The Twins Walk, Tumble, and Babble

When the boys walk, they don't exactly watch where they're going. Crash! Tumble! Regroup! Babble about it all. Oh, and make sure Mama is watching...

The Top 100 Books List

According to the BBC, the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books on their list. How many have you read? Kalianne at Bygone Beauty posted this meme.

Turns out I've read 51 of the books on the list, more than I thought but less than I'd like.

If you'd like to participate in this meme simply copy the list and follow the instructions below. Don't worry if you haven't read many books - the list is only opinion. Be sure to include the books you'd like to read too and those you think should be struck off the list. Feel free to list books not on the list that you deem worthy. Finally, be sure to post a comment so we know where to find you!

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you love.( I had a hard time underlining so I put starred them)
4) Strike out the books you have no intention of ever reading, or were forced to read at school and hated.
5) Reprint this list in your own blog.

The List

1 *Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 *The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 *Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 The Harry Potter Series - JK Rowling (Strike them. I am not sure these will hold up with time. They are already fading from children's memories. Sudden mass popularity doesn't equal long-term reading.)
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 *The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 *Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (many of them)
15 *Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 *The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 *Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 *The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 *Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 *The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 *Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 *Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 *The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown (strike it: I do not think this will hold up with time)
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert (strike it. Oh please. The Time Machine would be more appropriate.)
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo- Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding (strike it: I do not think this will hold up with time)
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 *The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81* A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day- Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 *Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89* Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole (read part of it: not top drawer. Strike it.)
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 *The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 *Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl (strike it: not top drawer)
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

I didn't strike that many books, not because I feel they should be included, but because I wasn't familiar with them and couldn't comment.

Books I feel should have been included: most are part of the most basic fabric of our Western culture!

1. Homer: The Odyssey
2. Homer: The Iliad
3. Mark Twain: Huckleberry Finn
4. Patrick O'Brian: Aubrey-Maturin series
5. Anthony Trollope: Phineas Finn
6. Nathaniel Hawthorne: The Scarlet Letter
7. John Milton: Paradise Lost
8. Goethe: Faust
9. Thomas Malory: Le Morte d'Arthur
10. Geoffrey Chaucer: Canterbury Tales (I've read parts)

Scaled Drawings of American Regency Garments Available!

Polly, a delightful friend, and fellow period fashion admirer, had the good fortune to attend a Jane Austen festival in Louisville a week or so ago. There was a fashion show, and many of the reproduction garments shown were based on Jennie's patterns, or Janet Arnold's Patterns of Fashion, or similarly scholarly resources, or from scaled drawings taken of actual garments in museums in the eastern U.S.. Polly thoroughly enjoyed the fashions.

Photo: Scaled drawing of Early Ohio Regency dress from the Ohio Historical Society collection. On The 19th U.S. Regiment of Infantry site.

They have made the scaled drawings available to all, a gift for which we should be truly grateful! There are scaled drawings for a 1795 day dress, three day dresses, and a wedding dress from 1800-1820s. There are also a ca. 1800 brassiere pattern, stays and child's stays, and a full apron. Most of the patterns have detailed photos of the original garments to go along with them. There are photos only of several other dresses and a pretty chemise from about 1820 that's lace trimmed and has a ruffle (!!), and at the fashion show the presenters promised to make more scaled drawings available.

One could make up garments from the drawings, with some work, or tweak Jennie's patterns, and I love the fact that you have so many photos of the exteriors and interiors of the dresses.

The drawings are on the The 19th U.S. Regiment of Infantry reenacting unit site, at http://www.19thus.com/. See the Women's Clothing section at http://www.19thus.com/WomensClothing.html.

Photo: Reenactors at an event in New Orleans, 2005. On The 19th U.S. Regiment of Infantry site. Their ensembles are very nice indeed.

I've Fallen in Love with a Horse

A horse breed, to be specific. Today I met my first Missouri Fox Trotter horse, a sorrel horse with lots of "chrome", meaning he had a flaxen mane and tail. He was sweet-natured and gentle, obviously enjoyed running up and down the meadow as his rider shot balloons with shotgun and pistol, and skewered iron rings onto his saber, or whacked at polo balls, made nothing of all the people around him, the noise of sabers, shotguns and pistols, and had the most marvelous, smooth motion.

Photo: Foxy's Red Ruby, a mare. See Arkansas Foxtrotters for more about her. This is not an exciting picture, and she is heavier than the horse I saw today, but you get an idea of the general looks.


Where were we? Why, the Ashland Estate Family Festival of Nineteenth Century Kentucky Life. There were two riders showing battle training, and picnicers in crinolines, cows and baby goats, sheared sheep with their proud owners, women demonstrating spinning and weaving, a man with a 1917 generator with big glass fluid-filled batteries running antique saw-blade cutting and sanding machines and a saw, men playing banjos and guitars, and much more. Our boys enjoyed the livestock, and Christopher's eyes gleamed and his dimples shone for half an hour straight over the horses and their riders demonstrating their skills.

Oh, I fell in love with that horse all right, asked about him, and his owner told me his breed, and this evening I looked it up. Sure enough, a popular pleasure horse, with a smooth, diagonal "Fox trot" gait, famous for being gentle and alert, surefooted and thus popular for trail riding, and not overbig. A family horse. The breed comes in all color combinations, too, but I loved the warm reddish color and that golden mane...just breathtaking!

Oh my, someday, just maybe? Perhaps I dream, but dreams are fun, too.

For more about the Missouri Fox Trotter, see their association site.

Creating Full Ostrich Plumes

It turns out that usually rich-looking, full and fluffy and curled antique ostrich plumes are not single bird feathers, but sewn-together combinations of multiple feathers.

