Regency Hand-Sewn Drawstring Dress: A Tour of Stitches, Part 1

Over the springtime and summertime I engaged in hand-sewing a Regency-style drawstring day dress in a cotton.

The project was a sort of giant, fully sewn toile, a grand mockup, for I was less interested in having the perfect dress for events than I was in understanding what it might feel like to construct a day dress by hand. What stitches might have been used during the period, and how would the sewing process feel in the hands? What would the results look like? How would they wear?

I am indeed pleased with the results, a plain, untrimmed day dress in a inexpensive cotton print, which still manages to project some grace in its cut and in the texture the stitching imparts to the seams.

If you look at the Sense and Sensibility site, the Dress Diaries Livejournal site, visit the Regency portion of Katherine's Dress Site or do a simple search, you will find lots of information and numbers of dress diaries covering making this dress, so I will not reprise that here.

Photo: dress front

Instead, in the following posts I will lead a tour of the dress, discussing its construction and what I learned during the stitching process.

As always, click on the images to see a -- much -- larger view.

Photo: dress back

First, a grateful nod to my inspiration: the 18th century wardrobe handsewn by brocade goddess for her master's degree and museum exhibition, which was heavily documented on her blog, Rockin' the Rococco, and which I reviewed last fall.

Research

I used several sources during the project, and uncovered additional details...some of which blew my ideas away...later. In all the research I tried to stick to formally published secondary resources or primary resources. Here is a resource list.

Printed Resources

• Costume Close-Up: Clothing Construction and Pattern, 1750-1790. Baumgarten, Linda and John Watson. Williamsburg, VA: The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, 1999.
• Costume in Detail: 1730-1930. New edition. Bradfield, Nancy. Barming, England: Eric Dobby Publishing, 1968.
  
• English Women's Clothing in the Nineteenth Century. Cunningham, C. Willett. New York: Dover Publications, 1990. Reprint of 1937 edition.
• Everyday Dress of Rural America, 1783-1800: With Instructions and Patterns. Wright, Meredith. New York: Dover Publications, 1990.
• Lady's Guide to Plain Sewing, The. Kannik, Kathleen. Springfield, OH: Kannik's Korner, 1993.
  
• Lady's Stratagem, The: A Repository of 1820s Directions for the Toilet, Mantua-Making, Stay-Making, Millinery, and Etiquette. Grimble, Frances, trans. San Francisco, CA: Lavolta Press, 2009.
• Nineteenth-Century Costume in Detail. Johnston, Lucy. London: V&A Publishing, 2009.
• Period Costume for Stage and Screen: Patterns for Women's Dress, 1800-1909. Hunnisett, Jean. Studio City, CA: Players Press, Inc., 1991.
• Workwoman's Guide, The. By a Lady. Second edition. 1840. Accessed on Google Books.
  

Primary-ish Resources
I say "primary-ish" because I have no access currently to actual period garments. I drew instead on photographs and notation of garments for sale from well-known dealers, and comments from well-known costuming experts online.

• Ebay: Women's Vintage Clothing, Pre-1901. Examination of photographs of garments for sale. Sellers followed: "Time-Travelers", "Fiddybee".
• Vintage Textile: High-Style Vintage Clothing and 18th Century Costume. (Well-known dealer.)
• Your Wardrobe Unlock'd. Ask the Experts Column. (Response by Jenny Chancey, owner of Sense and Sensibility Patterns.)
• Sense and Sensibility Patterns forum. Comments of costume experts such as Suzi Clarke, Frances Grimble, and "Acacia".

I hope you'll find the tour as interesting as I found the construction process!

Three History Blogs to Put Fashion in Context

I certainly wish I knew her name instead of just her initials, BWS. I know she used to teach, and I know she desires that primary-source historical documents and art be made available to everyone. She has created four bloggy doors for us that open into the eyes and ears of the past:

• 17th Century American Women
• 18th Century American Women
• 19th Century American Women
• Early American Garden History

In the three blogs about American women, the author writes about how their lives changed over the centuries. She pulls from paintings, prints, drawings, daguerrotypes, photographs, maps, logs, letters, advertisements, journals, interviews.... She considers the lives of the wealthy, such as Martha Washington, and of escaped or former slaves, groups portraits by period or artist, talks of mantua makers and seamstresses, mothers and their children, publishers and postmistresses.

Photo: 1771 John Singleton Copley (1738-1815). Portrait of a Lady. Los Angeles County Museum, California. (Reproduction at 1st-art-gallery.com. Contact the museum for an accurate image.)

Some of the sources she uses are easily available, but many are not, and the way they are grouped is immensely valuable for putting period fashion and clothing and how people lived in their clothing into context. The blogs focusing on the 17th and 18th centuries are heavier on the writing than the blog about the 19th century.

Photo: a midcentury seamstress and her sewing machine. Photo from 19th Century American Women: A Museum in a Blog.

In the garden blog, we walk through the gardens they walked through, understand their planning and growth and have a sniff at the flowers.

Hairstyle Tutorial: A 1909 Edwardian Coiffure

At long last, a tutorial showing you how to create a popular 1909 hairstyle, a sort of modified "Grecian" look.

