Teaser: A Surprisingly 18th-Century Vacation

Recently my parents decided to take a cruise, their first, and they graciously offered to let me come along. Who passes up a free cruise?! Well, maybe not quite free since I paid in many, many hours of driving, constantly letting my father commandeer my iPhone to check his work e-mail, and helping them not get lost on the boat which was a daily occurrence. It was kind of like babysitting large toddlers, bless them (I am totally exaggerating. We had a wonderful time!). I saw my first actual sunny beach, and we got back yesterday. I haven't the time just now, but I'll have to make a couple of longer posts to squeeze all the best pictures in and I think they'll be worth looking at.

The nicest surprise came from our stay in Charleston, SC, where the ship was docked. I had NO IDEA what a colonially intact area it was, particularly the tip of the peninsula, which was chock full of BEAUTIFUL 18th century houses, cobblestone streets, and tiny gardens. We only had time to tour one house and it was stunning inside.

One of the many glorious exteriors of the Charleston houses

 I was definitely not allowed to take pictures in this house but I cheated. I couldn't help it. Can't you just see a woman in a rustling silk sacque gown sitting down to play that harp while a man in embroidered satin waistcoat reads in the chair?

We also toured the Old Exchange and Provost Dungeon, where several signers of the Declaration of Independence were held prisoner, and George Washington gave an address from the porch of the building. I was beside myself with 18thc happiness, until we got into a room I had been going to skip altogether because it didn't look very interesting. 

Good thing my mother convinced me to glance around. The first thing I saw was an embroidered waistcoat. Then another. And a fan. And a pincushion. And then a gown...no, TWO gowns. I really thought I was going to die right then and there because I was separated from genuine extant 18thc gowns by nothing but glass. You have to understand...I live in the boringly un-18th-century Midwest, and if the St. Louis Art Museum has any 18th century textiles, they are keeping them tightly under wraps. Certainly coming across gowns on a cruise vacation was the farthest thing from my thoughts! 

Oh yeah. I took pictures from every possible angle. You will see them ALL. The thing that surprised me most was that they were BOTH sacque-backs, worn by women of Charleston...I would have figured on en fourreau for sure, if not "quarter back". That was a big shocker.

 So I'll do a couple of posts when I get time, one on the architecture and gardens we went through, and another full post on the clothing and accessories from the Old Exchange.

 

And this is...oh sorry, that's not Charleston. I am a horrible person but I just had to rub it in that I was in the Bahamas and we went to the most incredible deserted beach that several of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies used in filming. Miles and MILES of barely knee-deep crystal blue water. I'd live as a bum on that beach if I could have stayed.

More to come!

An Untimely Ailment

With the pretty daffodils and hyacinths blooming everywhere and the trees flowering like mad, I should probably have Cabin Fever and want to dance around in ecstasy outside....if only the thick wall of pollen didn't bounce me backwards on my rear every time I open the door. 'Tis the season for me to stay indoors.

Instead, I've got a malady of a different kind that will lead to sore fingers, strained eyes, and a headache...Gown Fever has returned to plague me! I posted a while back on some fabric I got at Hancock...it's got a rough, natural look to it and has light blue & medium blue stripes with smaller white stripes. And since then, I've been on the lookout for other blue-striped fabrics in extant 18thc gowns or in art, with a couple of results that have made my mind up:

Blue and white round gown from the Philadelphia Museum of Art

                     "A Girl Buying A Ballad" by Henry Walton from the Tate Collection

These are strikingly similar. Were it not for the sleeves I'd almost think that the extant gown was the exact one the painter was modeling his after. I think I can see robings in the painting, although the stomacher's not visible. Neither can I tell what the petticoat looks like under the apron, whether it's a different color or not, although I think it's safe to say it is not a round gown like the extant. I'm not going to be making a round gown but I'll be attempting my first real en fourreau - till now my efforts have been confined to a quarter-back gown and a very ugly Simplicity pattern that I covered over with a fake-pleated-back. Probably my gown will have a matching petticoat but I'm not sure about the chevroned stomacher because one of my gowns already has one and I'm kind of dying to try a compere stomacher. If I have enough fabric, heck, I'll do both!