As stated in the 1928 book The Nu-Way Course in Millinery and Hat Design,

The single plume is used very rarely for a trimming. The full, thick ostrich plume is made up of one feather of which the quill is perfect, built up underneath with less perfect feathers to give the required weight. The feathers are bleached and dyed, then starched, and finally curled.

Further, the 1922 book Millinery says,

Willow plumes were very popular a few years ago. Each tiny feathery fiber is lengthened by having several lengths of the same kind knotted to it, a tedious, fine, hand process. The result is a plume with long, sweeping feathers.

The art of creating these so-full plumes is not lost. See Lynn McMaster's costuming and pattern site for her page on developing nice, thick plumes from several thinner ones, then curling them to taste: Joining, Shaping, and Curling Feathers. This will not create a willow plume, but then, I am not sure many of us would like to spend hours knotting tiny bits of feathers.

Read more about trimming with ostrich feathers from these sewing manuals on the VintageSewing.info site:

• In the Nu Way book: Lesson 11 -- Ready-made Trimming.
• In the Millinery book: Chapter VIII—Hat Trimmings—Feathers

At the Beach

This week the twins have tasted ocean water, eaten sand, splashed in waves big and small, played with their older cousin, and have been held by relatives galore. And they have been delighted. Being one year old is fun, they say!

Cherry Chess Pie and Raspberry Chess Pie

We interrupt our regular programming to bring you this pleasant late-spring interlude: a segment on two unusual chess pies.

If you live below the Mason-Dixon line, you've probably eaten your share, or more than you'd like to admit, of any of a number of delicious chess pies and their relatives the transparent pie, the Jeff Davis pie, and so on. Plain chess pie, lemon chess pie, chocolate chess pie...all of them luscious, sugar-custardy, rich but not too rich.

Photo: the raspberry chess pie in preparation. The pie shell is ready, the sugar base is mixed, and the green and brown araucana eggs, size medium, will be broken and beaten in with the sugar, the custard poured into the pie shell, and the berries carefully stirred in. I needed only half the berries. Hooray! Some for cereal...

I read long ago that the term "chess pie" was a corruption of an English cheese pie dish, but chess pie contains no cheese at all. It's a mixture of sugars, flour, melted butter, well-beaten eggs, and flavorings, poured into a single-crust pie shell and baked until the custard is set and the top perhaps a tad browned.

A Cherry Chess Pie for Curte Senior's 80th Birthday

Last Sunday dawned gorgeously clear and fresh, and promised a fine Father's Day, for having a picnic and celebrating my husband's Dad's 80th birthday.

Pie cherries were in season at the Farmer's Market, I found when the twins and I visited around noon-time, and we were lucky to get some. These were small red cherries, so tart! Perfect for a pie, perfect for a gift to a gentleman who knew and enjoyed homegrown produce so very well.

I'd planned your basic deep-dish cherry pie, but on looking in an old favorite cookbook, titled The Gold Cookbook, by Master Cheff Louis P. De Gouy, an enormous tome of French and regional American cooking, dated 1947, the only cherry pie he listed was for a cherry chess pie. Not familiar with such a beast, I read it, thought it sounded mighty tasty, and proceeded to make the pie. After spattering my new shirt and the breakfast tabletop with cherry juice from stoning each cherry, of course.

The pie made up easily, baked well, set well, and traveled well out to Spindletop in the countryside for the picnic. Mighty tasty it was too, as we all agreed. Hint of tartness in the cherries, not oversweet, hint of honey, of all things, too.

Here then is the recipe, straight from The Gold Cookbook, page 945:

Cherry Chess Pie
Pit one quart of sour cherries after first washing them quickly in cold water then draining well. Mix 2 tablespoons of flour, 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon, 1/2 cup sugar, 1/3 cup honey*, a pinch of salt, and 1 1/2 tablespoons of butter or margerin (sic). Stir in 3 well-beaten eggs with a pinch of salt and add the cherries. Pour into an unbaked pie shell and bake in a hot oven (450 F.) for 12 minutes to set the pie and crust; reduce the heat to 350 F. and continue baking for 20 minutes longer, or until set. Cool and serve with a whipped cream topping.

*I used mellow sourwood honey.

The pie crust: I use my standby crust from my mother's Good Housekeeping Cookbook from the late 40s or early 50s: 2 1/4 cups sifted all-purpose flour, 1/2 teaspoon salt; cut in 3/4 cup of butter or shortening; add 4-6 tablespoons ice water bit by bit, and blend until the mixture starts following the fork around and forms a ball. Roll out and line an ungreased pie shell with it.


A Raspberry Chess Pie Variation

My raspberries are ripe! A few tastes last week of early berries made us all happy, and I expected a similar slim picking today, but was rather shocked to find the patch loaded. I did two pickings today, yielding perhaps a quart and a half. Not bad for a small patch in town.

Wanting to make something special, and not being in the mood for a tart, I went back to the chess pie theme, replacing the cherries with the raspberries, and leaving out the cinnamon.

We shall see! It should be done in a moment and tomorrow morning in fresh light I will photograph it...

Photo: the raspberry chess pie has been tasted.

...Tomorrow arrived and here are the results of the taste test: well, it's pretty good! The chess flavor and raspberry flavor are nice together, if not outstanding. However, I think a tart with a cream cheese or sour cream filling might take better advantage of the raspberry flavor.

Edwardian "Lingerie" Dress Diary, Part 2: Bodice Cutting and Lace Insertion

At this stage of the Edwardian lingerie dress creation process, I am constructing the bodice. As a reminder, for a base pattern I am using Jennie Chancey's Sense and Sensibility Beatrix shirtwaist pattern as a base.