As always, please click on the images for larger-size versions

This coiffure's front silhouette is wide, with large-ish puffs to each side, rather flat on top. From the side it looks large too, because the back hair is gathered into a big coiled bun. The style came into being, so newspapers of the day reported, in response to the ever-increasing dimensions of fashionable hats. The wide, flat coiffure was necessary to balance the contraption on the top of one's head. The Pompadour hairstyle of the earlier Edwardian era simply didn't have the width needed, and the high top would be squashed by the hat.

Photo: the circa 1909 coiffure I wore to this summer's Edwardian picnic; focus on the hair, not my silly expression.

Below I offer both a tutorial for creating the hairstyle on your own, and afterwards some historical background on Edwardian hair trends, and leads to period articles that describe how to put this sort of coiffure-- and other popular styles -- together!



A Tutorial: Creating the Coiffure

I have bobbed hair with a bit of a shag cut and a few bangs on one side, so this tutorial assumes that you do not have lots of hair to work with. If you do, you can make your own coil of hair for the back section of the coiffure rather than use a hairpiece, and if you do not want too much puffiness at the sides, you will have enough hair to create the look without resorting to hair rats to hold out the sides. If you want a fuller style, long hair or not, you will need a pair of rats. Details on those below.

Photo: my model style, a very restrained version of the popular coiffure. From the Photo Detective site.

Materials

• Your hair, preferably at least a day after its last wash
• 25+ hairpins of the loose type, not the tightly closed type
• a pair of hair rats (how to make covered below)
• a clip-on ponytail (about a foot long) hairpiece in as close to your hair color as you can get
  
• 1-2 hair bands to hold a ponytail
• Tight-hold hairspray
• comb
• brush

Make the Hair Rats

Hair rats are pads over which the hair is smoothed and which give it a puffed-out silhouette. Rats have been used for ages; and were very popular during the Edwardian period, having been extensively used to make variations of the Pompadour coiffure.

Rats seem to look, typically, like a long sausage or a slightly flattened sausage.

You can make a rat with a hairnet into which you stuff pieces of stockings, but the more accurate method is to stuff the hairnet with well-washed combings from your own hair. Victorian and Edwardian women kept hair-receiver containers just for this purpose. It took me several months to get past the (to me, considerable) ick factor, until I realized that many hairpieces are made with real hair, and that this hair is mine, and well washed. After that, it took me about 4 months to save enough hair from my brush to make the ratts.

When you have collected three good hanks of hair the size of your fist or so, divide the amount in half, wash it very well, and dry it.

Then wad one half up and stuff it into a hairnet, wrapping the hairnet opening around it until it's all held tightly and won't fall out. Shape it into a slightly flattened sausage; mine came out about 6 inches long. Do the same with the other half of the hair. Voila: a pair of rats.

Assembling the Coiffure

Here below is an overview of the steps you will take to create the look:



So, here we go.

First, comb out your hair.



Then, pin one rat to the side of your head as in the image above. You will need five to eight pins: pin through the rat and deep into your hair, pinning all four sides of the rat with at least one pin each. Pin well, because you do not want the rat to slip.



Above is the rat pinned in place.



Pin your bangs or front-most hair towards the other side of your head to keep it out of the way.

You will next smooth sections of your side hair up and over the rat, tucking the ends into the top back of the rat. Take a section, as in the image above, and smooth it around and over the rat. Tuck the ends under the rat as well as you are above. Pin right there at the tuck to hold it; you may need more than one pin if your hair is slippery.



The image above shows two sections of hair that have been smoothed and pinned into place. You can see that the back of the rat has yet to be covered.

Spray a little hairspray on the results if you are happy with them, and if your hair seems to need it.



The image above shows one rat completely covered; over my forehead is the front hair pinned out of the way.



The image above shows the side hair tucked under the rat. You may have to look closely to see some of the pins.



Next, take the front hair that has been pinned out of the way, and coil it or tuck it as best you can into a sort of smooth puff that integrates with the rat. This is not necessarily easy on first try.

Now, place the second rat on the other side of your head, and repeat the process.



The above shows the resulting effect. Depending on how you set the rats, you can get a much wider effect. Here, I set them fairly far back, so the side puffs are quite restrained. For the picnic, I set them closer to the front and so had a much wider effect.



Now for the back hair. You may not have much left. I did not. I combed it and gathered it into a small ponytail on the back of my head and secured it with a hairband. This little lump will hold the ponytail hairpiece.



Comb out your ponytail hairpiece.

Open the jaw clip and clip it to your own ponytail. The hairpieces I have seen have great big, long jaws, so they create quite a large lump. This is good.

Then, coil the hairpiece ponytail around the jaw into a large bun, and pin. It may take five plus pins to do this, and that is fine. You want a good hold.

Next time I make this hairstyle, I will pin create my own ponytail farther up the back of the head and set the hairpiece farther up too, since most Grecian coiffures featured the bun set almost parallel with the back crown of the head...a better hat support.



Above you see the bun pinned in place.



Spray with hairspray to hold the coiffure in place.

Above you see the final coiffure from the side. Again, I would have set the bun up quite a bit higher, and on the day I went to the picnic, it WAS up higher. The image below shows how the more correct coiffure looked after a day at the picnic. A little messy, but intact!



