Dress Sashes from My Collection, Part 2

Plaid Silk Taffeta Ornate Pleated and Fringed Sash...Bow

Here is part 2 in a series about sashes. Read part 1, about a pink double-faced silk satin dress sash.
(Plus, edited with new information, thanks to renna-darling, March 14, 2011.)
Get all the geeky image details by clicking on them. Some of the images are BIG.

This one is fun, and until recently, was just as much a puzzle as the previous example. It was also purchased at Curtis Grace and Associates. It's of papery silk plaid taffeta, 11" inches long by 3 3/4" wide. It has some water stains, especially on the tails. The silk is very strong. There is no sign of shattering at all, and no sign that the silk is "weighted" as so many turn-of-the-20th-century silks were. I have a sad examples of that, a petticoat bottom in pink and white warp-printed Colonial Revival pattern silk, and it makes me cry as with every even faint movement it goes to teeny-tiny shreds. I am glad that one cost only a dollar, or was it 50 cents? :}

Anywhoo...

This ribbon has been pleated at five intervals, with two tails of 32" each. Only one pleat is in good condition, and it's a single box pleat. The ends are fringed with cotton floss, macrameed for decoration.
If you are in for totally geeky detail, here below are those pleats, the bow position, and the ends, in excruciating detail. Can you guess what's going on?

Otherwise, skip a bunch of pictures and paragraphs to my suppositions about how this length of ribbon was used in a sash.

Here below is the sash ribbon laid out. You can see the positions in the ribbon where it was or is still pleated:

• Each end is about 32" long.
• There are five pleats, each about 10-12" apart.

Below, the most well-preserved pleat, from the top. It's a simple box pleat. The seamstress used doubled cotton (matte) black thread and ran two or so stitches, one atop the other, through all three layers to create and hold the pleats.

Below, another pleat, from the top. Notice all the tiny holes around it, from threads, no doubt. No other portions of the ribbon have such pinholes except these pleated sections.  Black thread again used here.

Same pleat below, from the back side. See the black thread? In some cases the pleats appear to have been box pleated, others almost gathered, but who knows, since the threads are all torn and sometimes just tiny bits remain.

Same pleat, same side, below, but stretched out so you can see the pleating arrangement.

This is the first pleat in from one 32" sash tail. It is just chock full of pinholes (in a spread of about 5 inches wide), and bits of black thread. However, there is a tiny remnant of burgundy colored thread (with light sheen) that matches the narrow burgundy stripes towards the center of the ribbon width. Then towards the edges, some remnants of a gray-blue very fine thread (very light sheen). The black thread is less fine and by the way, it still looks pretty black; I can't see that it's gone "rusty black" at all.

Below, one tail end, from the back. The raw edge has been turned under twice to a depth of 1/8" and hemmed in that burgundy thread, by hand.

The same tail end, from the front. Floss has been pulled through to the depth of the hem, then knotted macrame style, to a total length of about 4 1/2 inches. The floss appears to be cotton. Strands pulled apart fuzz lightly, and are not filaments; they are also not very strong.

Below, the hem, from the side so you can see the construction. I had to laugh at the geekiness of this picture.

So, what was this thing?

At first I thought it was a full sash. After all, I have been working on the 1790s almost exclusively for 18 months now and back then sashes were single lengths hand-tied.

I tried to imagine how pleats would look around someone's waist, with the poufiness in between pleats, even tried to think of the sash looped. Not an attractive sight, no matter the era.

Then, before dropping off to sleep one night, happened to think of the sash again, and it hit me, this was not the sash itself, but the tails, and the pleated sections were used in the construction of a double bow that lay on top of the tails. This decoration would then have been attached to a belt. Either someone had deconstructed the bow or it had fallen apart. Either is plausible.

Now, as to era.  I'll work backwards.

• 1970s and after: Seventies and eighties I know well and own a few high-end/couture garments...but all except the costliest feature some synthetic materials, and I cannot think of a home seamstress or local dressmaker doing this piece: that macrame floss would be hokey on all but the late sixties/early 70s, so maybe for a maxi dress outfit. Still, something's off. I go through my list of family and friends here and up North and elsewhere who dressed in these eras, and...it just doesn't fit. Narrow double-faced satin sash? Sure. Fat silk taffeta double bow with macrame, attached to a matching belt? Mmmmm, not likely.
• It may be late 1930s to the late 1950s.
• It's an adult sash ornament and those tails are very long, and the silk taffeta is fine, so it would have been for a very special-occasion tea-length or gala dress. 
• The fashionable silhouette was cone or bell shaped, referencing the 19th century, with small waist, and sashes and bows were popular accessories. 
• Plaid was popular in the forties and fifties and sixties, and so was taffeta. I wore my grandmother's spaghetti strap plaid green and black taffeta dress to formals in college, and it was a dreamboat of a dress.
• A real possible, then, produced by a home seamstress or local dressmaker with access to quality materials. The Met has some nice examples of big sashes, and this one has a knotted fringe too.
• Teens and twenties and early thirties. I don't think so. Fabric and style both feel wrong.
• Edwardian. No. Plaid was not a favorite and macrame styling was not in, that I can think of.
• 1880s-1890s. Colors seem off. Plaids were used in the '80s, but this burgundy/green combination? Again, doesn't feel quite right. A possible, but not overly likely.
• Late 1860s-1870s, even to Natural Form era. Of all the options, this is the one I like most, of course, though it turns out not likely to be an option.
• Taffeta was popular, and silk was the only kind available.
• Plaid was popular.
• These colors and the color combination was very in. If kept out of light, could not the colors have remained true?
• Macrame sash ends were popular.
• Bows attached to matching belts were very popular, and with long tails being an especial favorite towards the end of the 1860s.
• The fact that the silk is strong but the thread and floss are weak speaks to the passage of time.
• To test the stylistic issues and construction, step on over to the Cornell University HEARTH site, and look up Harper's Bazar. Search for "sash" and for 1868-69 you will get a host of results, including diagrams on how to finish belts with bows and tails very like this. Or if you have Frances Grimble's Reconstruction Fashion, consult it, because her HB images are bigger and clearer; Cornell's image scanning leaves something to be desired.
• Here's an example from the Met, item number C.I.40.3.1.

