end of the plume behind the bandeau and into my curls. Last time, if you recall, it had been wired to a thin structured under-bandeau that was hidden behind a soft, wrapped bandeau. Round three experimentation ahead. I am busy reading in magazines of the era trying to glean bits of evidence.

Finally, aftermath :} There's that massive chignon, now let down, and all the curls coming undone after being let out of the bandeau.

The next morning: Jenni wrote about the event too; please do have a read!

Volunteering for the Costume Society of America...and a Hiatus

2011-07-18T10:02:00.001-04:00

Happy News! Our little Jane Austen Sewing Society will be volunteering for the Summer Symposium of the Costume Society of America, Southeastern Region. At their kickoff reception at the Ashland Estate, we will demonstrate fine handsewing along with fan games, while we wear Full Dress suitable for outdoors, a la Ranelagh. We're all really looking forward to the opportunity to volunteer, and if I get the opportunity, I will post about it.

Meanwhile, the serious news. This blog is going on semi to full hiatus for another period. The boys start nursery school in a month or so, and our house renovation needs more of my attention. Therefore, the hobby must step aside once again.

I've enjoyed this last six months or so of fun with getting ready for the Jane Austen festival, and down the road hope to return with more translations from Journal des Luxus und der Moden, more costume research, and more experiments in period sewing.

Meanwhile, happy summertime to everyone, and I will see you again, on and off, later this year.

Accessories: 1795 Full Dress Ensemble in Cream Silk, Part 3

2011-07-18T09:54:00.000-04:00

Some of the accessories used in the ensemble,

More 1795 Full Dress ensemble details, this time the all-important accessories, from hair to fan.

Squinting at the images? For big views, please click on them.

Headdress

Let's take it from the top, shall we?

Ugh, I almost deleted that, but, let it go...I am talking about hairstyles, with or without toupees.

By the way, the Gallery of Fashion uses the term toupee all the time, and doesn't necessarily mean a rat-sized piece of obviously fake hair glued to a man's head, but the hairstyling at the top of the head.

In case you've forgotten the look of the entire ensemble already, here it is from the side:

A little play in blue and white and sepia.

The inspiration was this 1795 'do, as you may recall, made with a satin chiffonet (wrap), spangled, and with a diamond brooch and two ostrich plumes.

Gallery of Fashion, 1795, detail.

Well, I had a vintage freshwater pearl and steel brooch instead, and not all the spangles are yet applied to the chiffonet, and the fabric is dupioni not satin, but the ends are pinked, as in the figure, and the affair is tied as in the figure as well as Polly and I were able to get it.

I had one issue with the headdress. Underneath is a bandeau made according to Lynn McMaster's tutorial (see previous post). Well, the feathers refused to hold that well. One really needs to have LONG wires to stick the plumes in.

Yet are wires necessary? Nicole of Diary of a Mantua Maker located a fascinating print in the Yale Lewis Walpole Library Digital Collection, titled "Beauty and Fashion", from 1797. First, the full print, and then let's look at a detail.

The mezzotint shows two women at work in what may be a home, given the mirror and pretty wallpaper and patterned fitted carpet and nice table, but also might be a shop. I am not versed enough in prints to know.

You see that they are wearing their headdresses and hats indoors. One sees this all the time. It may have been practical, given cold weather, and it may have been fashionable, and it may have been an artist's caprice, although even amateurs drew women wearing their headwear, not just caps, indoors.

Here's the detail, above, that has me all excited. The lady on the left is sewing a plume to the chiffonet, which is at least partly constructed of ribbons. See how stiff the chiffonet is? See how it holds its shape in her hands? It's constructed (!), not wrapped on the head. There must be a substructure, a stiff bandeau, to which that plume is being sewn. Otherwise the chiffonet would be floppy.

Some wraps were just that, wrapped...there are prints satirizing the process...but this one is premade, and it means I can construct mine, get it just so, sew the plumes to it tightly, and never worry my head again about trying to wrap the thing again or about falling feathers. O happy day that this nugget of historical experience revealed itself.

A second detail showing the tools of the trade. Scissors, of course, small ones, and lace, which I think is the spotted stuff hanging off the table, and a roll of striped ribbin, and what may be a pattern or cut-out piece of fabric. Pins everywhere. They are mid-length and they have small heads.

This is what I love about this hobby: the chance to discover the material culture and the experiences behind it.

Hair

What I still do not have the way I want it is the hair.

The hairstyles of the day were so full that to look like a fashion plate, even with very long thick hair one still would have had to employ hair switches or a wig. Portrait miniatures, full portraits, and prints show a variety of looks, some full, some obviously just natural hair, thick, thin, curly, or straight. See the 1790s Fashion: A Transition from The Enlightenment to Regency posts and browse the images to get a clearer idea.

I was aiming for a Miss Frankland's hair in "The Frankland Sisters" portrait by John Hoppner (1795).

Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

My own hair is quite thick and curly, but not quite shoulder length.

To make the hairstyle, I pulled most of my back hair into a loose ponytail, secured it with an elastic band, then pulled the tail up the back of my head and pushed that giant curved haircomb you see in the topmost image down on it. The front and side hair were left hanging, and the remainder of the back hair ditto. I had no hair to hang down, much less enough to create the looped chignons of the fashion plate as well as the mezzotint about, so opted for this simpler, slightly later style.

When wound with that silk, the hairstyle flattened, and didn't have the length to work. The curls were too snakey thin, too. Solution? I will have to puff the natural curls more, lie the chiffonet on top more lightly, and hide some imitation locks underneath, in an effort to get the 1794-5 look.

Oh, about that comb. The base is a gift from Polly. I took an old pearl necklace I had that had broken, trimmed it to fit, and wrapped it to the comb with thin jewelry wire. Voila. It'll do, and can be taken apart and the base reused.
A final note about that mezzotint print above. Do you see the shorter hair the women are sporting? Plus that both women have hair that lies in soft waves rather than all-out curls? By 1797 big hair was bye-bye, that's one message, and second, that not everyone strove to sport little curly tops. I see this in other Lewis Walpole prints, bye the bye. If you use the link above and browse the library's holdings, you can see for yourself.

The Belt

Yes, the belt. The one item for which I do not have a proper reference. It just felt right. Belts were used, no doubt about that, and the design on the belt fits right in, but its size and shape? I am not certain. Further research needed.

The fabric part's construction is simple, and I made no attempt, other than sticking to handsewing to make it perfectly period. A length of silk is just folded over a core of stiff cotton duck, and overcast down. Then one end is threaded through the buckle, then end turned over, and stitched closed, just as in any belt. The other end is whipped closed.

The belt buckle, front. If you click the image, you will see the cut steel details. The color varies, showing a bit of damage. I am thinking it very late Victorian or Edwardian based on its large size and the curve it makes, perfect for going around a waist. I have another, definitely Victorian/Edwardian one in faux jet of a similar design, bought at the same time and from the same source...both were in a grab bag, I think, for pennies. Those years, the 1890s through the 1910s, were a Golden Age for belts with sashes.

The belt buckle from its back. Note the rivets. This is a true cut steel piece, interestingly with a gold color on the main frame, which is not terribly usual.

On the back, three roundels composed of vintage glass circles shaped and colored to imitate cut steel (from Bumbershoot Supplies, again), sewn down, and then surrounded by purl frieze, and a star of frieze sewn inside.

The Fan

All I did here was to paint, in gold acrylics, an Adamesque design with swags and bellflowers and plain bands, both ubiquitous motifs from the 1760s onward, on a pretty sea-blue fan. Here the blue is stronger; the lower photo has truer color.

The stick ends are gold-painted, too, and a row of small dots spots the sticks just below the paper.

No particular model was followed, here. Rather, over the past year I reviewed lots of images of fan leaves from the Victoria and Albert, the British Museum, and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, and absorbed the things I liked. Then, having having drawn Adamesque designs for cards and whatnot for fun over the years, just came up with a design out of the head and painted it, on the spot and with a small brush, loosely and without particular worry.

I am very happy with the results. It is airy, subdued, and warm, the gold and blue reminding me of sky and sunlight.

Its only issue: meant to sparkle in dim lighting, it -- doesn't. The gold paint is best for daytime. No wonder some fans were glued with spangles! Next time, I spot some spangles on.

A detail, below.

That ends the series. I hope you've enjoyed it. You'll see this ensemble again, tweaked. More about the occasion soon. It's a very exciting opportunity that our little sewing group is honored to be a part of.