My dress design calls for 1/4 inch tucks at center front, then a wide band of lace insertion at each side of the tucks, set on an angle to visually narrow the bodice, then a one-inch wide tuck at each shoulder line, as bretelles. Another band of wide lace insertion is to be set horizontally to mark the high waistline.

Photo 1: first bodice fitting.

Creating Tucks for the Center Front of the Bodice

If tucks are to be used in a bodice, most period instruction manuals, such as the 1905 edition of Butterick's Dressmaker manual (republished as Authentic Victorian Dressmaking Techniques, Kristina Harris, ed.), direct the seamstress to make the tucks in the fabric first, before cutting out the pattern pieces. This is what I did -- mostly -- because I wanted more tucks than Jennie's pattern allows ease for.

Photo 2: detail showing two sets of three tucks at center front of bodice. Picture was taken after pattern pieces were cut.

First, then, I cut a rectangle of linen from selvage to selvage that was big enough to hold the front pattern piece. Then I proceeded to hand-set six tucks in what would be the center front of the bodice. Following the photograph of an extant centrally tucked shirtwaist advertised on Ebay sometime back, I made the tucks in two sets of three, facing inwards to the center front.

To hand-set the tucks, I spray starched the linen so it would easily hold creases, and then pinched and pinned each quarter-inch tuck, pinning, pressing, and sewing each tuck one after the next. Here are the results, in photo 1.

Then I aligned the front pattern piece to the center front line in the middle of the tucks, and drew the pattern line. Because Jennie's pattern is marked for both a fitted waist version, with no ease for tucks, and a bloused or tucked version, I subtracted that part of the pattern piece that holds the ease.

Adding the Bretelle Tucks: A Matter of Trial and Error

After this, I added width to the front pattern piece to leave room for the two one-inch bretelle tucks...I measured the one-inch amount and added it to each side.

Then I hand-set each bretelle tuck and basted it in place, and looked at the effect. Eek: the bretelle edges were taking up part of the seam allowance! Out came the basting and I redid the tucks, checked them again, and stitched them in place. In retrospect, the bretelle are a bit more angled than my original design called for, but they still look nice.

Photo 3: the front bodice piece with one bretelle tuck set and basted in place.

Cutting the Bodice Back Pieces

Since the dress opens at the back, this meant cutting two back pieces. Just as for the front, I added an extra inch to each side for the bretelles, then eyeballed and hand-set each bretelle, basting it to check to make sure it ended at the shoulder line as well as matched the bretelle positioning on the bodice front piece before stitching the final bretelle tucks.

Photo 4: the two back pattern pieces with bretelles set and the placket hems pinned.

First Fitting for Setting on the Vertical Bodice Insertion

Now I basted the bodice pieces, wrong sides together to check fit and to place, and then baste, the wide vertical lace insertion bands.


Photo5: first fitting, showing vertical bands and portion of horizontal waistline lace band pinned in place.

The lace I am using dates to the Edwardian period. It was cut in pieces from a lingerie dress at some point by a previous owner. The dress may have been homemade, or at least repaired at home, because two of the pieces came with the snap fasteners used apparently to close the back of the dress, and the three sets of fasteners are all different. In time-honored fashion, I am reusing the lace on this dress.

Photo 6: detail view of a piece of the insertion.

Photo 7: Edwardian-era snap fasteners from the period lace I am reusing. Two fasteners are of the same type, but different sizes, while the third, smallest fastener, is of the simplest design.

Photo 8: Reverse side of each fastener. Note that the two fasteners on the left both use spring wires to keep the nubs tight.

Recutting the Front Bodice Pieces

The fitting showed that the bodice needed to be taken in to fit more closely around the torso (see photo 5). Further, the underarm seam had gotten skewed towards the back. So, I took two vertical tucks under the armscye and pinned them until the fit was right.
Photo 10: shows the bodice pinned at the new underarm seam.

After removing and pressing the bodice, I removed the basting, remarked the seamline, and recut the underarm seam.

It proved instructive to lay out the bodice front and back pieces, still connected at the shoulders, to show the difference between the recut seamline (bottom right in the picture) and the original seamline (top right in the picture).




Photo 11: shows the bodice pieces laid out.

Edwardian "Lingerie" Dress Diary, Part 1: Design Phase, with Two Antique Skirt Inspirations

As part of the Ladies' Historical Tea Society Edwardian Picnic preparations, I am in the middle of constructing a circa 1909 white linen ensemble, in a fashion popularly known as the lingerie dress.

About Edwardian Lingerie Dresses

The term "lingerie dress" is not a modern name for the garment, but a common name back then for this type of dress. As Anne Rittenhouse reported in the New York Times on May 26, 1912,

The white wash gown, which we universally call the lingerie frock, is a subject of interest as soon as the warm weather advances on us. There are seasons in which it is dominant; there are other seasons in which it is almost effaced by other kinds of clothes. (1)

These days lingerie dresses are often sold under the label "tea dress", as they were often worn for afternoon functions, especially during warmer weather.

Photo 1: unlined skirt portion from a lingerie dress; a previous owner cut away the bodice. The dress is constructed of two tiers made to look like three. Each tier is composed of three panels, but the upper tier and lower tier panels do not line up. The cut plus the ankle length lead me to think the dress dates after 1908. Trim is limited to wide tucks setting off each tier, complemented by narrower tucks.

