Catching up with Fall makes

 Oh yikes, the year continues to get away from me! Here's a few projects I managed from late summer to fall... I know only a few people are still reading this (and I love you for it) but I think blogging is really valuable for cataloging one's own projects and for self-reflection... I use it very differently from the (increasingly undesirable) Instagram.

 

 

The release of the Burnley & Trowbridge wrapping gown pattern was exciting to me, so around the 4th of July I pulled out a firecracker red taffeta from my stash and cut into it.

 

Very proud of how my stitching has changed over the past 10 years... When I first started, I'd have never managed to make teeny tiny nearly-invisible stitches like this.

 

 

While I'll probably never end up at a 'Banyan Party' in some remote French chateau (one can dream) at least I'd be prepared! It may come in handy some day for a dressing demonstration or a historic sleepover. Very simple project, and it came together gratifyingly quickly.

 

 

Since I'm spending a LOT more time down at Fort de Chartres, manning their Trading Post some weekends, I was getting tired of my usual rotation of just a couple different caps, so I pulled together a new one from the Virgil's Fine Goods "Bess" pattern. I think it's so cute and flattering (and great for hiding uncooperative hair).

 

 

In a lot of ways I'm still a sewing amateur, completely self-taught, so this was my first time doing gathered whip-stitches and I must say, once I wrapped my head around it, the technique was a game changer. 

 

Then I had a bit of a fail when it came to a long-desired project... it ended up being one of those dream projects that you just sit and mull over for too long, are bored while doing it, and then dissatisfied with the end result, haha.

 

I've always liked this portrait of Marie Antoinette; you almost never see her in green (and come to think of it, there's not a lot of 18thc portraits of women in dark green gowns, I'm not sure why). But I had spotted the perfect taffeta for it, a very changeable shot silk of dark green with a pink undertone. Perfect, I thought, I even have the lace!

 

But by time I got it assembled (I turned it into a jacket/petticoat ensemble for more versatility, since you can't see below the waist in the portrait)  I was just kind of over it. Probably photographing late at night, with hair I was already annoyed with, didn't help.

 

 

 

When I ran it through a 'painting' app I could see there were ways I could have edited it to make it more similar, like adding more paper flowers in a more uniform, closely-spaced pattern, but it all just felt too frilly and annoying at this point. So far I've taken all the lace and flowers off, and I'll be doing a nice self-trim with my leftover fabric. I'm still in love with the taffeta, probably one of the prettiest I've ever seen in person, so it won't go to waste. 

 

 

 

 

Next up in the project list was editing a very poorly-made shortgown from years ago. For one thing, I can't document any shortgowns in this part of New France... I keep reading that they were a predominantly New England garment. Jackets, on the other hand, are quite believable. So I picked apart the shortgown, scrounged up whatever scraps I had of the fabric (from the infamous 'Waverly Felicite curtain-along' projects of blogging yesteryear), ironed it all, and my helpful patternweight assisted me in playing grownup pattern Tetris.

 

 

(Do we have enough, or don't we? Always a worrying moment)

 

I also quickly discovered that there are still panels of this available on Amazon for $20 so I picked one up, but lo and behold, it's a slightly less beige, more ivory colorway! I wasn't about to waste the opportunity though, so the panel became a petticoat.

 

I had enough left from the panel leftovers to make robings and cuffs for the little jacket, but there is a definite color difference that you can spot if you know about it....I kind of like it, since piecing and reuse was so prevalent in the Georgian era. I'm betting with successive washings, the color difference will end up being less noticeable with fabric fade.

 

 

(quite obvious from the back, for sure)

 

 

Less obvious with the distraction of accessories like my new black silk apron and satin mitts!

 

 

Overall I think it'll be a very serviceable addition to my rotation of outfits for the Fort. Printed 'Indienne' cottons were frequently listed in our 18thc inventories, so I love celebrating that local bit of riotous color. 

There, now I think I'm caught up with most of my recent projects, but I have two more posts to make before the end of the year: one on the 18thc textiles and garments from a recent museum exhibition specifically featuring stunning printed fabrics from India, and some local historical holiday excursions with a new friend!

If you stuck with it this far, thanks for reading :)

 

 

 

Volunteering at an 18th century French fort!

 So as crummy as the first half of my year was with losing two beloved pets, a delightful new opportunity has opened up for me and I'm enjoying it tremendously. Fort de Chartres, the big French stone fort about half an hour from me, has been looking for volunteers so that it can open its little trading post at regular times when the talented and incredibly knowledgeable Fort gardener Carol (see the Jardin Potager site for her well-researched work) is around, or the Les Amis du Fort de Chartres is having a meeting, and/or the gun club is having a shoot in back of the fort.   