Goldwork-Embroidered Petticoat: 1795 Full Dress Ensemble in Cream Silk: Part 2

2011-07-17T19:38:00.003-04:00

The goldwork petticoat

Are you ready for the petticoat? I am so excited to have made it, even though I discovered it needs more embroidery. This is part two, by the way, in a series about the 1795 Full Dress ensemble I made for this year's Jane Austen Festival in Louisville. (See part 1.)

Please click on images to see larger versions, and warning, this post is image-heavy.

The petticoat is embroidered in goldwork, described below. As a first experiment in this type of embroidery, it went well. Now to add motifs to those already there to give the effect more ooomph. I am looking forward to that. It's the kind of work I adore. Yes Mom, I can hear you laughing: as a child seed beading and making minature furniture were favorite hobbies.

I love the cumulative effect of the goldwork: shine and sparkle, depth and dimension. Also elegant: none of this is flashy the way an all-over, pavee treatment might be.

In fact, a second experiment is in the works: I took last year's petticoat and am experimenting with a combination of silk embroidery, couching with gold passing thread, along with the techniques you will see below. The pattern comes from Luxus und der Moden (yes, Sabine, that pattern from earlier this year!) That project is a long-term one that may take a year or so to complete.

Constructing the Petticoat

The petticoat is made of a silk and cotton blend from Thai Silks. The fabric has super drape and the perfect amount of sheerness, and the weave is tight enough for good looks, but loose enough to permit ease in embroidery.

It is constructed in the manner traditional to the 18th century as a whole. Should you wish a tuturial, you cannot go wrong with "The Standard Eighteenth Century Petticoat" on A Fashionable Frolick or from Costume Close-Up.

About the waistline: this petticoat has the 1795 higher waistline. In this dress, the petticoat is held up by small loops buttoned to the stays: four loops in front (two to each side of the center stays closure) and three in back. You could also hold it up by pinning the tape waistband carefully to the stays, or with straps. There is some argument concerning the use of buttons and loops in the era, but I opted for it anyway.

About the length: The petticoat length is to the bottom of the anklebone, so that I would not trip when dancing.

Given the fabric's sheerness, I was able to finely gather the fabric to the waistband. First I folded over the raw edge to just over a half inch. Then I divided the entire circumference into quarters. Then, separately for each quarter, the fabric at the top was gathered twice, each gathering row separated by about a half inch. Then I pulled in the gathers, spaced them evenly, and whipped the valley between each gather separately to the cotton tape waistband. The whip stitches nip just a over an eighth inch of fabric at the top, and the gathering stitches are left in to help hold the gathers in place. This traditional treatment keeps each gather standing straight and unsquashed and allows it to pivot on the waistband for freer movement.

The Goldwork Embroidery

"Fortune", a Directoire-era French ensemble, featuring
a dress with goldwork embroidery.
From Napoleon and the Empire of Fashion.

The petticoat is embroidered in goldwork, using a combination of flat spangles, purl (bullion) frieze, bullion fringe, and "pastes" made from vintage rhinestones from Bumbershoot Supplies, a supplier in Oregon who has been most kind.

Goldwork had been popular at least from the seventeenth century, and would remain so until the fashion appears to have mostly faded sometime in the nineteenth century. Goldwork allowed the wearer to sparkle and gleam and "show" to advantage. It was a feature of Afternoon Dress and Full Dress; it would have been in poor taste to display gold in Undress, so far as I can discern.

Goldwork was usually, though not always, professionally done, and ranged from expensive to staggeringly expensive. The threads and spangles and foils were of real gold or gold plus a base metal, and there was a fashion for taking apart goldwork and melting it down for the gold. It still is expensive, one reason that I have used it sparingly.

An example of a sprig motif on my petticoat.
This one has a brilliant attached. The brilliant will soon
be surrounded by a circle of purl.

If you are interested in the subject, you'd do well to start with Gail Marsh's 18th Century Embroidery Techniques, which explains the workshops, the materials, the methods, and shows actual examples, in enough detail that someone with a little embroidery experience can latch on to it and go forth -- with care. Online, Mary Corbett's Needle 'N Thread has really useful posts on goldwork projects, as well as reviews of relevant books.

I spaced the sprigs using one of several Gallery of Fashion plates that specify embroidery in gold, but more sparingly than most pictured, too sparingly, as it turned out. I have not found gold-sprigged extant petticoats to date, and only one dress in the Napoleon and the Empire of Fashion, a Directoire dress of similar date, is sprigged, also sparingly, but it also has a heavily embroidered motif at the bottom.

Working the Embroidery

The embroidery process is pleasant. It is slow, yes, but the planning of the motifs is fun, and executing them, while exacting, has scope for creativity, for one never knows exactly how the purl will lie, and if it moves on its own to a different position, sometimes that position is more artistic than the planned version, allowing creativity and inspiration some room. This is dynamic work.

Another example of a sprig motif. The flower stamens
are composed of a central spangle, upon which have been
sewn bits of purl. Each stamen is started by pulling the
thread up through the spangle's center hole, threading
the purl bead on, and then pulling the thread to the
back of the work again near an outer spangle.

The sprigs include three basic motifs, all based on motifs that appear in pages 39-54 of 18th Century Embroidery Techniques.

They are made with gold frieze and spangles rescued from a cutter Indian garment. That garment was also terrifically hard to find, for there are few out there that I would feel okay cutting into.

Another sprig sample. My thumbnail gives you
an idea of the sprig's size.

The frieze, a gold-coated wire, wound very tightly in a squared pattern to enhance sparkle, is of the Indian Sadi variety and is a little looser than European frieze. To apply it, one cuts the wire to the length desired, and then threads it like a bead. I used gold-dyed Ver a Soie silk "Paris" thread from Hedgehog Handworks, an utter joy to work with. I would recommend only silk for a project like this; it is very strong.

Anyhow, to start a motif, one pulls the needle from the reverse of the work, threads on the frieze, than plunges the needle back through the fabric. Very short lengths will lay flat, but longer lengths need to be couched down at intervals to hold them in position.

Yet another sprig motif.

The spangles are then backstitched in place. Because I used so many spangles and this was my first project, I opted for the vintage non-metal spangles from the Indian cutter garment. Real spangles are expensive, but they do have a far superior shine and weight, and for an important garment, I'd save up and use them instead. Dream on, Natalie. Berlin Embroidery carries them, as does Hedgehog Handworks. (I used my small batch on the reticule).

For the pastes, I threaded a spangle on a long piece of silk thread, holding it with a half knot, applied a 4 mm chaton rose foil-backed glass rhinestone to an individual spangle with glue, set it in place, then threaded one end in a needle, plunged that thread to the back, pulled the thread loose, threaded the other end of thread, and plunged that through. Finally I tied the spangle on with a surgeon's knot to hold it fast. Each paste should be surrounded by a ring of purl to help hold it and hide threads: I have yet to do this. (Edited August 1: the surgeon's knot is not enough to hold the pastes in place. Several have come off. I am experimenting with gluing the threads closed. Not gluing the pastes to the fabric, mind, but the thread tie ends.)

Back in the day, pastes would have been of foil-backed glass too, and glued to a spangle or pasteboard base, but the base would have holes around the edge to sew the paste down, and of course the glue used would have been different. In future I may use cardboard, as it will hold the pastes flatter.

A sample of an individual spangle-purl combination.
Exciting, eh?

Individual spangles were sprinkled over the surface. To attach them, I used the traditional method of stringing first a spangle and then a tiny piece of frieze on the thread, and then sewing both on by running the thread back through the hole. Each is attached separately, for connecting threads would show through the thin fabric.

The Fringe

My petticoat is sprigged, as described above, in a band to above the knees, and then set with a fringe to flutter intoxicately at the feet, which it did, in fact, do very well.

The fringe is stritched with large stitches of doubled, waxed thread such that the fringe stops a bit above the hem so that the wearer will not damage it.

This way of positioning the fringe is found in an extant Italian 1795 round gown in the Kyoto Costume Institute Archives; see the detail below:

Image courtesy Kyoto Costume Insitute.

Bullion fringes are very hard to find and it was several months before some bits surfaced locally. They are indeed of gold bullion and are heavy. The fringe is attached to a "lace" threaded with flat gold wire known as plate. The entire fringe was very tarnished and the tarnish proved unremoveable (on a test piece), so it lacks the gorgeous gold color of a fresh piece. I decided that the effect was so important that a mix of tarnished and untarnished elements in the skirt would still work.

Following an extant example, I will be threading a spangled row above the lace header in the future.

The reverse of the fringe, showing the stitches that attach it
to the fabric.