Lingerie dresses are normally white, and made in lightweight fabrics like muslin, voile, cotton eyelet, batiste, or linen. Some dresses were lined; many -- perhaps most -- were not. Because the fabrics and laces were usually quite sheer, a camisole and petticoat, or full slip would be worn. I understand that frequently the underslip was in color, such as a cool blue, soft green or pink. The coloring would lend the lingerie dress itself a hint of color. maybe because the colored fabrics faded and wore out, or perhaps because, as the few samples I have seen are utilitarian-looking, few of them seem to be extant. Often they were worn with a belt or a sash. Dresses could be one-piece, or sometimes a two-piece outfit of skirt and waist.

Photo 2: Lingerie-style skirt, flared and quite trained. The skirt features an opaque soft muslin underskirt in several panels attached in the same waistband. The fashion skirt is made of a single panel, darted to fit the waist. It is trimmed at knee level with a double frill of self fabric edged with Valenciennes lace, attached in the middle like a ruche. The skirt is edged at bottom with two narrow tiers of self fabric edged with the same lace. The underskirt is trimmed at bottom with a narrow headed flounce. The flare and train lead me to believe the skirt style, at any rate, dates to at or before 1908, and the 1905 edition of the Butterick Dressmaker sewing manual recommends attaching underskirts in this manner.

While the overall silhouette follows whatever was popular in the year it was made, whether that be a yoke or flouncing or separate front and back apronlike panels, like the lingerie of those times, they are trimmed, often heavily, with various combinations of tucks and lace and embroidery. These dresses were very popular, and you see photos of girls and women wearing them from at least the turn of the century right through into the twenties.

Photo 3: detail of skirt bottom, showing double-tiered frill and underlying headed flounce.

My Dress Design

My dress design is based on a composite of several actual dresses of the period, as seen on vintage clothing sites. The main dress bodice inspiration was made in 1911 or 1912 of white linen, and featured wide bands of broderie Anglaise lace placed pretty much as in the design I ended with, along with two wider tucks as bretelles and tucks in the central bodice. However, it featured a far narrower silhouette, and two fascinating extra panels in front and back that floated free, almost like aprons. The bottoms were fringed with bobble trim. I have picked up the bobble trim for this dress, as it was popular in 1909.

The skirt ideas I used are common to many lingerie dresses: a train and a band of eyelet insertion near the skirt base. My skirt is composed of multiple panels and features a short train.

Photo 4: my design. Front view, with thumbnail side and back views

To bring the skirt and bodice together, I made the central tucks go from collar to skirt bottom. In the drawn design I added vertical tucks to the side skirt panels and at the back from collar to skirt bottom, but decided that was overkill and the final skirt will simply feature the front tucks: they should narrow and lengthen the look of the dress.

For the base patterns, I am using Jennie Chancey's Beatrix shirtwaist pattern and Beatrix walking skirt pattern. I have shortened the shirtwaist to and Edwardian "Empire" height popular during the time, and have narrowed the pattern pieces for a closer fit. I am using the train option on the Beatrix skirt pattern, and have added height to the waistline to meet the short bodice.

Next up: cutting the bodice and placing the lace insertion.

Additional Resources

• Fashion in the Edwardian Era: Part 1: 1900-1909 The Last Age of Elegance (The Ladies Treasury of Costume and Fashion)
  
• 1900s in Fashion (Wikipedia)
• Shelter and Clothing: a Textbook of the Household Arts. By Helen Kinne, Anna Maria Cooley. New York: The MacMillan Company, 1914. On Google Books. Includes directions for making a "one-piece dimity or lawn dress" (lingerie): see page 343.
  
• Early 20th Century Fashions (Lavender's Green): examples of period and reproduction lingerie dresses, worn well.

Extant garments are for sale on many vintage clothing sites. For some fine examples, see:

• Vintage Textile, Edwardian section
  
• Contentment Farm, Edwardian section
  
• Bobby Dene's Vintage Clothes, Edwardian section (the pictures aren't of best quality but the examples are so numerous that the site gives a super idea of the variety of styles made over the years)
  

Photo 5: example of lingerie dress in Shelter and Clothing: a Textbook of the Household Arts, page 343.

References

(1) Rittenhouse, Anne. What the Well-Dressed Woman is Wearing: Lingerie Frocks Important Part of This Month's Sewing---Simple Gowns with Only Tucks as Trimming Have Come into Wide Favor. New York Times May 26, 1912. Accessed June 9, 2008 (http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9C04E4D7103AE633A25755C2A9639C946396D6CF)

Happy Birthday, Little Tots

On May 31, our two boys had their first birthday. Grandparents and cousins visited and we all, every one of us, had homemade white cake and vanilla ice cream and homegrown strawberries.

Above: everyone sings to to the tots, who take the attention most seriously.

Poor babies, no coffee for them, not even if it did smell so good. There is something about fresh-roasted beans that is softer than regular coffee; we're lucky that a vendor at the farmer's market roasts his own.

Christopher enjoyed it all but Noah thought ice cream less than appealing. Wonder when that will change?

Just a few days before this, the boys and I played in the back with a laundry basket. Bless his baby heart, Christopher can still climb inside it. Please don't grow up too fast, little boy!

Fashion Plate and Photo Sources...Oh, and Random Patterns, Too

Updated September 9, 2011

The Web is chock full of sources for period fashion plates and period photos. Folks on Elizabeth Stewart Clark, Truly Victorian, H-Costume and Sense and Sensibility have passed several sources around over time, and others I have uncovered myself. Lately Google Books has been offering increasing numbers of volumes of popular women's magazines in full, which is a true blessing since not only do we have the fashion plates, but the descriptions and the other magazine content...what a rich source!