This is not really a good time for a bolt of inspiration to strike, sadly, because I am going on a long-awaited trip with my folks for a week and when I get back from it, need to throw myself headlong into man-clothing that was promised a long time ago before a big camping in June. I'll be in the car a lot on the trip but there's just not enough room to lug along that many yards of fabric even if I could somehow find time to cut out the gown before Monday. Instead I'll take some smaller projects and maybe make another pair of mitts and the materials for an embroidery bag.

Something unrelated struck me today while I was glancing through some reenactment photos from Williamsburg. A couple of gowns on a few ladies (I don't think they were technically affiliated with CW, just "go-ers" in colonial clothes) looked...off. It took several minutes of thinking to figure out the problem; the fabric looked good in color and material, the construction of the gowns looked decent, and the accessories seemed right. Then came a picture of one of them bent at the waist to pick something up and I realized that she didn't have stays on and neither did the other two women! They were all slim, so nothing was bulging awkwardly or curving in the wrong places, but the gowns didn't have that nice straight back or anything solid to smooth against and it made all the difference in how the gowns hung and the ladies carried themselves. I appreciate 18thc undergarments so much more than when I started sewing, and will never again go without them in a gown!

A project most common

My birthday was a couple of weeks ago and with it came time with friends and family that has kind of cut into my sewing...but that's not a bad thing! Hand-sewing alone at home is my way to unwind from a day of working with the public as a librarian (you would not believe the requests we get...ranging from "can you help me find a washer on craigslist?" to "would you write my resume/essay/thesis for me?"). Still, it's good for me to remember that I can also recharge myself by being with people who love me, so I enjoyed my time away from projects.

Last night though I did finish the accessories to go with my lower-class outfit. For re-enacting, which I wish I could say I do a lot but it's really only in the summers, I have what I think is probably an upper-class undress/day gown for the mid 1770s (a 'quarter-back' gown, for lack of a better term for the back seams) in a pretty pale rose color with a maize-yellow petticoat, as posted earlier in this blog. I also have a middle-class, probably linen-blend gown in yellow with blue and white stripes, which is now on its 3rd life and has undergone some pretty drastic alterations....it's turned out nicer the more it was altered, and will get its own post sometime after this one.

But a good lower-class (and I don't mean grimy drudge...just farmer's wife having to make ends meet) ensemble was kind of eluding me because I was having a hard time picking convincing accessories. After looking through a lot of 18th century art in the Lewis Walpole Digital Image Collection and browsing through other costumer/re-enactor suggestions and photos on blogs, I realized that solids are all well and good, but they can look boring and two-dimensional without some patterns mixed in. Then again, correct fabric prints can be such a stumbling block for re-enactors, so that was another consideration to weigh...do I want to risk accuracy for the sake of a print?

Luckily it became clear that while floral prints are sooo easy to get wrong, stripes and plaid ("cross-barred", I think the pattern was called) are a little harder to mess up and are quite common in art prints of the time. I really seized on this art print in particular for some of the outfit's inspiration:

                                                 "The Curate" from the Walpole Collection

This print is, to me, a lovely example of lower-middle-class; I hesitate to say "lower class" because they look clean and comfortable, and because country curates usually had enough of a living to keep them from being destitute. However, the colors of the fabric are also rather sober and plainer than I'd expect of upward-trending middle class, and the lady of the house is doing her own fire-starting rather than having a servant to do so. I already had a blue jacket, and made up a grey linen petticoat to go with it. Also in my stash was some blue and white plaid...but sadly not enough for an apron! It became a nice kerchief instead. When I went to Hancock to see if I could find something suitably patterned for an apron, my life got a little harder...NO blue and white checked or plaid fabric. A light-pink check was the closest I could get, and after some consideration, it'll do.

So I think for one of the Rendezvous days I'll do my errands and cooking in a white cap, dark blue corduroy jacket, gray linen petticoat, check apron, plaid kerchief, medium-blue stockings, and probably boring black shoes. I put my blue silk Georgies on...but they're just a little too frivolous still. Maybe if I were a servant running away with stolen clothing from my mistress, they'd work, but I just don't feel like I could justify it now since I'm clearly not even in "Sunday best." So I will have to take a picture of the outfit later...my camera is out of batteries!

Thrift find

I found the sweetest tiny reticule today at the thrift store. It's linen on the outside, satin lining, and ribbon embroidery just like in "18th Century Embroidery Techniques" by Gail Marsh. I know reticules aren't quite right for early-mid 1700s but it is so charming I think I will just have to use it as a little money purse at events.