A Delicate Product, Slow to Make

Two giant caveats about goldwork, aside from the expense:

It is very delicate. The purl frieze is superfine metal wire. The ends, which are barely visible to the eye, have a tendency to catch on fabrics and can pull them. Worse, once caught, if the wire is pulled, it will uncoil and can never be coiled up again. A few good pulls and you are well on your way to a garment which must be redone.
It tarnishes. Gold threads and spangles, these days anyway, have base metal in them. They must be kept out of sunlight, and you should avoid touching them while working with them as much as possible, and always afterwards. With good care, the garment being kept well wrapped in muslin and kept in the dark, tarnish can be kept away for some years, but eventually the gold will lose its gleam. This is ephemeral art...

Despite the small size of each motif, each one took about 25 minutes to complete; there are four rows of about eight motifs each, plus the individual spangles are individually attached, and the fringe laid. Therefore, this experiment showed me that goldwork is not fast work, by any means. I noted that my speed increased only a certain amount with experience. In contrast to plain sewing, in which there are usually expanses of repetition, this sort of embroidery requires close attention and much picking up and putting down of scissors, spangles, and pieces of purl, much shaping and laying with tweezers and pins and the like. It's fiddly, and speed can only increase so much. Also, mistakes cannot be hidden; you either live with them or redo your work.

(Edited August 1) Despite all this, I am doing more goldwork over time. First, am already adding several more rows of motifs in between the current sets on this petticoat; these rows feature two new motifs. Someday, maybe Napoleon dress referenced above? Again, dream on, but in the middle of wintertime, one motif at a time, what a nice, bright yellow sunny interlude.

The Cream Silk Robe: 1795 Full Dress Ensemble, Part 1

2011-07-14T19:34:00.005-04:00

Image courtesy Hannah.
Thank you so much!

As promised, here are details concerning the Full Dress ensemble I wore at the Jane Austen Festival in Louisville last weekend about which I posted earlier. The post is in multiple parts; this one is about the inspirations and the robe. The next is about the Goldwork-embroidered petticoat, while the following will cover accessories, including hair. Warning: this post is picture heavy.

As always, please click on the images to view larger versions.

I was fairly pleased with the overall effect of the ensemble. As an experiment, it rates maybe a 7. Overall things to improve:

The robe still was a bit loose on me, no matter how tightly the front might be pinned. Must see if alterations needed. I understand that robes were meant to accommodate for changes in weight and bulk: let us experiment some more on what pins can do.
The goldworked petticoat lacks enough shine. I spaced the motifs on the sparing side. Easy enough to correct: add more!
Feather headdress needed more securing. I will talk more about that later.
Our ballroom lacked a traditional anteroom with a mirror, and the ensemble sorely needed a check before entry, because I did not know that the dress lace at the neckline had partly folded underneath, and the feathers needed adjusting. Lesson: find a bathroom and take your time

Preview for the next post: all about
making a goldwork-embroidered petticoat.

The Ensemble Inspiration

The ensemble has its roots in several Gallery of Fashion plates extant garments and portraits.

The Robe Inspiration

The robe I actually made last year, although I did not write about it until a September picnic, and you are already aware of the roots of its lace. You may not know, though, that the back of the gown itself has its roots in the same dress, " the silver round gown" from Karen Augusta. As you will see below, I used the same vee cut for the center back as on this gown. It has a wonderfully vertical, narrowing effect entirely lacking in diamond-shaped back pieces.

Plus, the robe's edge-to-edge front closing and conservative cut -- which take their cue from earlier decades -- are from several 1790s dresses in Nancy Bradfield's Costume in Detail. I used this design because I liked the cut and it seemed to suit my age well.

The petticoat is inspired by two Gallery of Fashion plates and the motifs embroidered on it come from elements of actual 18th century goldwork embroidery in 18th Century Embroidery Techniques.

Figure XLII, the rightmost figure in the February 1795 plate above, wears a gold sprigged and fringed petticoat. Whenever the text refers to "gold", I take it to mean goldwork and "silver" I take to mean goldwork done in silver, which was also very popular. The text, so far as I can tell from unscientific reading, usually calls other embroidery colored or gives specific colors, such as black. It is possible that the term gold means gold-colored silks or cotton, but I suspect that, given how prevalent goldwork was among the bon ton, real gold is meant. For more information, see 18th Century Embroidery Techniques and Napoleon, The Empire of Fashion.

Here below is the other plate, from December 1794; figure 35 is my inspiration.

The Headdress Inspiration

The headdress is taken from a specific figure, no. 37 from January 1795, shown above. It is described thus: "Chiffonet of white satin, two white ostrich feathers, and a large diamond pin placed on the left side."

Robe Construction

The robe is hand sewn except for the hem, on which I used a chainstitch Willcox and Gibbs treadle with hemmer attachment, having run out of time last year.

It's made of, yes, that same cream silk dupioni, and employs the traditional construction methods described so well in Costume Close Up and in other posts on this blog, to wit:

The front and lining of each bodice piece treated separately: basted together, the edges turning in.

Each piece sandwiched with the next to create a lapped seam and backstitch of combination stitched down.
All edges finished by combination stitching the turned-in seams (but one of seveal ways to do it).
The sleeves backstitched at the bottom half, then set on a manniquin (which should have been a live person), the shoulder straps laid atop, and stitched down. The insides left unfinished for easier renovation.
The skirt top turned under, and carefully whipped to the extreme bottom edge of the bodice.
The skirt hems turned to a small hem and combination stitched, except the bottom hem, which was machined.

For detailed instructions on how to sew in this manner, please refer to the Costuming Research and Documentation page on this blog, where I have links to tutorials.

Above, the lace on the dress.

The dress opened up to show the interior. Note the modesty panels that are sewn to the side seams. When donning the robe, first one panel is wrapped over the stays and pinned there securely, then the other ditto.

Then the robe front pieces are lapped tightly to fit as smoothly as possible. The drawstrings at the top are pulled tight and tied.

Then small pins are inserted horizontally into the edge -- between the fashion fabric and the lining -- of the overlapping piece, and then caught in the underlapped piece. I insert a pin almost every inch. This holds the gown securely closed, invisibly.

Above, how the lace is tacked on. It is easily removable.

How the skirts are attached to the bodice. You can also see the two seams attaching the vee-shaped back piece to the two side back pieces.

The armscye, showing the stitching as well as the basting.

That's it for the robe. Next time, the pettioat, embroidered in gold purl and spangles and pastes!

The 2011 Jane Austen Festival at Locust Grove, Louisville

2011-07-11T21:15:00.006-04:00

Jenni Miller, on right, and myself.
Image courtesy Sarah Jane Meister.

Behatted, begrimed, and behappy, I was writing this still in my Morning ensemble, straight after getting home yesterday. Curte called to say he had the boys at Spindletop swimming, and gave me the evening off, sweet man! I had expected to come straight home and step right in to dinner and bedtime chores. It was such a good trip that I couldn't help writing immediately. It was the first night away on my own with friends in several years; what fun!

As always, please click on the pictures to see larger views.

Jenni and Carson Miller.

This year's Jane Austen Festival was the best yet. Well organized, good events to attend; even if insurance cancelled the archery contest and side-saddle riding demonstration, we could still witness a duel and learn how these things went off and why, watch Nora make fine lace -- and I mean reseau-based net lace with over 150 pins and goodness knows how many bobbins going at once -- enjoy an excellent afternoon tea, well made, with pots of five different kinds of properly brewed tea going round continually, wander the gardens, listen to lectures and shows, talk costume shop -- and best of all, meet friends old and new.

How nice to finally hug Sarah Jane, with whom I've corresponded and whose blog I've read for what, three or four years now, and to meet part of her family into the bargain. To Sharon, Julie R. Deanna, Hannah, Maria, Kathy, and Nora, to Capt. and Mrs. May and the Doctor and Miss Waterman, to the kind JASNA volunteers with whom I worked Sunday afternoon and promptly forgot your names because I didn't want to forget how to handle a credit card, and to everyone whose name I leave off unfortunately through bad memory and I hope you'll forgive me for it, thank you. What a very nice time.

I only wish I had more pictures of you all as mementos. The camera was buried in my sewing bag, and so bulky and modern it was hard to pull out with so many visitors watching. Besides, the darn flash was off, and the pictures I took were very poor quality, so poor it's hard to make out faces. So most images in this post are courtesy Sarah Jane Meister and Jenni Miller.

A domestic moment. Sarah Jane Meister with her son, Malachi,
and Jenni.

A weekend of gallantry and wit. Jenni accepts a bow from her husband. Carson has a gentle sense of humor.

An Unfortunate Incident That Ends Well

Jenni displays her fan, self-painted, to Maria Clemmons and me.