Photo: A 1796 fashion plate from the Collection Maciet, with a handwritten note underneath, "Morning Dress".

I am cataloging these resources here for ease, and am adding to them as chances occur.

Right: detail from La Mode Illustree fashion plate, 1869. Collection Maciet, Bibliotheque des Arts Decoratifs
America's First Look into the Camera: Daguerrotype Portraits and Views, 1839-1864
More than 725 of them, mostly portraits, and mostly by the Mathew Brady studio. Wonderful for fashion research.

Arthur's Home Magazine (on Google Books) (Added October 1, 2009)
Entire volumes of Arthur's Home Magazine, digitized by Google books. Most volumes contain a half year or full year of issues. While more religiously minded than other magazines, Athur's still offered some fashion and needlework information. When you click the link, you will go to the Google search results list for "Arthur's Home Magazine". The search may not have garnered all that's out there, because if there are spelling mistakes or the book was titled with a different word or character, Google will not recognize it.

Belle Assemblee, La (on Google Books) (Added October 1, 2009)
Entire volumes of La Belle Assemblee, digitized by Google books. This is a super source for Regency fashion. When you click the link, you will go to the Google search results list for "Belle Assemblee". The search may not have garnered all that's out there; because the magazine name changed several times and it is entered into Google Books in several ways. Because of this, I could not use the Editions feature in Google Books, so many items farther down in the search results list will not be the magazine.

Bibliotheque des Arts Decoratifs, Collection Maciet
Very large database collection of fashion plates, with the occasional pattern. Marvelous for mid-nineteenth century. Photos zoom to very large size. In French. To view the plates:

• From horizontal nav bar at top, choose "Recherche simple" (simple search).
• A form will appear on the left half of the screen.
• In "Termes de recherche" (search terms) field, enter "mode" (fashion).
• Under "Type de document" (document type), check "Collection Maciet".
• Under "Langue" (language), check "Tous" (all).
• Click "Rechercher" (search) in the lower corner.
• A database results list will appear. If you don't speak French, the citations will still make sense enough: just check the boxes next to the years in which you are interested.
• At the bottom of the screen, click "Voir les notices" (view the citations).
• One or more full citations (depending on the number of citations you chose) will come up in the right screen. To view the fashion plates associated with each, click "Voir les vignettes Maciet" (View the Maciet plates) at the lower right corner of a citation.
• Thumbnails will load.
• If you click on a thumbnail, a full-screen dialog box will pop up. It will contain a larger-size image, and along the left side, viewing tools.
  "Zoom avant" = zoom in
  "Zoom arriere" = zoom out
  You can also use the percentage box beneath. Note that it takes time for the images to resolve into their new zoom setting.
  "Selection" gives you a zoom selection tool. On the image, the pointer changes to a box with four arrows. Click and drag to create a selection box to zoom in on a particular portion on the image.
  "Deplacement" is a pan tool. Click and drag the image around.
  "Luminosite" and "Contraste" affect the color, as you might expect.
  "Garder les reglages" (keep the ??) probably means keep the settings
  "Configuration par defaut" (default configuration) returns the image to its original size
  "Impression" (print) allows you to print or save. A new print screen will show up with the image. In the box at bottom it says that you may insert your comments: they will print along with the image. Magnifique!

BFI (British Film Institute): Mitchell and Kenyon Collection: Edwardian Britain on Film
A superb way to see Edwardian clothing (mostly from 1900-1904) in action, as worn by everday people and celebrities. The films are usually just a few minutes long.

Dames a la Mode
Fashion plates. Especially useful for the Regency era. A blog maintained by Tayloropolis.

La Couturiere Parisienne
Fashion plates, patterns, and fashion history from an accomplished fashion historian in Germany.

The Daguerrian Society (this entry added 09/23/08)
A database of over 1,000 images. You may search the database or browse the images by thematically organized galleries.

De Gracieuse 1862-1936 (the Netherlands)
I noted that for 1868, anyway, the fashion plates are replicas of those in Harper's Bazar. Entire magazines have been scanned. Zoom doesn't appear to work, but as of September 2008, if you select an image, and choose "save" from the icons to the right of the image, you get a large enough scan to see details.

Diderot: Encyclopédie, ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers
There are a number of versions of Diderot's enormous encyclopedia out there, some translated, some in the original French, and some as images of each page. A quick Google search of the title will get you many of these. My preference is for the Wikimedia Commons and Wikisource version, since it includes both scans and a searchable text version, and the index to all the plates.

• Scan of each page, on Wikimedia Commons
• Searchable text
• Plates, by volume

Also, see plates related to 18th Century dress from Denis Diderot's Encyclopedia, on the Costumer's Manifesto
Duke Digital Collections (This entry added November 19, 2008)

• Emergence of Advertising in America
  Ads, pamphlets, and more.
• Hugh Mangum Photographs, circa 1990-1922
  Terrific collection of portraits and almost documentary style images from an itinerant photographer practicing in rural North Carolina. Super way to see normal people in their best, and not so best.

Earthly Angels: Cartes de Visite
A blog collection. Can be sorted. Sadly, the collection's editor hasn't, perhaps not being able to, included much in the way of information about the images.

Fashion (Category) in Wikimedia
Image archive divided out by category, with sections such as "18th century fashion" and "dressmaking. Warning: some categories are loaded with images, many without text description, and take forever to load. Proceed with care.

Flickr "Pools" of Historic Photographs and Images (added May 13, 2009)
Flickr is stuffed with contributers who love to share antique photos, postcards, and other images. Here are some of their "pools", groupings of photographs by subject. Be forewarned: some pools, such as one labeled "antique photographs" contain pinups and other images that may not be appropriate for young people (I did not include that pool in this list).