 

Me with my basket of sewing... I got most of my Burnley & Trowbridge wrapping gown sewn on that day! You can see the bake oven under the canopy in back.

I first got to volunteer in the Trading Post during the summer Rendezvous, and I jumped at the chance, because as much as I like setting up camp and sitting under the fly watching the passers-by watching us, it's not the best opportunity for talking history to people. Most visitors are a bit wary of interrupting people in the camps and it's more of a tourist viewing experience than a history-learning opportunity (...plus uh some of the 18thc 'history' being portrayed is a bit dubious in some camps... I see you, flour sack 'blouses' and cabbage-rose Victorian skirts 😂).  

 I've read a LOT about the local French colonial history, and understand some of the nuance and complex interplay between the French colonists, the local Native tribes (the more settled tribes were the Metchigamea with a village very close by, the Tamaroa, the Kaskaskia, and the Cahokia peoples, but there were others who would sweep in to war with and raid the settled tribes), and the enslaved Africans brought by the French. But I'm not comfortable calling myself a full-fledged interpreter just yet, and am still learning from people who have been doing it for a while. I don't want to cultivate a single persona at the moment -- although I hope to pursue something along the lines of one of the few women who made it here from France -- most of the women married by the male French settlers were either Native or were hardy French-Canadian women who had a generation or two of the New World underneath them.

So in that regard, staffing the Trading Post is ideal for me, because I can share some of what I know, but being in a building that sells modern coffee mugs and t-shirts with pictures of the Fort on it, nobody's going to mistake me for some kind of expert, haha! The Trading Post is also not an original historic building -- the buying and selling would have been done out of one of the governmental structures on the property: large, long stone buildings that also housed offices, soldiers' barracks, grain and goods storage, and more.

But I so enjoy having the chance to dress up and go down with a purpose. It doesn't hurt that the Trading Post has air-conditioning because it is extreeemely muggy down at the Fort when hot, since it's in the rich 'American Bottom' area, near the Mississippi River, bounded by tall bluffs on either side (and no breeze, like, ever).

 

Always excited to get in the car and drive down the hill to the Fort

 

 

Kinda looks like I'm outside an 18thc tavern, but no such luck, just my workplace for the day, haha.

 

Volunteering with Keni, a sweet lady with Friends of the Fort

 

 

I've been kind of wearing stuff I already had, but I wanted a cuter cap, so I made the JP Ryan Dormeuse in cotton (I have a fancy sheer one in silk) and it's been serving me well.

For Rendezvous, I did bust out the cotton sacque for the first time in a couple of years, and it was so sunshiney-looking that people loved it!

Never quite ready to go home at the end of the day... these are the times I wish I could just stay in 18thc clothing for the whole week.

 

 

Oh! I forgot! I did make the shoes above. Knowing I might need to be on my feet all day, and having a bad ankle and bad knees, I wanted some super flat, super comfy, 18thc-passing shoes. All I had to do was cut out uppers (from black velvet, in this case) with latchets that would work with shoe buckles, and I sewed them onto the all-fabric-upper of some Target memory-foam flats. They have been great so far and I wish I'd bought a couple more pairs so I could make more cloth shoes!

 

The original shoe:

 

I used the sturdy wool from my 1890s jacket to back the latchets and give them some stiffness

Eventually I swapped these buckles out for some non-bedazzled plainer silver buckles, but you get the idea. Everything's bound with black grosgrain ribbon, which works out great for going around curves. Very comfortable, very easy, only took me parts of a weekend, really!
 

Rendezvous 2021

 Generally the Rendezvous at Fort de Chartres is held in June, but because of the pandemic it got pushed back to September. I was so ready to have a nice outdoor event and while the weekend temperature was still pretty toasty in the mid to upper 80s (F), the humidity wasn't as oppressive as it usually is at the June event. 

Thanks to the old 'pandemic pounds' (and the nagging feeling of boredom with my past lower-class wardrobe) I found myself eager to make a couple of looser, no-frills cotton jackets with fabric from my stash.

Cotton was a fairly frequently named fabric in local inventories, particularly in women's gowns of indienne, vibrantly floral-printed. As New Orleans stood just a jaunt down the Mississippi River, which was regularly sailed by the trappers and merchants of the area to sell furs and grain, nice new goods also made their way back up to the Kaskaskia/Prairie du Rocher/Cahokia corridor.