Saturday afternoon brought brutal heat. While Locust Grove itself is placed in a both beautiful and practical position at the crest of a series of tiny rumpled rises and hills so that it catches available breezes and is shaded by a true park, Louisville as a whole is spread flat like the Ohio River mud that most likely underlies it, and summer heat lays down an uncomfortable and unhealthy blanket right on top. The little hilltop wasn't enough to escape yesterday's blanket, and even beneath the trees, we braised underneath it until overdone.

Polly and I, with Locust Grove in the background.
Polly is wearing her block
Print open robe ensemble
and her new bonnet, prettily
trimmed.

At one point, feeling faint under an unbearably hot tent, I wandered over to a blanket where some picnickers were lounging and, recognizing several of them by sight, we made introductions; you may recognize Miss Waterman, Capt. May and his wife from Miss Waterman's blog, which is such fun to read. We were just getting started when, had there been no blanket and an excuse to sit, I'd have slid, bump, into a dead faint, a minute or two later. I am very grateful for their help and care, for had I fully gone under that awful black wave that starts at the top of your head and travels downward, blocking light and life like drowning, but upside down, it it would've have been a message to Curte and homeward bound for me.

Captain and Mrs. May picnic. Both were saviors.
Image courtesy Jenni Miller.

Did you know that a cold drink placed on the carotid artery on the side of your neck will cool your blood, and that a wetted handkerchief on the back of your neck is wonderfully cooling and comforting, and that the effect lasts so long as there is water to evaporate in it? Important things to remember, wherever you are in the heat.

What on earth do I smell? Or is it pride?
I am prejudiced against this photo,
but find it funny and apt. Image courtesy sarah Jane Meister.

Anyhow, the Doctor and Capt. May escorted me to a cooler spot, and after about a half an hour, I was well enough to enjoy the rest of the afternoon. Thank you again; you all of you were very kind and a pleasure to get to know. So sorry to hear too that you, Miss Waterman, and your mother too, were next to fall prey to the heat. What an afternoon!

A Second Unfortunate Series of Incidents, Also Well Ended...What a Ball!

Miss Waterman looks on
from a gallery. Her kindness,
along with her fan, had
saved me from fainting
earlier in the day.
Image courtesy Jenni Miller.

The gods weren't through with us yet. I had booked two friends, Polly and Sharon, and I a suite at a local B&B -- it was to be a special treat. It won't do to go into details, but our arrival was so unpleasant and the room not as advertised, that none of the three of us felt safe and we left. I've never had such an experience before and hope not to again; thinking about it is upsetting.

But wait, there's more. The B&B incident cost us over two hours of time before the ball -- time to find new lodging and multiple lengthy phone calls with the credit card company to contest the charge -- and on the way to the ball Polly and I got lost in a largely deserted and iffy part of Louisville, before finding the ballroom, 45 minutes before it ended. And immediately relost ourselves going home afterwards.

Once again, I am grateful for friends, for dinner with Polly and Sharon was delightful and relaxing, and the ball, if short for us and undanceable for me -- too, too tight shoes, ouch! -- was so pretty to watch and to listen to, that it all was worth it.

This image of the ball is too bright. It was far more
softly lit.

Spalding University has just the ballroom for a Regency Assembly: very high ceilings, springy wood floor, multiple chandeliers with a soft yellow glow, and best of all, banks of enormous windows on one wall with a city view and second-floor galleries (!) on two sides with candle-lit tables (!) from which to watch several hundred (!) dancers below, and some of my favorite, lyrical dance tunes in the world, live! The JASNA volunteers had taken full advantage of the opportunity, and it was decorated with magnolia -- oh, the scent! So what if the air was a little warm? It was really, really neat.

Jenni and Carson, ready for the ball.
Image courtesy Sarah Jane Meister.

Here, at the very end, a lone, lorn image of a very tired woman and her fresher friend, or fresher looking, anyhow. Later I heard she had suffered a terrible headache. This is the only image available, so far, of my ball ensemble. It was almost 10:30, and the day's events had done their work to a 47-year-old face, but let's ignore the tired stare and deeply carven eyes, for there is the ball ensemble on which bits and tads of evenings and tips and tots of other moments have been spent.

The almost-ghost and her friend.
Image courtesy Sarah Jane Meister.

The gown is last year's creation, with the addition of that lace, and a fresh silk and cotton voile petticoat, which I embroidered in goldwork and paste (vintage chaton rose rhinestones) sprigs, and bullion fringe, also vintage.

It is worn with a self fabric belt with an Edwardian-era buckle studded with cut steel and a full headdress consisting of a spangled chiffonet, now known as a wrap, to match, closed with a vintage pearl and steel brooch and two ostrich feathers, one of which is in the process of falling off. At the neck, the requisite large beads. On the hands, faux silk white gloves. In the hands, the day's spangled reticule, and a new fan, which I painted in gold in an Adamesque design. The shoes? Nice leather with very high toes and low heels..sadly not Louis style, and painfully tight. Well, they were free.

Next time, details on the ensembles and how they were achieved.

1795 Ballgown Grand Try-On

2011-07-08T16:09:00.002-04:00

Most of the ball ensemble. The gown fits with the
different stays! The bandeau is not sliding off!

Have just tried on MOST of the ball ensemble. The main thing was to make sure that the gown would fit properly and that the headdress bandeau -- the base for the rest of the headdress, which will be wrapped on before the ball tomorrow -- will hold. Check-ish, and check.

As always, please click on the photos to see a larger version.

My one concern: the gown is almost too big. I've lost over 20 pounds since it was made and although such dresses are forgiving, being able to be pinned more or less tightly, I see wrinkles near the shoulder line. Ah well. To late for alterations right now!

The missing items:

the rest of the headdress, including hairstyle
the belt
the gloves
the ballgown polonaised for dancing

Fitting Notes

No more dress gaposis, courtesy Nicole at Diary of a Mantua Maker. She had described pinning the dress horizontally.

I got the idea to pin in horizontally through the very edge, not from the outside of the exterior fabric at all, through the lining of the front and into the rest of the dress. One inch apart all the up, and easy does it, and voila!
Bandeau: a length of buckram made into circlet and folded in half for strength. Muslin tube gathered onto it. Two long hatpins from my maternal grandmother stuck up through the bottom and inserted into the plumes. Vintage freshwater pearl and cut steel brooch pinned on. I love that brooch.

Belt

The belt buckle chosen.

Well, the originally planned belt buckle just didn't go with the new petticoat, the details of which you cannot see but will later. The other belt ideas were too small. I chose instead an Edwardian-era shaped buckle of Neoclassical design. It's larger and the horizontal motion fits the dress and goes to the edges of the robe skirts. The color (hint) coordinates with the petticoat.

The Cloak, Completed Enough to Wear

Here is the cloak! It still lacks the frill down one long edge, but not all cloaks were fully frilled, and it's just plain fun as it is. Such items were often worn just as below, casually half-knotted in front. It's such a fun accessory that it's going to turn up in my modern wardrobe.

The cloak, as worn.

The little fan still needs a coat of matte medium. It's not the best, but it will do. You should see Jenni's. I only drew/painted part of mine; she did the entire thing.

Signing Off Until Next Week

Am off to the festival as of the morning, and still lots of prep work to do. So off we go!

Happy weekend to every one of you!

1795-1800 Reticule Completed Enough, Plus Ball Gown Tucker and Sleeve Ruffles

2011-07-07T12:33:00.004-04:00

Today's News Item No. 1: The Reticule

Here's the reticule, done enough for use at the festival.

It's of scraps of almost slubless duppioni silk, bag lined in same, and the top edge whipped. Tired of seeing the same silk all the time? :} I still have some scraps, so watch out...

The pattern: a square 7 inches wide by nine inches long, with the bottom edges rounded off.

The source? A homemade embroidered "bag" from the Victoria and Albert Museum, circa 1790 to 1800 (image below). The museum notes that at this point such bags still looked rather like pockets.

The seams are covered with vintage gold-colored silk ribbon, prick-stitched with the same color silk thread, both from the stash. What luck that the colors matched. The ribbon helps create sides to the bag so that it is three-dimensional, not flat. This was again pure luck; I had no idea the ribbon would help make the edges stand out like that.

There are eyelets across the top through which brown cord is drawn. I had no thin ribbon or gold or blue cord of any sort in the stash, and so will have to purchase two yards of something like that at the festival.

Reticule, 1790-1800. From Victoria and Albert
Museum. Item number

T.724C-1913.

The bottom features a handmade tassel. I wound a bunch of old cotton floss around four fingers, perhaps thirty winds. Then I took the skein off my hand, pinched the top, and wrapped more floss to create the ball shape. Then sewed gold thread all over it to hold it. Messily done, for it was frustrating and I was winging it. Nordic Needle has nice instructions. Memo to file...