• The Smiling Victorian
  Photographs from the Victorian and Edwardian era, as contributed by individuals from all over the world. One of the nicest thing about the collection is that indeed, many photos record happy moments, either in formal sittings, or more frequently, in snapshot style. Many photos with provenance. Over 800 items.
• La Belle Epoque ca.1890 - ca.1914, including ArtDeco and ArtNouvea
  From photos of buildings to fashions to people, a huge pool of over 11,000 items.
• Vintage Victorian
  Photos, CDVs, postcards, trade cards, illustrations...
• Cabinet Portraits, CDV, Photos on Cardboard
  Just what it says :}
• Pre-1930s Photos
  Again, just what it says.

Godey's Magazine (on Google Books) and The Lady's Book (Added October 1, 2009)
Entire volumes of Godey's Magazine, and its predecessor, The Lady's Book, digitized by Google books. Most volumes contain a half year or full year of issues, and most are complete with their fashion plates and accompanying descriptions. When you click the link, you will go to the Google search results list for "Godey's Magazine" and "Lady's Book". The search may not have garnered all that's out there, because if there are spelling mistakes or the book was titled with a different word or character, Google will not recognize it. Also, note that some volume years were misstyped in Google; thus the "1886" issue is really for 1836.

Good Housekeeping Magazine (Added October 1, 2009)

• Scans on HEARTH archive site.
  Run of issues in their entirety from 1885-1950, from Cornell University's HEARTH archive. Each page available as an image, a PDF file, or as searchable text. Scans are not great quality, but content is superb anyway. You can easily search all content from all issues at once.
• On Google Books.
  Better quality scans than HEARTH resource, but not a complete run of issues.

Harper's Bazar Magazine
All the magazines from inception in 1867 until 1900. Each page available as an image, a PDF file, or as searchable text. Sadly, the pattern supplements aren't included, but a patient person might find a pattern match in De Gracieuse, which carried many of the same plates and patterns. That magazine's supplements have been digitized. See the entry for it in this list. On the Cornell University HEARTH site.

Historical Artwork and Fashion Plates
Includes Peterson's, Demorest's, The Delineator, New Idea, and more, from 1870 to 1918. Includes some Peterson's patterns. Posted on Festyve Attyre.

History of Corsets (in images)
From Wikimedia Commons. I cannot locate an author. Page takes ages to load, but there are tons of images.

Iowa Digital Library: Iowa Women's Archives and the Noble Photographs (This entry added November 19, 2008)
These two collections, part of the much larger Iowa Digital Library, contain fascinating photographs of women in everyday, work, and school settings. Chiefly Belle Epoque era and later. On the homepage, scroll down to choose either of the collections from the list.

Iowa State University Digital Collections: Fashion Plates
"Contains plates of general fashion dating back to the 18th century and continuing through the 20th century. Additional categories within the files include accessories, baby and beach fashions, bridal fashions and portraits, children's and communion clothing, footwear, inaugural gowns, maid uniforms, masquerade costumes, men's fashion, millinery, mourning dresses, negligees and undergarments. There are also magazine issues relating to fashion as well as magazine articles discussing fashion of the Ancient, Medieval, Renaissance, and Modern periods."

LACMA Collections Online: Costume and Textiles
Fashion plates and online exhibits from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Large holdings.

Ladies' Companion, The (on Google Books) (Added October 1, 2009)
Entire volumes of The Ladies' Companion, an English woman's magazine, digitized by Google books. There is a very limited amount of fashion information, but enough to be interesting. Most volumes contain a half year or full year of issues, and most are complete with their fashion plates and accompanying descriptions. When you click the link, you will go to the Google search results list for "The Ladies' Companion". The search may not have garnered all that's out there, because if there are spelling mistakes or the book was titled with a different word or character, Google will not recognize it.

Lady's Monthly Museum, The (on Google Books) (Added October 1, 2009)
Entire volumes of The Ladies' Monthly Museum, an English woman's magazine, digitized by Google books. This magazine was published during the Regency and offers some fashion information. Most volumes contain a half year or full year of issues, and most are complete with their fashion plates and accompanying descriptions. When you click the link, you will go to the Google search results list for "The Ladies' Monthly Museum". The search may not have garnered all that's out there, because if there are spelling mistakes or the book was titled with a different word or character, Google will not recognize it.

Los Angeles Public Library: Casey Fashion Plates Index
"The Joseph E. Casey Fashion Plate Collection contains over 6,200 handcolored fashion plates from British and American magazines dating from the 1790s to the 1880s. All of the plates are indexed and digitized for online viewing."

McCord Museum, Canada: Costume and Texiles Collection
Zoomable photographs (one per ensemble) and explication of hundreds of items in their collection. Note that the museum has many other collections online, including photographs, plus fascinating games. A marvelous site.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute Added January 13, 2009
Their entire collection is online. Not all pieces have photos. Not all photos are that good, and text information is limited. From the index page, choose the Collection Database link. It seems to be easist to find things if you search for a large category of garment, such as "dress" and then sort the results by date.

Mode Histoire
Scans of the fashion plates and patterns from nineteenth century magazines and transcriptions of all the original text that accompanied them. Currently limited to Peterson's 1863, but more to come. I have contributed my 1872 Peterson's to the effort.

New York Public Library

• NYPL Digital Gallery
  To find fashion plates, in seach box type "fashion" and then a year.
• "The Pageant of America" Photograph Archive
  These are photographs, not fashion plates, but very useful for looking at dress

Period Resources Fashion Scans
From Digital Changeling's site. Including Paris Modes from 1909!