1909 Coiffures: Some Historical Background and Leads to Period Styling Articles

"New Coiffure Is Flatter", read a Sunday headline in the New York Sun, in December, 1909. "The Exaggerated Pompadour No Longer Modish". This and similar headlines all year long all announced a great change in ladies hairstyles after the relatively long reign of the tall, poufy Gibson Girl pompadour with which we nowadays often associate most of the era. That coiffure and its variations were created by smoothing the hair over sausage-like rolls, rats or specialized supports made of wire or other materials.

Photo: The offending early Edwardian pompadour could actually be a sweet hairstyle, as this happy young lady shows. Do click the source link to see the full set of portraits of this delightful young person. (Hugh Mangum photographs: N489.)

Here is how the Sun put it in that somewhat snarkily penned article:

"[T]he average woman...is having much to try her patience, for a coiffure revolution has been sweeping over fashion's world, and last year's false hair is languishing in the bureau drawer or being made over at the hairdressers. For one blessing women may give thanks. The exaggerated pompadour and the innumerable boldly false puffs which have distorted the feminine head in recent seasons and have been raised to the nth degree by the type of girl or woman prone to extremes are likely to disappear from the horizon." The article goes on, "The sides are flattened, the top is flattened, and any protuberance that asserts itself is at the back..." ("New Coiffure is Flatter". The Sun, December 12, 1909.)

Newspapers agreed that new hats revolutionized -- and that is the term that was thrown about -- revolutionized the hair landscape.

"The new fashions are partly the result of the semiclassic influences in the present modes and partly a response to the demands of the new millinery. The mass of hair extending out from the back of the head above the neck is to fill in that great cavern which exists under the brims of many of the new hats.

The pompadour in a modified form still holds its popularity. It is much lower now in front than of old and very broad from side to side. The hats are also responsible for this development.

For faces of a certain type the hair is parted in the middle and brought back in a softly waving mass on each side to the heavy puffed rolls behind. The style is new and very popular..." ( "Fashion's Commands in Coiffures"; San Francisco Sunday Call, 1909.)

In general, it appears most 1909 styles (other than the modified pompadour, seem based on a pompadour that has been squashed and split. The hair is now parted, as described above, in the middle, "Madonna" style, and sometimes the side, and is waved out from the sides of the head, while the back hair is arranged in a large mass or masses, nearly parallel with the crown of the head.

Photo: a typical sample of the middle-parted style, which the site Photo Dectective, out of Britain, calls the "Hatpin hairstyle".

Some newspaper articles averred that rats or hair cushions to hold out the sides were quite out, replaced by freshly washed, fuzzy, hair backcombed to give the width, and wisps smoothed over for a finished look. Other articles suggested the familiar rats.

As one might expect, within the broad outlines of this silhouette, there were lots of variations. Articles commonly noted that ancient Greece provided the ultimate fashion source, and at this time high waists, slimming lines, and Greek decorative patterns were indeed high fashion. Styles with names like the Psyche knot featured bandeaux wrapped around the head and Grecian-styled combs and hair jewelry seemed quite popular.

Photo: "Greek Coiffure in Vogue", published in The Sun, describes modish new styles.

There were coiffures described as a "turban", constructed usually of long hairpiece switches that were wound round and round the head and in and out of combs, for a sleek wrapped result.

Other modish, fancy styles required the "flat as a pancake" top and wide sides, with a fall of puffs at the back, achieved sometimes with small pre-puffed hairpieces, sometimes with a woman's own hair waved using the Marcel process or "water-waved". Read about the latter, uncomfortable-sounding process on in the very fine article "The New 'Unstudied' Coiffure", from the The Morning Examiner, Utah, Sunday, April 4, 1909. Yet other styles, like the Billie Burke, were named for celebrities.

Particularly style-conscious writers tended to deride the old fashion, as fashionistas so often tend to do, while articles tuned more, dare I say, to reality, suggested modified styles. These articles are particularly fascinating as they address the needs of readers of all ages and features, suggesting options and using ordinary-looking women as models, something we rarely see today in the popular press, except in Good Housekeeping type magazines, perhaps, or articles specially self-consciously focusing on real women.

Photo: An illustrated article from The San Francisco Sunday Call showing modified styles for all kinds of women.

Resources

For this article I have focused mainly on two resources: daily newspapers and portraits. The articles in particular are lots of fun to read and some are tutorials for making particular styles! I also referred to a costume text for some sense of trends.

"Arranging the Hair: Widely Different Effects Produced by Different Coiffures"
New York Tribune (New York, NY), April 25, 1909.
Terrific article showing how different styles affect the look of the same model.

"Coiffure Styles Show Great Changes".
The Paducah Evening Sun, march 17, 1909.
Good overview.

Costume in Detail: 1730-1930. By Nancy Bradfield. Great Britain, Eric Dobby Pulishing, 1968.
In this book Nancy includes sketches from photos and newspapers and you can watch trends in clothing and hairstyles go by.

"Fashion's Commands in Coiffures".
The San Francisco Call, March 28, 1909.
Excellent article describes modified styles for all ages and features, with tips on achieving them.

"Greek Coiffure in Vogue"
The Sun. (New York, NY), February 21, 1909

Hugh Mangum Photographs, (ca. 1890)-1922.
Duke University.
Portrait proofs, group portraits, and a few landscapes. Terrific resource for understanding small-town America as represented in North Carolina. However, the photos aren't dated, so you have to work with the costume details and hairstyle details to get a good sense.

"New Coiffure is Flatter"
The Sun (New York, NY), December 12, 1909.
A treat to read, if snarky.