Neither of the prints I used are historical reproductions to my knowledge, but they seemed semi-plausible based on many sample books and resources I've looked at, including the fascinating extra photos from the London Foundling Hospital that Angela of Burnley & Trowbridge was able to show us only during an in-person powerpoint at Costume College...so many small prints and geometric patterns that we wouldn't think of as being common in the 18thc.

I chose an indigo floral and geometric print for the first one, and assembled it from the trusty J.P. Ryan 'jacket pack' (what a gift that keeps on giving, lol).

 

 

 

 

You can see it's fairly basic -- although I wore stays with it, I wasn't intending it to be anything more exciting than a working-woman's nicest jacket. 

 

 

 I paired it with a basic cap, B&T handkerchief, a bibbed apron (common for French women, not so much for an English/American impression), and my new American Duchess Sophie mules. My set of household keys and pincushion are hanging a bit too low for practicality but I had just climbed out of the back of my friend's van where she had shut and locked her keys in the front, hence the bow for MY keys had come untied in the mad scramble, haha.

 

 

 

All rumpled up in back from Operation Key Rescue, but having a whale of a time! My apron probably should be a bit shorter than my petticoats, but I wasn't about to last-minute hem it, BECAUSE...

 

 

 

....I was last-minute hemming my new cranberry linen petticoat for Day 2 😂  Despite the key-rescue incident, Kim and I had a lovely time under the shade of the fly, just chatting and pretending not to notice the photographers (although Erica, a lovely local lady, caught us grinning at her here). 

My second jacket was a two-yard piece that I had bought to supplement a Regency gown I felt wasn't full enough in the skirts....but lo and behold when it arrived, it was a white ground rather than ivory! Feeling foolish, I stowed it in the stash for a good while, and pulled it out to make something light. 2 yards is not enough for the view I had chosen from the 'jacket pack' so I knew there would be some piecing, and I enjoyed turning the pattern paper this way and that to figure out where it would be the least intrusive.

I ended up piecing in at the shoulders, which makes sense because many gowns have this piece to assist in setting sleeves:

...and at the back where the jacket's 'skirts' begin:

It's not a very meticulous piecing job, in fact I had no choice but to have one of those back skirt pieces with the print running slightly on the diagonal because I was down to scraps, but I guarantee unless I pointed it out and mentioned it to someone, most people wouldn't notice.

 

On Day 2, I was extremely glad to be wearing a light color because we walked around a lot and it got up to 86F.  The folks running the Fort's fashion show were kind enough to draft me, and there was much interest in my American Duchess Kensington shoes, which I had painted a favorite local French shade of blue.

 

 

behold mine saucy ankles

 

 

 

.....and nobody noticed my pieced back, and I wasn't going to mention it either 😁 

 

 

 

To continue to stay as cool as possible, I also wore a sheer cap, made from the J.P. Ryan Dormeuse pattern (so cute, even if it looks like a face-eating jellyfish and my husband was aghast at the floof) and a cross-over sheer white cotton handkerchief. 

 

 

Naps were taken mid-day in the shade, particularly by my husband, whose tolerance of walking the market tents only extends so far and once he's hit the food tents, it's over.

 

 

 

Some bottles were drained, and bread was....very much not eaten...because that loaf is approximately 4 years old. When I went looking through my re-enactment bins for candlesticks, there it was, from the LAST event we had set up a tent at, as pristine as could be but absolutely hard as a rock. People visiting the tent got such a kick out of my petrified pain (French for bread). I really could have caused a 'pain' with it if I'd thrown it at someone.

We were all glad when night fell and the temperature cooled off. I always feel like evening is when the real magic happens -- sneaky modern conveniences are painted over by darkness, hundreds of tents are lit up with not an electric light in sight, people walk to and from camps with lanterns. I was very excited my new iphone did a good job taking night photos.

 

 

It was a bit too breezy for the chandelier -- I need to look for glass shades for the candles, I guess! But as I tried to protect my card game from dripping wax, my mother-in-law caught this photo where the candle-light gives everything a painterly glow.

 

 

When the wind proved too much for candelabras to stay lit (look at that wax drip!), we wandered on up to the fort to watch the dancing, which is always amusing and looks like chaos until folks learn the motions. The usual caller couldn't make it last-minute, so my poor friend Martin was left to do the cat-herding this time. My husband and I have had a few lessons but decided to stay out of the mess this time. It made for great pictures though! 

 

 

The blurred dancers could almost be ghosts of past inhabitants of the fort and nearby town

 

 

We climbed up into the guard tower to watch from above and it was like stepping back in time to see the lawn lit with dozens of lanterns.

 

 

 

Ending up at a campfire with friends and music and good conversation is always my goal at an event....luckily that order is never too tall to be met!