Tassels at the ends of the ties would be nice touches, but no time for that now. I leave for the festival Saturday!

The design on the front is drawn with watercolor pencil...pen drawings and paintings, anyhow, were done on reticules so I extended to pencil, and I may soften the edges with a brush later, and add a few more sprigged flowers. Hmmm.

The interstices in the pattern are decorated with true gold spangles (Berlin Embroidery). They have heft and richness plastic spangles lack. Some spangles have a bit of gold purl sewn on top.

When I return from the festival I hope to add more spangles around the outside of the drawn pattern, and I may quilt the reticule a bit, to give more weight to the scene, which is somewhat flat right now given that the design is drawn rather than embroidered.

This has been a pleasant, colorful project, perfect for evening time after the tots are in bed.

Today's News Item No. 2: The Ballgown Tucker and Sleeve Ruffles

What ballgown, you ask? I am wearing my cream open robe again, but this time with a different petticoat that for now is under wraps. To prepare it for ball use, I added a tucker of wide cotton vintage lace from the stash. Oh, and sleeve ruffles.

Lace trimming in this manner was still popular in 1795. See the September 1795 afternoon dress below, from Gallery of Fashion.

Gallery of Fashion, afternoon dress, 1795.
From Bunka Gakuen Digital Library.

The relevant portion of the dress description reads:

Robe and petticoat of fine muslin; the petticoat richly embroidered; the robe trimmed round the neck, and down the sides with lace. Two plaitings of lace around the neck. Short muslin sleeves, trimmed with edging, and the epaulettes trimmed with three rows of lace.

Here's an extant example, with the lace still attached. Notice that its depth is similar to mine:

Silver round gown, 1798-1805, from Karen Augusta.

Have had this lace a long while and it's good to finally be able to use it. The design, which features small dots and a small repeating pattern, is open and airy enough to work for the period. I have a fragment of early lace in my little collection that is quite similar, though much narrower. The wide stuff is for real collectors, not accidental ones :}.

Memo to all readers and Sewing and Sundry, our resident conservator, in particular: the lace is not antique: it was bought as a cutter attached to a destroyed tea-length slip that isn't that old, so I felt comfortable using it. When considering whether or not to use older materials, my rule is not to spoil anything antique or of value: the item must be common, and either bought as a remnant piece or with a garment that is too spoiled even for study. My other rule: do as They did, and reuse what I already have, over and over, in new ways, remaking or retrimming.

The lace is simply tacked to the dress lining with big stitches. Such "suits of lace" were meant to be able to be removed easily for cleaning and reuse on other dresses. (See Gail Marsh's 18th Century Embroidery Techniques for details.)

Snapshot of a Reticule in Progress

2011-07-04T13:15:00.001-04:00

The basics for an early reticule. Drawn on silk, then spangled with gold spangles from Berlin Embroidery and sadi purl frisee from India.

A rainy Fourth of July morning meant a peaceful time for the boys and I, allowing them hours to relax after yesterday's fun at Spindletop with friends from Atlanta, and me ditto to draw, which is always fun.

The design is my take on a home-produced one from the Victoria and Albert Museum. More details later.

Ciao!

The 1795 Morning Dress Hat, Completed*

2011-07-02T21:38:00.006-04:00

* for all intents and purposes.

So, here it is! Am very pleased with it. Thanks to Lynn McMaster's article on 1790s turbans, in which she uses part of a coat hanger on which to put the ostrich plume, I was able do something similar to not only make these plumes really stay put, but be able to remove them without effort or damage so that they can be employed in evening wear.

As always, please click the images to see them larger.

Here below is how this all was achieved.

Last you saw, the hat lacked plumes and the trim was just laid on to see how it looked...

Oh, here are the model hats, from June 1794 Gallery of Fashion. As you may recall, I am doing a combination of the leftmost and rightmost figures' hats. The only thing I am not entirely happy with on mine is the size of the composed bow; it's a little small. I thought it should be as tall as the crown, but really, it's an inch taller and perhaps contains yet another bow, although I have four and the thing is some inch and a half thick! So I added a small coque feather aigrette to add fullness and cover and to provide some snap, crackle, and pop to otherwise single-color trim. After all, I am not so rich in good plumes right now to consider dying any as on the originals.

A typical costuming error, to go too small. Ah, next time, eh?

Attaching the Ostrich Plumes

Ingredients

Preparing the plume holder:

Curte used strong wire clippers to cut the end of a wire coat hanger into a sort of "U" shape.
I bent the wire such that it followed the front curve of the hat crown.
Using strong linen thread meant for stay making, I overcast the wire on to the hat, using plenty of stitches to hold it securely. The extra amount of wire serves as extra security.
I left three quarters of the vertical wire unsewn.

Plumes attached to the wire holder.

Attaching the plumes:

The plumes are actually four quality wing plumes, bought last year. To me, it's worth it to purchase good feathers. Well taken care of, they can last more than a lifetime, and be used on countless hats. Plus, those plumes are almost the first thing you notice in a 1790s ensemble, or on an Edwardian one, for that matter...
Each final plume is composed of two feathers, the back of the front feather's quill shaved and properly sewn along the quill to attach them to create one very full plume. Lynn McMasters has an excellent tutorial about this on her site.
The plumes are wired together heavily with thread, and then jewelry wire.
The connected plumes are then pushed down on top of the wire holder, such that the wire holder goes between them. Had I but one plume, I'd have pushed its hollow center down over the wire holder. They are tacked a bit above with thread to keep them from swivelling.
Voila.

Adding trims:

I added a group of black-green coque feathers from my friend Polly. The feathers come in long strings attached with thread near their bases.
I fanned them out, and inserted their bases into a little pocket made of silk ribbon wrapped round and round and sewn together, then sewed them into the pocket and made a little constructed bow in front to hide the handiwork. This coque aigrette may be removed and used for evening wear, too. However, it's tacked to the hat with sewing thread.
The hat band was slipped round the crown. It's not tacked, having enough cling in it to hold, I hope.
The puffy constructed bow is tacked dead center on the hat front.
One-inch wide lengths, selvage to selvage, of silk gauze are cut with pinking sheers, lightly ruched, and tacked to the under-brim of the hat. Since silk gauze frays like mad, I should have cut on the length of grain, but forgot in the heat of things. So I starched it, and as it was still fraying, after attaching it to the hat, I hair-sprayed it (gah!) Severe issues require severe measures. Yuck; well, I'm sure to retrim the hat before the spray yellows or stickifies the ruche, which is worth perhaps two cents total, anyway. In the day they may have treated the gauze in some other way, such as dipping it like crazy in gum arabic or something.

I still lack a bit of ruching on the brim, but the hat is showable.

Time estimate to complete: 6 hours. Good grief, who knew? Of course, that counts the failure hours, and the rest was done in wee smidges of time, between everything going on. Phew...

Additional Resources
For those of you interested in feathery details:

Plume source: Plumes N' Feathers
Creating Full Ostrich Plumes
Edwardian plume research notes on blog
All of Lynn McMaster's articles on millinery, plus her patternsClick on Articles link in left navigation bar

Next up, last bits before the festival. A quick self belt for the evening gown, the evening gown's lace tucker to tack in, hair, packing everything...

This evening I leave you with a typical cat pose: on top of feathers, Ladybug is almost asleep.

A very happy Fourth of July to those of you in the States, and a very happy weekend to those of you across the ponds!

The 1795 Morning Dress Hat Conquered, Almost

2011-06-30T14:08:00.002-04:00

The hat in progress.

Oh, did I fight with it. For perhaps three hours on and off, so far. The reports from the front say that after last evening's defeat and bitter-tasting retreat, the forces have persisted and the war is almost won.

Let's end the overlong analogy. I had a girls' evening out with my sweet friend Polly, and helped her get her costume ready, and started the hat that's to be worn with my 1795 morning ensemble, along with the muslin cloak and the wrap-front dress, planning to finish by evening's end. Hah.

The Hat Design

June 1794, Gallery of Fashion, detail.
From Bunka Gakuen Library.

My design, as we know from a previous post, was for a hat style popular in 1794 and 1795. The gypsy hat has a flat top and wide-ish brim which is turned down on the sides to frame the face.

The design I am using is from the Gallery of Fashion, June 1794, "A Peep into Kensington Gardens: Morning Dresses". My design takes elements of figures 10 and 12, viz.: the hat itself from figure 10 and the trim from figure 12.
The hat I'd planned to use was too small brimmed, said Polly. Oh dear. That hat went back into storage, and I took off last year's hat trims from the same old hat I've owned since 1981, the first one ever bought with my own money. Am so much the model of Jane Austen herself, frugally retrimming what she already has :}.