"The New 'Unstudied' Coiffure", from the The Morning Examiner, Utah, Sunday, April 4, 1909.
The Morning Examiner (Ogden, UT), April 4, 1909.
Unstudied? It takes trip to the hairdresser to do most of this work...

"A Plain Coiffure"
The Citizen, (Berea, KY), December 2, 1909
A tutorial for a coiffure thatis quite doable!

Photo Detective: Facts from British family Photographs, 1901 to 1953.
British website. Helpful for photo dating. It is unclear whether the names the author gave the hairstyles are his own names or were current in Britain at the time.

"Psyche Coiffure"
The Citizen (Berea, KY), October 28, 1909.
A tutorial! You will need hair rats and so on, but what a nice effect!

Edited to add, 01/20/2014
From a year earlier, and a French magazine, but clearly showing the trends to come Stateside:
"Nouveau Genres de Coiffure". Le Miroir des Modes, 1908.  Translated from French. English title New Types of Coiffures for Ladies and Young Girls. On the blog A Most Beguiling Accomplishment, by Cassidy.

Midsummer Scenes

Midsummer sings the song of water, filling wheelbarrows, falling from watering cans, falling in sheets from the sky, falling into the sink to clean dirty faces.

We explore the water in a wheelbarrow Mama has filled for us.



We fill our watering cans, and empty them on thirsty plants, in buckets, on the cement, anywhere that seems to need it. Mama tied the hose to the wheelbarrow to discourage disputes over who gets to control it, and encouraged sharing and taking turns. It worked pretty well for us: sharing is not always easy but we like to take care of each other.



Mamaw lets us water her flowers with big watering cans out at the farm. We go back and forth to the pump with Mama. The flowers look thirsty even though we hear Mama and Mamaw compare notes on rainfall...over four inches in a week and a half!



On days that threaten rain we draw shapes in pudding and Brittany teaches us alphabet letters in it. Who knew you could eat what you learn? Then it's off to the sink to de-stick-ify...



So that is a taste of midsummer. Watery or pudding-y, it's a good time to be two.

A Hard Day's Washing...Then Counting Your Blessings

Amy of A Day in 1862 found a a receipt for washing clothes in a scrap book and copied it for us. It's titled "Warshing Clothes" and it begins...

"Build fire in backyard to heat kettle of rain water.

Set tubs so smoke wont blow in eyes if wind is pert.

Shave one hole cake of lie soap in boilin water.

Sort things, make 3 piles:..."

Do read the rest...you sure get an interesting sense of what it was like to wash clothes, and to reflect on it afterwards.

Photo: Girls in a tenement on laundry day. An advertisement for Kirkman's Borax soap, a replacement for homemade lye soap. Image courtesy The Library of Congress; LC-USZ62-59211.

Read the post >

Regency Fichus: More than Just Squares of Fabric

If you watch films set in the Regency era, like the 1995 Sense and Sensibility film, you might get the impression that women wore little plain squares or triangles of lawn to fill in the necklines of their low-cut, high-waisted dresses, or nothing at all. The little triangle is commonly known today as a fichu and seems to most filmmakers rather unimportant.

Note: Click on the photos to see larger versions of them. The photos of the fichu in my collection are especially big.

Photo 1: My antique fichu. It is made of Limerick lace and dates to between 1820 and 1835. More details below!

Photo 2: triangular fichu of white mull with buttonholed eyelets worked around the zigzag edge of the upper triangular sections and ruffle applied to lower section. Three-piece made with the large ruffled triangle forming the under section. Length (approx.): 91 in. (231.1 cm). Gift of Miss Amy M. Pleadwell, 1959 (C.I.59.17). Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Perhaps since then you have gotten the idea that chemisettes are the more correct thing to wear, whether plain or tucked or ruffled or ruffed. Yes, chemisettes were very common indeed, if paintings and miniatures and fashion plates and literature are any guide, especially for wear during the day.

Yet there was a world of fichus out there, too! Square-shaped, triangular, rounded, or long and narrow, a host of shapes, in lawn, yes, but often in net, too, and other fabrics. And decorative? Highly. Embroidery classical or Eastern, sparse or almost Baroque in its richness, fabric ruffled, layered, scalloped, ruched.

Photo 3: Long, narrow fichu. 1799–1821, European. [no medium available]; [no dimensions available]. Gift of Mr. Lee Simonson, 1939 (C.I.39.13.95). Metropolitan Museum of Art. Based on the photograph, the base of this fichu is of either a very sheer fabric or of net. It is embellished with ruching of more opaque-ish fabric.

Fichus, popular in the 18th century (and maybe before: I simply haven't read), carried on in popularity, more or less, right through the Regency, the Romantic era, the mid-century, the high-Victorian era, and to some degree in the Edwardian era, before rather falling away to become a quaint relic. Each era's fichus are somewhat unique in design, their shapes and embellishments matching the prevailing fashions.

Photo 4: Fichu, 1820-1839. Sheer white cotton with white cotton dot embroidery: large square to be folded diagonally; deep ruffle along two edges extending in pointed ends beyond square to form ties. Length: 35 in. (88.9 cm) Width: 35 in. (88.9 cm). Gift of Mrs. Donald P. Spence, 1989 (1989.166). Metropolitan Museum of Art

Making a Regency Fichu That's More than a Square: A Few Suggestions

The below is not an exact how-to for a particular fichu style, but more a listing of ideas and sources. Before I found my antique fichu last week, I was well on my way to designing my own based on a remnant of fine embroidered fabric salvaged from a heavily damaged garment.