Peterson's Magazine (on Google Books) (Added October 1, 2009)
Entire volumes of Peterson's Magazine, digitized by Google books. Most volumes contain a half year or full year of issues, and most are complete with their fashion plates and accompanying descriptions, plus some garment patterns. Warning about the latter: they are not to scale, I hear, even if marked in images, so that you must drape the pattern pieces and alter them to fit you. . When you click the link, you will go to the Google search results list for "Peterson's Magazine". The search may not have garnered all that's out there, because if there are spelling mistakes or the book was titled with a different word or character, Google will not recognize it.

Powerhouse Museum Collection
From the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney, Australia. Photos of actual garments and accessories, including some ensembles with zoom feature. Warning: the accompanying descriptions can be poor and undated. For example, a search for "fichu" returned quite a list of photos of actual fichus, but almost all of the items were undated and information scanty. Further, not all items listed have photos, but you can filter those out. However, the breadth of objects is wide, and if you already know a bit about the type of item you are researching, the images can be of help. There is also an electronic swatchbook of fabrics from a narrow (but fascinating) selection of years.

Royal Lady's Magazine, The (on Google Books) (Added October 1, 2009)
Entire volumes of Peterson's Magazine, digitized by Google books. Most volumes contain a half year or full year of issues, and most are complete with their fashion plates and accompanying descriptions, plus some garment patterns. Warning about the latter: they are not to scale, I hear, even if marked in images, so that you must drape the pattern pieces and alter them to fit you. . When you click the link, you will go to the Google search results list for "Peterson's Magazine". The search may not have garnered all that's out there, because if there are spelling mistakes or the book was titled with a different word or character, Google will not recognize it.

Shorpy Online Photograph Archive Added May 13, 2009
An online archive of thousands of high-resolution photos from the 1850s to 1950s. Our namesake, Shorpy Higginbotham, was a teenage coal miner who lived 100 years ago. Many of the photos have been extracted from the Library of Congress, while others are contributed. The photo quality is extraordinary.

Tidens Toj
A Danish museum exhibition site containing high-quality, zoomable photos of actual garments, and often fashion plates and patterns to go along with them. Covers multiple centuries, but the nineteenth century is very nicely represented.

University of Washington Digital Collections: Fashion Plate Collection
"The database consists of 417 digital images chosen from a larger group of fashion plates"

Victoria and Albert Images: Heideloff Gallery of Fashion plates
A small selection of plates from the famous Gallery of Fashion, published 1794-1800 by Nikolaus Heideloff in London.

Why Not Then: Antique Garments section
Photographs of garments in author Stormi Souter's collection. Multiple photos per garment, with accompanying construction notes and measurements

Two Trimmed Edwardian 1909 "Beatrix" Skirts Dress Diary, Part 2: Designing a Graduated, Shaped Flounce

Polly desires her Beatrix skirt to have a tall flounce. Skirts of this era often were flounced, although as 1909 turned into 1910 and then the 19-teens, flounces appear to receded in popularity in favor of bands of flat embroidered, lace, or pleated decoration.

Some of the prettiest flounces I've seen are graduated in height. A graduated flounce might start at, say, seven inches in height at the skirt's front panel, but incrementally become taller until it might reach some fifteen inches at the back of the skirt. Combined with a short train, the effect is of two curving lines receding from one another.

Another characteristic of Edwardian tall flounces is that they were frequently cut shaped and on the bias, so that the top of the flounce would be sewn on flat, while the bottom, being wider and on the bias, fluttered out. Such flounces are softer and more clingy than a flounce made of fabric cut straight of grain and then gathered.

Emma Ruth of the Sense and Sensibility described how to make a shaped flounce, and I followed her directions in making Polly's flounce, photographing as I went. Here is how it went:

First, I laid the skirt pattern pieces out on the floor, one right next to the other and matching the seam marks, as if they were making up the shape of half of the skirt.

Then I taped several pieces of waxed paper together and laid the resulting piece of paper on top of the pattern pieces.

In the first image you can see the pattern pieces laid edge to edge, and the waxed paper placed atop.

Next, I traced the line of the bottom and sides of the skirt pattern pieces onto the wax paper.

After this I drew the flounce line. Starting at front of the front panel pattern piece I marked a spot at 7 inches or so from the skirt bottom. Then I drew a curving line that increased in height as it went to the pattern pieces for the sides and then back of the skirt, ending at a position about 15 inches from the bottom of the final, back skirt pattern piece. I cut out the result. Now I had the basic pattern for the flounce, but...I needed to make it flare.

In the second image I have drawn and cut the basic flounce pattern. The front of the skirt is to the left; that's where the flounce is most narrow. The back of the skirt is at the right, where the flounce is widest. Like most pattern pieces, the pattern is for one half of the flounce.

So, on the base pattern I drew long vertical lines several inches apart, from the flounce bottom almost to the top. Then I cut each line with scissors, slashing the pattern pieces and spreading them at the bottom. The more I spread each slash, the wider the fabric would be at the bottom of the flounce and the more the resulting fabric would flutter and flare.

In the third image, a closeup, you can see the vertical lines drawn across the pattern, ready to be cut and slashed.


Finally, I laid another piece of wax paper over the slashed and spread pattern, drew a fresh pattern, and cut that out. Voila, shaped flounce pattern!

In the final image, I have cut and slashed the pattern to create the shaped flounce pattern, and have laid a layer of waxed paper atop, ready to draw the final pattern. Because slashing causes the pattern to curve, I had to add several little pieces of wax paper to fit the curve.