I even removed the original trim that had been long hidden, to find that time had faded the tobacco brown hat and band to latte. Hmmm, there's an essay on entropy and mortality there, but later. This is a light-weight post.

The design calls for a fancy, quadruple bow with quadruple tails, a puffy wonder of a bow.
Production Failure

My silk ribbon being new and me being money conscious, I feared to cut it, and so played for a hour making floppy bows that lacked body. So Polly and I tried millinery helps, sinamay ribbon (fabulous stuff), horsehair cord (whoa!) and I even built a petersham backing bow behind and starched both, and, so scary, cut the fancy ribbon.

The resulting hat trims were just BAD. Royal blue is easy to make chintzy, and I certainly succeeded there. It looked both overthought and underworked at once. Quite an achievement, but alas, the camera refused the shot, for it was so horrid;)

Went home with a failure, didn't I?

Production Rebirth

Yet, I'd had such a good time with Polly overall that I woke happy to a hummy soft sunny day, and like a bee, made something sweet from the most basic materials.

Our first lesson is, use fabric and ribbon you don't fear to cut and you'll relax and create something nice.

Our second lesson is, puffy constructed bows don't work with floppy single faced silk satin, even starched.

Here's what I did to make the hat design work:

Used scraps of the same bolt of white duppioni silk I've used for the last five years for other projects, including the living room curtains.

(Lesson number three; save every last weency scrap of good fabric.)

Pinked long fat pieces of it.
Cut those into shorter pieces and made four tailless pseudo bows: two loops crimped in the middle with thread tacking.
Starched them.
Made sets of pseudo bow tails.
Mounted all atop each other at angles, tacking them together with thread. Required strength and I bled on a tail. Proof of effort, I suppose.
Faked a bow center with a loop of fabric on top.
Made a tuck on the underside of each bow loop to puff out the loop.
Used a long piece of pinked fabric for the hat band and back bow and its tails.

That's where the hat stands now.

What's Left to Be Done

At this point need to make a mount for two plumes from two long pins fixed to the hat crown, and tack all to the hat itself, and make a tiny ruche from gauze around the underbrim edge.

Getting there!

More about the Cloak: Construction Details

2011-06-18T11:09:00.003-04:00

Here's a bit more information on the construction of the cloak that I'm currently making.

Hemming
First, the main body of the cloak is hemmed with a 1/8" hem, and the edges of the frill are hemmed the same way. The simplest way to do this is with a hemming attachment. I have a Willcox and Gibbs 1911 chain stitch treadle sewing machine that makes a magnificent hem, as well as the same model, an electric version, on long-term loan from my friend Miss Johnny. Here is a shot of Johnny's machine working on miles of flouncing several years ago:

Here is the little hemmer that makes it possible:

Here is the machine at work on a straight seam, several years ago:

Whipped Gathers
I mistakenly called them "rolled gathers" last time...but that term rather makes sense because you roll the edge before whipping it. (By the way, I have edited the post to correct the mistake.

Anywhoo, here are the steps to make a narrow whipped gather. When I first tried them, the results were not good. It took a good bit of experimentation with ways of holding my hands, of treating the fabric, of stretching the fabric, and so on, to make it work. The pictures you see below date to the wrap-front dress work and are not as narrow as I have achieved since...and by the way, my results vary a lot, because I don't do this all of the time.

If it isn't as narrow as you want, keep remindng yourself that it could take several garments before you achieve a pencil-point-fine effect. Also remember that the fabrics we use, and the threads, are not as fine as back then, unless we use thread used in lacemaking, and super-fine fabric (which is hard to get and in many cases, seems to be no longer made).

Number 1

Knot the thread securely in the fabric, taking a backstitch in it too, so it cannot come out. If you don't and the thread comes out, there goes your work...

Attach the piece of fabric some foot or two from you to a sewing bird or other holder. To work accurately and speedily, you need tension on the fabric.

Number 2
Using your thumb and forefinger or middle finger, rub the raw edge of the fabric such that the raw edge rolls up tightly inside the fabric. You want this as tight as possible, for the tighter, the finer the result, more like what was done back in the day.

Maintain tension on the fabric as you do this, or the roll will not be even.

If you gently move your entire hand upwards as you roll, you can keep rolling along until you have a foot or more ready to gather.

Tip: your thumb remains steady; it's your index finger or middle finger that does the rubbing motion.

If the fabric seems not to want to roll, try wetting your finger a little. Lightly starching the raw edge can help, too.

I have looked at a video or two online of the process and those show more of a folding action than a rolling one, resulting in a much wider hem.

Number 3

Whip the rolled hem. Insert the needle as shown below, on an angle, so that the thread whips up in a spiral. This will help the gathering process.

Maintain tension on the fabric, so that you can work speedily and maintain the same needle angle all the way.

The more stitches per inch, the finer the result.

Every so often, extend the thread to its length, and run the needle up it, letting the end of the thread fly, to take out extra twist in it. Otherwise, the thread is apt to tangle and it will drive you nuts. This is a tip from Frances Grimble's The Lady's Strategem.

Number 4
After a couple of inches of whipping, hold the hem with one hand, and gently pull on the thread with the other. The hem will pull into gathers.

To keep the gathers from flattening out again, immediately press the top of the gathered section between thumb and forefinger, and make a half knot or two to hold that section. Then you can arrange the gathers at will in the space left.

You do not have to put that half knot in there, but know that your gathers will move all over the place in the meantime.

You should practice this portion of the process several times, to see how full or scant you want your frill. Just as in regular gathering, the tighter you pull the thread, the fuller the gather, and the looser you leave it, the scanter.

To my eye, gathers on things like caps were often quite scant.

So there you go.

I have no pictures yet of the process of whipping the resulting frill to the main cloak...it has its own little issues, naturally. Sewing always does.

"C" is for Cloak and "F" Is for Frill and Both Are...

2011-06-17T21:47:00.005-04:00

"Still Life with Sewing Box", this vignette might be called, that is,
if it didn't include the snaky, too realistic view
of the electrical cord behind the table.

..."D", for Delightful.

The swirling frill spilling out of my sewing box will belong before too long to what was known in the mid-1790s as a cloak and perhaps also as a mantle. (I swannee I saw that name recently and now cannot locate the original occurrence.)

This is not your standard red Regency-era cloak, worn as a practical garment, whether lavishly trimmed or plain red wool.

No, this handsome accessory or outergarment set off women's morning dress for a few years, until it was eclipsed by the more practical, exotic, and more expensive (at least if imported from the Middle East) shawl.

December 1794 Gallery of Fashion

Cloaks were worn winter and summer, and were often layered with other items. In the December, 1794 GOF plate shown here, the lady on the left is wearing a "[d]ouble handkerchief crossed and tied behind. White muslin cloak, trimmed with the same. Blue fox fur tippet." I believe the handkerchief is within the dress, then the cloak with the frill -- muslin can't have been warm -- and the tippet, hardly big enough to warm one's neck, much less neck and chest. That red tail she's holding? That's a tail from her exceptionally wide sash. The lady on the right is similarly layered: "[l]arge white double handkerchief, and a yellow silk handkerchief over it. Black silk cloak, trimmed with lace."

Cloaks were often white, though Gallery of Fashion shows them sometimes in black, as above, and of muslin or silk or satin, in which fabric a frill is often sewn. Sometimes the frill was replaced by lace or even fur. Frills along all edges appear to be very popular in the magazine, and are usually narrow, although you can occasionally spot deep lace-hemmed ones, and sometimes lace, being expensive because entirely handmade at this period, trims just the ends and the long edges are bare, or just a portion plus the ends are trimmed. I have not seen any illustrations of cloaks edged with ribbon or ruching, although that doesn't mean that didn't happen. Cloaks could also be of other construction. The image above from September shows a lady walking in "[b]lack silk netted cloak, trimmed with a full plaiting of lace".

Cloaks appear normally as accompaniments to Undress. They appear at breakfast and on walks. I do not see them paired with more formal wear. This makes sense, for cloaks were frilly, and would not have matched in tone the flowing robes or fringed petticoats and long swansdown tippets of that style of dress.

September 1794 Gallery of Fashion: netted silk cloak.
Oh, for a walk like that one! I miss water.

They were usually worn as described in the September issue: "drawn and tied in the front, the two ends hanging down very low". They could also be tied together with a bit of ribbon, flutter upon flutter.