Research
The first step is to look at pictures. Paintings and portraits give you an idea of how women wore them, but rarely how they were shaped. Try searching the Web for paintings and drawings by Ingres for example, have a look at the paintings and plates in La Couturiere Parisienne and see The Sangamon Settler blog for a series of 1820s portraits. Fashion plates mostly do not show shape details, just suggest them. Therefore, your best bet if you don't have a museum collection near you is to go looking within online museum collections.

Photo 5: Detail of fichu in photo 3.

The Metropolitan Museum proved to be my best source, and that is where all of the photos in this post of fichus other than my example hail from. The Powerhouse Museum also has some online, and I imagine the Victoria and Albert does, too. A simple search using the word "fichu" will work.

Sadly, not all items in any online collections are dated or give dimensions, but enough do to give you a pretty wide variety of shapes and embellishments to work from. While I was looking at examples online, I paid very close attention to observing embroidery and kinds of embellishment, and tried to get a sense of what styles went in and out of fashion. For example, very early Regency fichus, like early Regency dresses, seem to feature two-dimensional embellishment, while the later Regency fichus, like the dresses they adorned, were more shaped and beruffled. Embroidery designs morphed too, from severe classical effects with the formal feel of an Adam fireplace embellishment, or clean, almost wiry, airy designs, to the more exuberant, rounded, fluffy shapes that marked the advent of the Romantic era. East Indian designs also appear.

Materials
Cotton or silk net (you can get it today from Judith Hats and Millinery Supplies, and I have seen it on Ebay as an import item, but have never bought from those sellers) was a common base for fichus, as you can see.

Dharma Trading carries lawns and gauzes, while Farmhouse Fabrics carries other sheers. Some silk sellers on Ebay and some importers appear to carry fine sheer fabrics, but I have not ordered from any to date.

Shapes and Designs

• You can riff off the Metropolitan Museum example by cutting an oval piece of net, hemming it, and then hand-sewing ruches made of lawn, or batiste, or silk gauze to it. For 1820s, this sort of decoration fits right in.

• You could use plain net for the center portion of your fichu and then whip antique net lace yardage around the perimeter. Scraps and small yardage of net lace come up all the time (Mmmoonchild, a seller on Ebay, is a good source). Do your design research first, though, and look at as many Regency-era examples in museum collections as possible, so that you don't pick a lace that has an obviously mid- or late-Victorian feel about it. I'd avoid modern net lace: the patterns seem wrong to me and usually they are made of synthetics.

• If you have patience, you can use floss or coarse thread and embroider the net. These are known as embroidered laces, and while not true laces, they sure look like it. Therese De Dillmont's Encyclopedia of Needlework (pp. 598-621) covers this branch of needlework and includes some designs that could even be simplified further. (Note: if you're at all interested in historical needlework, this book is a treasure.) You could even limit your design to a series of small dots, placed in patterns! Spotted net.... Frances Grimble's The Lady's Stratagem also contains needlework patterns that suit the era. Some of the museum items offer detailed views, too.

Photo 6: Large triangular fichu of ivory mull embroidered along two short sides with stylized floral garland in white, with drawnwork centers. Length at CB: 37 in. (94 cm). Purchase, Irene Lewisohn Bequest, 1976 (1976.60.11). Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Whether you use net or lawn or gauze or another appropriate sheer fabric, you can cut your fichu in a variety of shapes. The pictures above give you some options, and Frances Grimble's The Lady's Stratagem has quite a number of pages devoted to making shaped fichus. Some of them work best for the late Regency and Romantic eras, but some patterns and ideas will work for earlier decades, too.

Photo 7: detail from photo 5.

Later Fichus
From mid-century on, fichus are a staple item described in women's magazines. Sometimes engravings portray the latest fashion so that the smart woman can spot the right one in the shops, and sometimes directions were given for making them. Have a look at the sites listed on my Fashion Plate and Photo Resources page. You'll find Harper's Bazar and the Peterson's, Godey's, Paris Modes, and more. A little patient viewing should turn up all kinds of later fichus.

My Antique Limerick Lace Fichu

Last week I purchased a net lace fichu (see photo 1) from Pieces of History. It dates to between 1820 and 1835 and is made of Limerick lace.

The fichu is some 5 inches wide and about 44 inches long. It is made of two panels, each 22 inches in length, joined at an angle at the center. If you look on the reverse, you can see that the lace is rather roughly sewn.

Photo 8: Detail of one end of my fichu.

Each panel is made of a long piece of net in two grades of holes...large in the central area, and edged on one long side with an approximately one-inch band of very fine-holed net. The net appears to have been manufactured this way. On the other long side and the ends just strips of the edging have been cut out and somewhat roughly sewn to the central panel, while the corners are mitered, the pieces being joined with overcast stitches. However messily the joins have been made, the thread used is so terrifically fine and the small net so small-holed that you can barely tell how it is constructed and at a few inches distance cannot tell the right side from the wrong side, except for the center join of the two panels.