(Emma Ruth noted that if I wanted a gathered flounce I would have slashed each line from top to bottom to break the pattern into separate strips, and then would have spaced them out. Then I would have cut a new pattern from the resulting shape.)

Emma Ruth had another note about preparing the flounce: hem it before applying it to the skirt. Otherwise you're in for a lot of work.

Warm thanks to Emma Ruth for her kind direction. It all worked so well.

Sewing Mornings Continue

A few days later, Polly and I met to work on her skirt. We seamed the main skirt up, and Polly had her first experience using a treadle. She took to it immediately, even getting the hang of working the W&G wheel, which turns in the opposite direction of most sewing machine wheels.

Then I used the flounce pattern to cut out Polly's flounce from her navy and white stripe seersucker, and laid it on the plain skirt. What a nice effect! The stripes on the bias contrast nicely with the stripes on the straight part of the skirt. Can't wait until it's applied to the skirt.

That day's work was attended with a few technical difficulties, shall we say? I hoped to use my Singer handcrank's gathering attachment to make the small ruffle to attach to the main flounce, but it kept jamming, and then the Singer's tension went wonky, a condition from which it has yet to recover. Yargghh. So Polly gamely worked on a trimming ruche by hand...

A few days later we met again, and I demonstrated applying a period placket, using an original garment as a design guide, and we set the waistband, too.

Working on that fabric has been most interesting: did you know that working with narrow striped fabrics can make you dizzy, and ditzy? After several hours of cutting, sewing and ruching, both of us felt a little woozy.

And Rebecca's skirt? It's seamed up and has its waistband, and is ready for the lace insertion. I even found some true period torchon lace to use to trim it with!

Two Trimmed Edwardian 1909 "Beatrix" Skirts: Dress Diary, Part 1

I am making two Beatrix skirts (a Sense and Sensibility pattern) as gifts for friends for a 

picnic at the end of May. While the original pattern is for an untrimmed skirt, each of these will be trimmed in a fashion appropriate to the era. I am planning to set insertion lace in two rows into Rebecca's skirt around the hem, and Polly's skirt will receive a circular flounce headed by a row of ruching. Both ladies loved the idea of trained skirts, too, so both will have their heart's desire.

Having promised to document the process for our tea society, herewith the first report!

Rebecca's Willow Green Trained Skirt with Lace Insertion


On a sunny spring morning, with the crabapple blooming outside the window, I cut out the skirt pieces.


Ladybug helped. This was her first week with us, and she delighted me with her interest in sewing. Zip Zip used to love to help me, and I missed her company.


Now each panel is sewn together. I used 3/8" French seams. French seams are a delight when you have fabric of light enough weight to use them, because a French seam encloses the fabric edges neatly and sturdily, so there will be no loose threads, unraveling, and no further seam finishing!


Fully pieced together, the last seam that draws the skirt up from a two-dimensional bunch of panels into a three-dimensional garment, is ready to be sewn. In the background you can see my circa 1911 Willcox and Gibbs chainstitch treadle sewing machine. It makes sewing linen so straightforward, and it's so quiet that I can sew in the evening while the twins sleep in rooms nearby. Willcox and Gibbs advertised their machines as being silent stitchers, and oh, what a blessing, when you have light-sleeping children!

In fact, here is a little video of the machine at work:

Under the crabapple tree, our boys celebrate springtime

Last year I stood under our crabapple tree, weeks before it bloomed, wearing maternity clothing.

This spring, what gift laughs under our tree in full bloom but twin boys, chuckling with their cousin Jane on the porch swing?

Home! In 1883...

Ithaca! "Forest City", they called it back then. Where Rome had seven hills, "Ithaca makes her boast of seven streams, concerning which she challenges the world". Then there's the lake, "that with its framing of bright, foliage-covered hills and the inlet at its head, might be likened unto a large and beautiful hand mirror." Cornell! The town. The 150 waterfalls. The deep glens and gorges.

Look! This view of Fall Creek emptying into the lake -- it's hardly different now.

D. Morris Kurtz wrote about them all in Ithaca and Its Resources, in 1881. By a wonderful miracle, I ran into it on Google Books, where it's there for the reading. As the title page says,

Ithaca and Its Resources
Being an Historical and a Descriptive Sketch of the "Forest City" and Its Magnificent Scenery
Glens - Falls - Ravines
Cornell University
and the principal
Manufacturing and Commercial Interests
by D. Morris Kurtz
Fully Illustrated

Come and see >

19th Century Women's Fashion Mix and Match Games at the McCord Museum Website

Canada's McCord Museum has two games about women's fashion that test your ability to recognize fashion silhouettes. One of them is tough!

First, try the High Fashion of the Nineteenth Century game, at http://www.mccord-museum.qc.ca/en/keys/games/jeu2_2/.

Second, try the harder Women's Fashion game at http://www.mccord-museum.qc.ca/en/keys/games/jeu2/. I found myself making mistakes right off the bat!

Waving Doughnuts with Excitement

...not me, the boys. I only wish I had a nice fresh old-fashioned doughnut to wave, and then nibble!

Anyhow, back to our story. Last Thursday afternoon was warm and breezy, and before the rain set in, Mom and I set out to garden. We set Noah and Christopher on a quilt, dressed in wide-brimmed hats, and gave them their favorite stacking toy, with rings we call doughnuts, to play with. Well, Christopher handily stacked a doughnut on the stacker, and celebrated to the world.



Curte says that a boy walked by sometime later, and Christopher watched him pass, and then waved a doughnut madly at his back.

Here's Noah in "My Hat"; dig, dig, dig, dig it!