Cruikshank draws the ladies: is that a cloak on the right?
See the Lewis Walpole Library collection, Call Number:800.03.18.01

So far, I have only found one extant item that even remotely can be described as a cloak. It's from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, is dated as late as 1790, and is written down as a muslin "fichu". The dimensions, however, are more of a longish mantle: 75"x10", and it is frilled at the edge. Perhaps it's the precursor to the mid-1790s mantles, for I can see it wrapped round the shoulders, crossed in front, and tied behind. It's just an imaginative hop until you have the same thing, longer like the extra-long sashes of the mid-1790s, now wrapped around the shoulders, but tied in front and left to hang.

Beyond scanning for these items in GOF and Luxus und der Moden, and a brief look into the fantastic Lewis Walpole Library's digital collection, I haven't done much research on these items...no looking into texts, for instance, or really trying hard to try to track extants down. After all it's summertime and the brain is easily overheated. It's the season for greenery and romance, not Mrs. Ernestine and her books.

Yes, that's the right word, romance: I find these silly cloaks nearly the ultimate in romance, and quite contemporary, really, in this year of ruches and frills and flirts. Their chief purpose seems to add another element of flow and flutter and length to an ensemble. They emphasize the vertical, and thus impart, one hopes, a willowy, sylph-like effect to the wearer.

Construction

The LACMA example's frill appears to be rolled to a selvage edge. If the mantle is 10"wide, it could easily have been woven on a narrow loom, like a very wide sash or ribbon might be. Thus, finishing would be far easier.

I haven't access to such a narrow-woven item, although a lucky duck might conceivably find a 75" scarf to add a frill too, especially of Indian cotton. Although 75" doesn't win you that delicious length. One indeed might check Dharma Trading and looking at their long scarves. Hmmm, should have thought of that. A really lucky person might have access to a white stole from India
.
However, this one is my own work It's of two 50"-ish lengths of 10" wide silk-cotton voile from the stash (and originally bought from Thai Silks, over a year ago), sewn together, for I didn't have 100" handy in one length. The frill is self fabric. Each evening before bedtime I roll-hem some of the frill and whip it to my base mantle. Just a bit of quiet busywork to slow the pulse before sleep.

As you can tell, then, this version is a hybrid of machine work and handwork. The Willcox and Gibbs narrow hemmer was used to hem the mantle itself, as well as the frill. However, a machine-gathered frill simply won't work, for there is always a header produced, unless someone has invented a roll-gathering attachment. A header will mean an extra layer must be sewn to the mantle hem, stiffening it and interfering with the flutter effect. If one folds the header down to hide it, the hem area becomes even stiffer.

What to do? The only way I can see thus far to make this garment do what it is designed to do is to roll-gather the frill and whip it to the hem, just as was done for caps and other fine muslin or lace garments. That means the entire garment is but one layer of fabric deep, and the result can flutter and flap delicately at will.

I am not being overnice in either the roll-gathering or the whipping, and so the handwork is not be as good as either the LACMA piece or my recently finished dress with the whipped frill. These scarf-like items get such rough use: tossed over the shoulders, they end up draped on chair backs, they fall off, they are stepped upon, are handled over and over, are even forgotten and left. I'd rather a bit of roughness for this item and no worries, than a perfect accessory that I fear to take out and use in modern living.

For once it's done, I hope to wear it for a long time to come, not only as a period item, but as a fun accessory for summer evenings.

Renovating My Sheer 1795 Morning Dress: Completed

2011-06-14T22:21:00.004-04:00

Gasp. Whether that means "Good heavens!" or "[the last] gasp" is up to you. Still, it's done. Here it is, tried on, with some of the ideas I am noodling over for accessorizing it. Thank you, Jenni, for the picture-taking!

As always, please click on the images to see a larger version.

I am wearing the wrap-front dress with the handkerchief tucked within the dress, as directed to repeatedly in Gallery of Fashion. As in the reference portrait miniature (towards the bottom of this post), the ribbon at the waist is simply a bit of blue silk ribbon from William Booth, Draper, tying the wrap dress closed. It is not meant to go all the way around the waist. Instead, one end starts at the side back seam, the other at the front edge of the wrapped front. Since the interior side of the wrap front is securely pinned to the stays, this closure receives little stress and should not pull out of shape. It's the only item not done...a matter of a few stitches. I pinned the ribbon on for the picture.

I may move the lower sleeve ribbon lower, to just below the elbow. We shall see.
The short silk ribbons tying the sleeves are in very small bows with tiny tails. Thank you, Leimomi Oakes, the Dreamstress, for sleuthing out that such could be simply tied on, allowing one to change ribbons, and thus the look of the dress, at will. They stay in place without slipping because the voile clings a bit, so Mrs. C., I don't think I need the little sleeve thread loops!

My hair is not styled, simply stuffed up in a sort of chignon and my blue antique silk taffeta dress sash (made of very wide ribbon) wrapped negligently around it. For the festival, I will add some locks, to take the look more to 1795.

The earrings, a little smaller than those usually pictured in fashion plates, are really rather similar to those worn in the period. Of a sort of Classicizing filigree work, they consist of a cone and inverted cone separated by a small cylindrical bead. I could just as easily have worn hoops or sizeable pearl drops. The mid to late 1790s were not the years for small-scale jewelry. Bold was In, and More was Better.

The large beads, perhaps a little larger than normally worn, but not by much, are faux pearls, which, as we know from Two Nerdy History Girls' fascinating post on the subject, were quite common; they tie closed with blue silk ties. I will probably wear large green stone beads instead, but wanted to try these.

The bracelet is antique brass wire and brass beads, woven in a classical design, with tiny dangly ends. It's age, unknown, but it is not twentieth century. You see cuff bracelets in fashion plates and the Napoleon: The Empire of Fashion exhibition makes good use of them.

Back view: still need to perfect handkerchief placement. If you look carefully, you might see about an inch and a half of the embroidery on the stays showing through...even buttoned high, the petticoat doesn't cover all of it. Hmmm. Another reason to keep stays white for clothing in this era. I may baste a covering over these stays, much as I do not want to, for they are very pretty.

The chair working as a prop? It's a rather worn Empire-era "fancy chair", most likely made in Baltimore, where the industry was well established, but a few years later than the dress date. Still, I've been wanting to try a dress with it nearby, for the color and lines suit a little white dress :} By the way, when talking of architecture and the decorative arts, such as furniture, in America Regency era is usually referred to as the Empire era round about the early 1800s, while the earlier years of the Regency may be referred to as the Federal or late Georgian era. It's all rather confusing, as naming conventions mostly seem to be.

Here is the reference portrait miniature from the V&A, painted in 1795, of an unknown woman (http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O82059/miniature-portrait-of-an-unknown-woman/.

I decided, for this go-round, not to tack lace to the dress, for I prefer the coverage of the handkerchief, and the whitework on it is decorative enough.

My ribbon is far wider than her ribbon at waistline, and narrower than her sleeve ribbon, but I like my choice of ribbon. However, I will play with the sleeve poofing more, and tighten it and arrange the gathers on each sleeve a little when I put on the dress.

I am very happy with the outcome of all the months of research and renovation and reworking, and all the confabulations with you all. The dress feels attractive to me, has good lines, does not seem either overdone or underdone, suits my age and personal style, and I learned a ton about construction details and the minutae of styles for the years 1794-1797. My projects do not always turn out that way, so I turn in this evening a content woman.

I leave you this evening with a common early summer sight, day lilies, here luminescent in our garden in the evening.

Their Fourth Birthday

2011-06-11T13:31:00.000-04:00

This story was written by Noah and Christopher and Mama.

Here we go, said Noah, when it was time to make the birthday cake for Noah and Christopher. You see, it was our fourth birthday.

Mix it up, that's what we did, says Christopher. Then, when the cake was finished, we took it out of the oven, we frosted it, says Christopher. Then we docorated it, says Noah. Pretend roses and bananas on there, says Noah, (that's what was on the cake). Curious George had a cake like this.

We had dinner with Mamaw and Papaw and Grandmother and Mama and Daddy. Then we had the cake; we had candles. We put them on in secret, because people don't want to see you put them on, explains Christopher, because it's a surprise.

We sang "Happy Birthday to you, Christopher and Noah".

Then we ate the cake with ice cream -- it was chocolate -- was it chocolate only? Oh, it was strawberry, chocolate, and vernilla, explains Christopher. Daddy says it's called Neapolitan ice cream.

Was it a good birthday, asks Mama? Uh, yes, they say.

Mama reports, yes, it was a good birthday. Very peaceful and happy, a good fourth birthday, indeed.

A Second Chemise (AKA My New Nightgown), and Tips Thereon

2011-06-05T21:34:00.005-04:00

Oh, excitement, a chemise. Still, it means
a new nightgown to me :}
Yes, that's one of those cool balsa wood
rubber-band airplanes up there. They've
been in the air a lot lately.