Limerick lace is not a true lace at all, being actually embroidery upon net, either tambour or needlerun embroidery. My example is clearly made by needle. Fairly fine thread is wound around, satin-stitch-like, multiple holes in the netting to create small circles, and around single holes to form lines. Filling stitches of a type I cannot identify fill leaf shapes. The Therese de Dillmont book mentioned above describes the process.

Photo 9: detail of back side of my fichu, showing central join of the two panels.

This fichu's lace is quite provincial and light-hearted compared to other, high-style examples of Limerick lace. Higher-style pieces feature far more intricately sewn patterns of acanthus and other floral elements.

Finding an Antique Fichu of Your Own

Amtique fichus are common in museum collections and turn up regularly in antique lace dealers' holdings (some dealers are listed under Sewing and Dress Resources in the links at left) and on Ebay. They can be reasonably priced, although early nineteenth century pieces tend to be pricey unless heavily damaged or very simple. If you are wanting a real fichu to set off a very special Regency dress, you might consider looking for an antique one (searching via the word "fichu" will do nicely). Not that I'd wear a museum-quality piece, but there are some out there that can be worn, with care. I saw several other ladies at last weekend's Jane Austen Festival in Louisville also sporting the real thing.

If your pocketbook is limited, you might consider rescuing a heavily damaged piece, and repairing it carefully. The Therese de Dillmont book details a method of darning holes in net -- with the darned section featuring the same honeycomb pattern.

If you intend to wear your fichu for an outdoor event or one in which your clothing might risk damage, I'd never suggest wearing the real thing, for in your effort to recall a time now passed, you risk damaging or destroying an artifact that has somehow survived.

Fashions on Film, 1895-1920, from the Huntley Film Archives

The Huntley Film Archives has quite a large collection of film clips featuring fashions from the Gay Nineties, Edwardian, teens and twenties. They have put some of the better ones together into a single film titled "Fashions 1895-1920".

Photo: Clip showing early teens ensembles. Look at the lady with the tied-back skirt! Lovely, but probably hard to wear.

Among the clips:

• People on their way to and from events.
• Small groups of women who appear to be showing off Titanic-era ensembles.
• Mincing along in hobble skirts! My goodness, did they take small steps!
• Hairstyle fashions, with the models turning around for the camera.
• Silent-screen stars.
• Twenties beauty contests.
• Clips from silent films.
  

While some of the clips don't show the fashions close up, and are better for seeing how people moved in their clothes and opened and closed parasols, for example -- important if you are developing an impression -- some of the Titanic-era clips are very clear. There is one lady hobbled silk dress in particular that lots of us will stop the film for, just to see details.

And now, the film:

What We Learned from Our Edwardian Picnic

How could that picnic last Saturday be described any better than this? My friend Polly wrote, "It was one of those days that you would just like to bottle and open up when you need a good dose of bliss!" 

Yes, and a lesson, too, in the art of grace when stepping on uneven ground, when wilting under 2:00 p.m. sunlight on a cloudless June day in Kentucky, about the perils of pavement, and how deportment, that old, old word, and sensible clothing can keep one cool, comfortable, and in a blissy place. Funny that in the video I have from that day, I am striding like I normally do :} 

How The Lesson Actually Started Before the Picnic, or Yes, You Do Need A Maid to Dress 

The boys helping Mama to bake. I had to provide them
 with their own flour and bowls and spoons
 because each boy wanted to experiment on his own.

Morning dawns, and with it two small boys ready for fun and -- action. Daddy needs sleep. But the scones aren't made, nor the deviled eggs, either, the table linens aren't packed, and I am not dressed. 

What to do? Have the twins help cook, of course, and beg for Daddy's help afterwards. So we baked and cooked: the boys cracked eggs and stirred flour, and tried to check the oven (not!) and we made a grand mess, and cleaned it up, since the twins like dustpans and brushes, bless them.  

That left me an hour to get ready, and I would have made it, except that I got stuck halfway in and halfway out of my dress. 

As John Ridd might have said in Lorna Doone, "it happened in this wise". The Order of Putting on the Ensemble Edwardian ensembles consisted of layers, some meant mostly for fashion, some quite sensible. A newspaper article, titled "Garden Party Frocks of Lace and Embroidery" is a must-read how-to. Published in the Odgen Standard newspaper in summer 1909, it tells us all about what should be worn, and how it should look! For example, petticoats should be "raglike", made of batiste and soft, thin materials, and the dresses "limp". Hips should not be in evidence. Plus, there is much, much more detail. What a treasure! 

Ordinarily, the first layer consisted of the chemise and drawers, or, alternatively, a set of "combinations" consisting of a camisole and drawers in one. By this time drawers were not especially baggy, because skirts were becoming fitted at the hip and narrow skirts were making an entrance. (Have a look at period dressmaking manuals with drafts between say, 1906 and 1914 and at fashion articles and you will see this shift.) 

After this you put on your hose and shoes or boots. (Your corset, being longish and stiff at this period, prevented bending at the waist.)

Then, on would go the corset, which at this date was still the straight-fronted corset that set women leaning forward, supposedly for health.

Over that, the corset cover, often, to protect the corset from perspiration, or to add warmth, depending on the season, and to keep dye from a non-colorfast dress fabric. Very sensible. We wear camisoles today similar reasons (excepting the dye bit), but why aren't cotton ones popular in the United States? The microfiber ones look terrific but do not breathe, with predictable results.