March 14, 2011: The Mystery May Be Solved

The sash ornament must be from the 1890s or after, for I just learned from renna-darling that mercerized thread came in at the end of the century; it made threads lustrous, as the perle floss of the fringe is. Renna-darling, a student in a textile conservation program in Edinburgh, pointed this out. This is where a knowledge of the technical is so very valuable.

So I am placing it around the late forties or early fifties, but not much later. The perle floss is weak, and so are the other threads, which is what happens to thread, but the sash itself is still strong. The style of fabric and fringe was popular then but not later, and all materials are natural...no synthetics. The later the years get, the more likely a handmade article is likely to incorporate synthetics.

Puzzles like this are such fun. Thank you, renna-darling! Do visit her at Sewing and Sundry, her livejournal blog. She has been writing about her conservation program, and it is fascinating.
Coming up later -- when I am unsure :} -- two more pieces: a complete sash with constructed bow attached to nicely constructed belt, and a length of wide single-faced satin ribbon.

Dress Sashes from My Collection, Part 1

"My collection". Well, doesn't that sound Grand? Still, I do have a small collection of antique clothing. For ages I've been wanting to share bits of it with you, in the hopes that we all might learn something from it.

Since sashes have seriously been on the mind lately -- how to get the right fabric, width, length for the Jane Austen festival day ensemble -- it seemed good to head to the chest and to pull out the sashes and sash-width ribbons I do have, and to examine them, if only to figure out how much fabric I need and if I could treat edges with gum arabic with safety.

What you will see below are not 18th century ribbons. If I found such a ribbon reliably dated to that period I'd about swoon. Still, they are 19th and early 20th century, and the stories they have to tell might interest you, especially if you like fashion from these eras, as do I.

Here's part 1:

Pink Double-Faced Silk Satin Dress Sash

This sash is made of unctuous double-faced silk satin, bought at the delightful Curtis Grace and Associates. It has heft to it, due to the two faces, it has a rich drape; it does not flutter. I tested that by hanging it and a lighter sash in a breeze for a moment. Despite its heft, it is still quite translucent -- see the chair back through the fabric.

It's 68" long by 4 1/2" wide. The ends are cut on the straight bias.

Here is a detail shot. Click please, for you must see it big to understand what I will say next.

I assume you've clicked and looked. Okay, the sides are finished with thick close button-hole-like stitching, machine made, one side ribbed and the other flat. I doubt if this sash was cut from a length of fabric, the stitching made near the edges and anything left over or trimmed off, or stitched over the edges themselves. You'd see tiny threads, sooner or later, and there are none, and the grain is perfectly straight. I think this ribbed edge was the selvage, and perhaps thick like this due to the double-facing on the satin?

Now for some fun. When I first touched the sash ends, a "hooray!" moment. For sure enough, the ends had been treated with something to prevent fraying. The stiffener can be felt from just in from the frayed edge to about a half inch. You can just barely feel a change in the fabric's feel, and it's a wee stiffer, but there is no color change. I am hoping that this is an example of an end treated with gum arabic, a tree gum long used to prevent fraying and to add gloss, as in the lovely pinked edges on gowns. In an 1888 issue of Good Housekeeping, for instance, it's recommended for adding gloss to shirt fronts.

Now, about its age and use. At 68", it's not terribly long, and who wore it depends on how it was worn. It might fit a teen girl if tied in a bow with short tails, but at that width it would be awfully wide on a tiny girl of six, even given the almost timeless propensity for adults to decorate young girls with wide fat bows. For an adult, it would have needed to be threaded through two belt clasps and so sans bow, and there is no sign that anything like that was done...no pin holes, no fold marks length- or width-ways, or anything. Or perhaps it was worn low on the hips and just folded over. It's hard to say. Sashes of this width could have been worn by adults as late as the twenties, so far as I know; after that such width would have overwhelmed the designs popular for waistlines. For children, up to a bit later, but not so much, I do not think, and this is truly unctuous fabric here, very expensive.

The color varies from a rich-but-soft shell pink to a vibrant pink like a tropical flower, and I think the latter was closer to the original color. Rich colors like that are found in the early 1890s (not after 1897, when we all went pale), and then again I think in teens and twenties and thirties.

Does anyone have any ideas?