Blogger app? No good.

So I have an android tablet and an iphone, and there are Blogger apps for both...but they are AWFUL. I have the worst time getting to my Dashboard from them, and when I do, I can't look through all the recent posts by others. Not sure if anyone else has this problem or a solution to it, but maybe it's my fault for wanting to read blogs more than wanting to post things myself. It SHOULD be easier than this.

I am slumming it with my projects lately, just finished a grey linen petticoat and am almost done with a very light pink-checked apron for my lower-class impression. Although I did recently buy a nice curtain panel from Etsy (not as nice as Lauren's over at American Duchess, sadly, but I like it) for an upper class apron:

 The fabric has little dots all over it, and although the ground is clearly machine-created net and the dots are painted on, it's difficult to tell unless you're scrutinizing it up close, so I'm willing to make the authenticity sacrifice, because to me it looks like:

I also got an interesting plate and saucers that almost match my teacups at the thrift store. The plate itself is a little garish and crudely painted but not too far off from some of the fragments they found in the French-settled areas around here, if I'm remembering correctly.

And lastly I purchased a pocket watch for my gentleman-friend from Jas. Townsend.  I think he'll enjoy it and I will benefit when we're hanging out because neither of us will have to pull out our non-authentic cell phones to see what time it is. I certainly thought it looked sharp!

Rose quarter-back gown -- final photos

I am so, so happy with how my first ever entirely hand-sewn, drafted-from-books gown turned out. It taught me some important lessons along the way, like "don't use extremely heavy upholstery fabric for a gown that would have been made out of silk" but I'm broke and Hancock Fabrics' decorating clearance is impossible to pass up.

 I took a few photos with my phone before I remembered I still had a digital camera...this is kind of grainy but even with poor resolution the silhouette is very elegant. Our clothes nowadays are so unflattering compared to the 18th century. I'd wear this all the time if I could get away with it!

I did self-fabric trim with ordinary pinking shears...I haven't got the scalloped shears yet, maybe eventually, but I do know that there are some extant gowns that have the straight pinking.

 

The bodice is closed with hooks and eyes, which I'm assuming is historically accurate as it showed up in Janet Arnold's patterns. Still not a fan of the puffy sleeves but the fabric was too thick and inflexible to lay down nicely at the shoulder. Next time, next time.

 

I'll post about the shoes with some pictures eventually...they are of course the leather Devonshires from American Duchess with her Fleur buckles. I was so terrified to punch holes in them and kind of felt bad when it was done but of course the buckles are so worth it.

No, I'm not wearing my fichu (and yes, I'm going to call it a fichu instead of a neck handkerchief, because the area I reenact in is French in heritage), I should have been proper and stuffed one under my neckline but it was upstairs and I was lazy. Also I would like to eventually make a fancy, somewhat decoratively short whitework apron to go over this but I don't feel like it's imperative.

Doing my hair was a lot of fun...it reaches almost to the small of my back now so there's plenty to work with. I poufed up the front and bobby-pinned it, then kept making smaller loops and twisted sections and pinned them haphazardly, leaving a couple of pieces loose to curl with the curling iron. Unfortunately with no electricity at the fort, I won't be able to get it to look like this at reenactments most of the time (plus the summer humidity this past year was so disgusting that a crisp piece of paper went limp and soggy within five minutes...curl would have been impossible). But for a first time attempt it looks pretty decent.

What a cute mule you have there...

I'm not sure why I've never seen these before in the Met collections...but I clearly need them. Flamestitched mules. I knew you could make flamestitch wallets, but shoes didn't cross my mind. They would be so perfect for slipping in to in the mornings when waking up and trailing about in my dressing gown while my maids bring me tea and...nevermind, these mules are giving me delusions of grandeur. But they're so pretty!

          See other views here

Also, as far as engagement rings go, I have said the past few years that some day (if that some day ever comes) I wanted a ring with a "halo" around the center stone, thinking it was a fairly new development in the ring design world...but no, it isn't.

So beautiful. I was surprised to see it belonged to a woman in New York, of all places, around 1760. I guess I imagined it on the finger of some European aristocrat...and the Met doesn't list it as paste, either!