Then the petticoat. At this date, depending on the line of your dress, it could be much like our modern straight slip, only long...no flounces, made of silk, and fitting closely over the waist and hips to remove bulk. If your dress skirt had a little flare, it might still include a flounce atop the basic slip, and that flounce could be highly decorated.

Then your dress, or slip plus dress.

Then your hat, gloves, jewelry, and any outerwear. I wore normal underthings, excepting the corset cover and petticoat. So far I had gotten through putting on the petticoat. 

About Petticoats: Which One for Which Dress? A Digression

The period petticoat I wore. In the photo, 

it's placed atop the dress so you can see the lines and length.

Since my dress has a skirt with a small train and just a little bit of flare, and since it has some weight to it, I chose an actual period flounced petticoat in very light batiste. The petticoat's bottom has a small frill, and some 10" up a flounce is attached. You can see the lovely insertion lace and tucking and the whitework lace banding that covers the seam between petticoat proper and the flounce. 

In the photo I have set it atop the dress so you can see that it is a proper length, about an inch above the bottom of the skirt, so that the petticoat will not show below the skirt hem. Those of you who recall years before, say, 1990, when many skirts were unlined and slips were still normal, will remember the embarrassment of an associate whispering to you "your slip is showing" and your stealthy movements to adjust it back into invisibility. 

Photo: Polly under the rose arbor. Note how streamlined her skirt is.

 Had she worn a flounced petticoat, it would have fluffed out too much at the hem.

Had my skirt been of seersucker, or some other light fabric, I might have chosen a plain petticoat sans flounce, if I did not want too much pouf. This was the case for my friend Polly, whose seersucker skirt lost its drape and became stiff when worn with a flounced one. She wore a period plain muslin petticoat, with scalloped hem.

I might have worn a princess slip, flounced or unflounced as the dress line above demanded, instead of the corset cover and petticoat combination and had I owned one, I would have. It might have prevented what I describe below. Do read the "Garden Party Frocks" article for superb details! 

Back to Getting Stuck 

All those hooks and eyes!

I had tied the strings on the petticoat, and the strings on the back-closing corset cover (a 1909 pattern made in batiste from Frances Grimble's Edwardian Modiste). All behind my back and four strings total. Then I stepped into the dress, and started closing the snaps and hooks and eyes, working from the bottom up. As you may have read, there are many, many of them, 3/4" apart, all the way up. 

With great effort and perhaps five minutes (an eternity to make your arms ache) I managed to complete all the closures. Any higher a neckline and I'd have needed help. 

Then the sad discovery that the petticoat was too loose on the waist. Oh, no. After lifting the skirt and trying to retie it, I untied the corset cover strings by mistake, then lost a string somehow in all that fabric. 

Now both undergarments were loose. Polly was to arrive in five. 

Nothing for it but to start unhooking. This went more slowly, since hooks and eyes are meant to stay closed. Halfway down, and I reached a sticking point. Everything was tangled up. Perhaps a hook was stuck to some lace. You can't just yank because the lace will tear, or the fabric, or both. 

At this point Polly arrived, I slipped behind the front door to let her in, and in between a few fits of giggles we sorted things out. Because we were both in a hurry, pictures show that one hook is off mark so that the waistline shifts, and the corset cover somehow, despite having wide-set shoulder straps, was showing in the back neckline. In 1909, it'd have mattered. In our day, not an issue, at least for us. 

So yes, having a ladies' maid or sister, or mother, or husband, or daughter, to help you get into your more complicated outfits was most useful. No wonder that typists and other business workers in the day made menswear-inspired skirt and front-buttoning blouses popular. 

The Arts of Walking and Moving and Keeping the Skirt Clean

The Delineator published an illustrated article on how to 

handle a long skirt gracefully in 1908. 

See Further Resources section below.

  

During the picnic most of us comment repeatedly about how slowly we were moving. In the morning the air was crisp, so we couldn't blame heat then. No, it was the long skirts.  When we walked in our long skirts, and especially the three of us who wore skirts with trains, the extra fabric forced us to slow down some, aware as we were of the possibility of tripping or of falling into a dip or hole in the grass or a crack between bricks on a pathway. 

The dirt and oil on the train of my skirt, both underside and on top!

When you walk in a long skirt with some flare to it, the fabric moves forward with your legs, covering your feet. You cannot always see where you are going! 

Lifting picnic baskets and linens to take them to and from our picnic site took longer, too...because one hand is partly encumbered because you must hold your train. 

For grace, you might let your train trail behind you on clean grass, but I made the mistake -- once -- of letting it trail on pavement. Oh no! It draggled in oil from cars. For the rest of the day I was intermittently aware that the back of my dress was dirty. Sigh. Cleaning that off will be a real challenge. 

Horse manure and mud would have been easier to clean off, truly. Rebecca and Polly discovered similar dirt on their trained skirts.  What a reminder of what it was like for women to have to clean their skirts and dresses after they wore them, and how time-consuming that could be! No wonder that fashions for wearing trained skirts on the street in the early Edwardian period (and at others) were derided. The dirt looks disgusting and causes so much extra work. Read all about wash day and washing equipment in the Encyclopædia of Household Economy, published in 1903. 