Whoof, another one down! I've long needed another chemise, and another nightgown, for I've worn mine to the bald tire stage, so to speak. So I cut two out, one a sweet 21st century nightgown, and a second in the form of a Regency chemise. Then I made up the latter, finishing it this evening. I will wear it tonight, too. Hooray for something new and fresh!

As always, please click on images to see larger versions.

Anyhow, I have some sewing tips for you on it.

Pattern Helps

Per Dawn Luckham, bless her, I learned that the Sense and Sensibility chemise pattern is too full in the back to replicate a normal chemise of the era, and she suggested using the front piece as the back. Check. I even left the neckline as low in the back as in the front, for some of my dresses are lower backed than others. I've used the S&S pattern before, and it is so straightforward, and my pattern pieces already cut out, and my fabric so wide (54" Kauffmann Kona cotton) that it wasn't worth it to me to cut straight from the 1790 chemise pattern in Costume Close Up.

Otherwise, the pattern generally can be left as is, although using bias tape for the drawstring channel is at first blush, rather a cheat. It worked fine on my first chemise, and has worn like iron, but the original in Costume Close Up used a linen tape. More on that issue below.

One musing to start with: Handsewing is so portable, needing but needle and thread and thimble and scissors, and you can pick it up and do it in a few minute increments. Sure, the results take days and weeks, but you get a different sense of time, and a pleasant enjoyment of focusing on something quiet, on breathing slowly, and letting your mind drift. If you're always in a hurry and using a machine, some of the joy of what we do is lost. For me, anyhow, handsewing is meditation and therapy, and moment of peace in a very busy world, and yet I have something durable to show for the time spent. If you haven't handsewn to date, please do consider it.

Construction Tips

I took most of the seam work from the 1790 chemise in Costume Close Up. Most, but not all.

Being in a hurry (how ironic, given the above!), I sewed the main seams using my handcrank sewing machine, and managed to get the pieces all together in perhaps two hours...it would have been one hour except that I put in a gusset backwards...twice. Tip: don't construct gussets when you're tired. :}

All seams are flat-felled. The seams in the original CCU garment are tiny...somewhere around 1/16" wide, I think? Yikes, I cannot do that, but I can go to less than a quarter of an inch. Here are some tips.

Make your seams on the outside of the garment. That way the interior is flatter and less likely to chafe.
Many of you know that for a flat-felled seam, after sewing the seam, you make one seam allowance very narrow, then fold the other allowance under and hem it down over raw edge, hiding it and finishing the seam nicely.
If you're brave, offset your initial seam 1/4". That's right, don't lay the raw edges evenly together. You can do this with an unfitted garment and not come to much grief fit-wise, if the seams are narrow. It saves you the DRATTED trouble of trimming one of the finished allowances afterwards down to 1/8" with a pair of dressmaker's shears. So hard to do that evenly!
After your seam is ready to fell down, practically roll and twist the top allowance down on top, bit by bit, flatten it hard with your fingers, and pin it. The rolling action allows you to turn under a wee, narrow width. Only pin a few inches at a time. You notice that there is no pressing with an iron involved here. They didn't back then, and I don't see why we need to today. It would be nuts with such a narrow seam anyhow. Use the power of your fingers to form a fold, and press down on the fold's edge with your fingernails if that helps.
Then hem, with as small stitches as you can muster. You want this garment to last a long time, wash after wash. For this garment, I went somewhere between an eighth and a sixteenth, depending on my hurry. :}
What to do in places where two seams cross? Think ahead and plan which parts go on top and which will go on bottom, so the top one can fold down neatly, and its little short end be folded too and hemmed down. See the image in the hemming section below, and look where the seams cross.

Here are some pictures. The hems are between 1/8"-1/4" wide.

If you want a narrower seam, I theorize that you trim the one allowance very fine indeed, though not so fine as to risk the seam pulling out, then roll the top allowance down per the hemming tips below, rolling, if you must, some of the underlying allowance along the way. However, I've not done that yet.

Folding down the fabric...helping it along on top. Then I moved by hand and used thumb and forefinger to fold-roll under another bit.

Hemming. Oog, that was too big a stitch in the underlying fabric, there, so I see. Should have been 1 to 3 threads wide. You can see I was in a hurry on this seam, too, for my stitch is quite far from the previous one. Yes, at points I got a bit hurried, wanting to finish, instead of enjoying the Zen of it all and going for the Right Thing.

Results. Not too bad.

Hemming Tips

Flat hems can be just about as narrow as a rolled hem.

How? Just as in preparing the flat-felled seam above, by rolling the raw edge under by rubbing it between your forefinger and thumb, or middle finger and thumb. If you rub gently, you can get about a 1/8th hem. If you roll hard, you get a narrower one, more like a 1/16" of an inch.

The trick, at least for me, is to press the first fold flat with your fingers, after you roll the raw edge over, then roll again to encase the folded-down part, press hard again, and have a result ready to hem down.

I found myself making the first roll for an inch or two, then pressing hard, then making the second round of rolling, rather than preparing the hem in a single operation.

Then I hemmed down those few inches, and repeated.

My hemming stitches were about 1/16"-1/8" apart.

I only have a picture of the result, sadly, but I think you can get the idea. Look at the left edge there, of the sleeve. That's a flat hem. Once I've pressed the stitches gently, they should fade into the fabric and not stick out.

Machine Sewing

This is an unabashed plug for rescuing a treadle or handcrank machine and using it rather than an electric machine, if you want speedy sewing.

The attachments that came with such machines were typically very high quality, and there were hemmers that could produce hems easily of 1/8". I have several such machines and ditto such hemmers. They are worth their weight in gold. Now, they do have problems, like any machine, when crossing a seam, but it can be done if the bump isn't too thick.

Here is the hem at the bottom of the chemise. No prep work, no fuss with trying to set and pin and then stitch a hem, and wonder if a pin will break a macine needle or fly out at you. Instead, fit on the attachment and treadle or crank away, using no electricity (how green is that?), producing a wonderful result, and fascinating your children into the bargain!

In fact, this hem was prepared by Christopher power, and he loved it. He is so proud this evening.

Neckline Helps

I used no separate fabric or tape at all to make my neckline channel. I folded the neckline's raw edge under 1/8", folded it again around a half inch, and sewed a combination stitch just inside the first fold to attach what was now a channel to the chemise.

As with all the handwork above, I prepped and sewed by inches.

Turning self fabric under around curves, and making a channel with a machine, would be a nightmare, and you'd have to clip the edges and use a ton of pins.

Not with handsewing. With your fingers, you can ease the tendency of the fabric to pucker and wander on those curves, bit by bit. You do this by shaping and stretching and manipulating the fabric, just as with any curved seam. My result had a few pickers, but those iron out pretty well, and the ones left are lost in the gathers once the chemise is drawn up, anyway. I used just one pin, to hold down the fold an inch or so ahead of where I was stitching.

This method is in contrast to both Sense and Sensibility, which calls for using modern bias tape, which takes curves easily, and CCU, which uses a linen tape. It would have to be a very fine, thin tape indeed, for any tape I have come across is quite thick, and I cannot see it going easily around curves.

I could have made my own bias tape with self fabric, but I wanted to see if this would work, and it does nicely. Now I have no extra bulk to deal with in that essential neckline area, and less work overall. :}

By the way, you can get 1/8" inch wide cotton tape very reasonably from William Booth, Draper, and it's nice stuff. Use this to thread through the channel and tie the chemise. He and his staff must have been away at an event, though, for turnaround was over two weeks. Still worth it, but I got worried.

Next post, the boys' fourth birthday! Oh, we had fun...

An Even Better Version of Ackermann's Online, in Full

2011-05-31T09:12:00.000-04:00

Ackermann's fabric samples, from a month in 1813.

Thanks to Sabine, who located another source for Ackermann's online at Archive.org. Go to archive.org, and in the search box, copy this text string:

Ackermann, Rudolph

Why should we be extra happy at this version? Several excellent reasons:

Because the text is searchable. Holy grail, my friends, is fully searchable text. Allows all kinds of interesting research.

With text search, it's easy to locate actual samples of real dress fabric. Yes, you heard me. Ackermann's didn't just provide fashion plates, but promoted British textile manufacturers. The image at the top of this post shows dress fabric pasted right into the engraving on the right page. It's from the 1813 volume. If you click the image you can read the accompanying text on the right page.

With text search, it's easy to hunt down references to fashion in ads, letters, and other articles.

Because you can download the volumes in all kinds of formats.

By the way, the issues make terrific historical reading. Get your viewpoints on the Napoleonic Wars, the War of 1812, the latest music and literature and manufacturing news here!