Handling the Heat

We all noticed something interesting: while we did become somewhat warm if we stood in the sunshine, those of us who wore the linen or seersucker outfits remained quite comfortable. Linen and cotton breathe well, and the light colors, especially the white on my dress, reflect the sun. Further, at least in my case, the petticoat underneath trapped air, keeping everything loose about me...no tight clothing to make one feel sticky and hot! The batiste camisole picked up any perspiration and wicked it away from me. 

Finally, like people of old, we kept to the shade, moved slowly, and Paula, smart lady, brought a parasol. While the late spring sun did become quite hot, we had our cool drinks, and all in all, were remarkably comfortable, while I noted that some other folks at the house that day looked somewhat wilted and bothered. 

Further Resources

A household laundry setup, 1906.

 "Chapter Five: In the Laundry". In Encyclopædia of Household Economy. Holt, Emily. New York: McClure, Phillips & Co., 1903. On Google Books. 

Everyday fashions, 1909-1920, as pictured in Sears catalogs. Olian, JoAnne. Courier Dover Publications, 1995. (In contrast the New York Times articles, see the wider-skirted fashions of Sears.)  

"Garden Party Frocks of Lace and Embroidery: Airy Fabrics Essential for Midsummer Wear - Raglike Petticoats Beneath Limp Frocks - The Follow Me Shoulder Knot - Plumed Hats and Embroidered Gloves". The Ogden Standard, May 29, 1909. In Library of Congress Chronicling America site. (Must read!) 

"High-waisted skirt" section of "The Shoulder Scarf of Our Grandmothers Once More in Great Popular Demand for Evening Wear". NYT, January 10, 1909. 

"Hints for the Home Dressmaker: Attractive Summer Clothes for the Middle Aged Woman." San Francisco Chronicle. June 27, 1909. (Features non-high-style clothes: note the lack of the high-fashion high-waisted skirt.) 

"Of Summer Dress: The Things to Make at Home and the Things to Buy." The Sun, June 13, 1909. 

"WHAT THE WELL-DRESSED WOMEN ARE WEARING; Appropriate Gowns For Travel -- Stripes and Checks Popular for the Summer Months -- Blouses to be Worn. Short Jackets Not Much in Favor This Season Because It Is Becoming to Few Figures." Rittenhouse, Anne. NYT, July 18, 1909. (Remember that this is a look at high fashion, whatever the text may say.) 

"What to Do with a Long Skirt". On Vintage Connection site. (All about how to move and walk in a long skirt.)

The Ladies' Historical Tea Society Edwardian Picnic at White Hall

What a day. What a wonderful, happy day. Our tea society met at the home of Cassius Clay, White Hall, at 11:00 in the morning for a relaxed picnic. It was quiet there and peace-filled, shaded by mature trees, and and we overlooked the mansion and its lawns, the whole of that surrounded by fields, some of new-mown hay all carefully baled into giant cylinders, some of cattle grazing and occasionally lowing, their background the first cries of this season's crickets. The morning air was cool and dry and what old novels called a zephyr breeze breathed over us now and then.

Our director Rebecca Chamberlain wrote about the picnic in our blog, the Ladies' Historical Tea Society, so she shall tell the main story.

Photo: Rebecca and Natalie look out over the fields, with Cassius Clay's White Hall behind. As always, click on the photos to see larger versions.

Here are a few more pictures of the outing:


Polly and Rebecca set up the picnic things. Both wore skirt and waist ensembles, and Polly wore a seaside-style hat that I had created in 2007, large-brimmed, and ruched on top and throughout the underside, to which she added veiling around the crown and trailing down the back. The additions turned it from a hat to a Hat and she looked marvelous in it. Rebecca is wearing a country hat, simply trimming with ribbon to suit her informal waist and skirt.


Taking a stroll before we sit down to eat.

Polly and I made her skirt from navy and white seersucker (from Denver Fabrics); it features the shortest of trains and is meant for high-summer wear. Her petticoat, properly unseen here, is simple and sturdy and unflounced, but trimmed at bottom with scalloping: perfect to go with a breezy skirt. She paired the skirt with a long-sleeved, high-necked blouse trimmed with Cluny lace.

Rebecca wears a skirt I made for her, of willow-colored linen (from the Fabric-Store.com). It is set at shin level with a band of antique chunky Cluny lace insertion I found in a local antiques store, a good fit with the medium-weight linen weave. It features a train some 6-8 inches long. It suited her so well! She wears a turn-collared lace-trimmed informal blouse and she has rolled up the sleeves, something we have seen in period picnic pictures that I covered in a previous post.


Here we have just sat down for lunch.


Picture-taking in front of the conservatory: Polly and Rebecca have broken down into giggles.


Paula seeks a little rest in the formal garden. She was smart to bring a parasol. The rest of us forgot ours. She wears a teens-era style ensemble of straight black skirt, boots, and fluffy blouse. The sleeves do hark to the early Edwardian era, but we were not attempting period-correctness, only period-inspired fun.


Darleen under White Hall's double rose arbor. She also channeled the teens. She chose to leave her blouse untucked and peplumed for an informal look, and chose a black straight skirt and ankle boots to go with it. Her hat is mushroom shaped and surrounded with flowers: it was very successful and looked terrific. Mushroom hats were a hat phase then as now.

Next posts: the promised remarks on how we reacted to wearing period inspired clothes, plus the rest of my ensemble...the underthings, hat trimming, an a hairstyle tutorial. These posts may take some time to put together.