Sewing/Work bags

Man-clothing is killing my soul right now...I derive no pleasure from boring waistcoats and breeches, but I did make a solemn promise that I'd make a full outfit for a gentleman-friend. I'm cutting a lot of corners with material, patterns, and sewing machine on long invisible seams, but luckily he doesn't care (YET. I'm waiting for the day he demands complete accuracy and hand-sewing, eek). The shirt is done (yay bedsheet), the waistcoat is being sewn (yay thrift-store drapes), and the breeches are cut (bargain-table corduroy and Jack Sparrow pattern? Sweet). I haven't decided if I want to make a not-historically-accurate frock coat from said costume pattern since this ensemble is going to be worn in the heat of summer. He says "yes," I say "I'm not fanning you when you die from heatstroke."

So I have been using the little breaks I've been taking to look at 18th century work or sewing bags, thinking that might make a nice small project to take to events. There is such a variety out there in various collections!

 Love this pretty little bag from the Met, although it's a bit late in the century, 1795.

 This one from the National Trust Collection looks VERY much like it could have been made from an old embroidered waistcoat. Doesn't that placket of trim in the middle look like the pocket flap?

Huh. A drawstring bag from an auction...not really any info (late 18thc, early 19thc), but it's interesting, even if not very attractive. Makes me think of Native Americans in Maine for some reason...

This one from the V&A collection is quite exotic looking; date is very vague (1700-1800), and the silk was made in China with the ribbon added later once the bag was made up in Europe.

 One of my favorites, also late in the century, circa 1799, France, silk, from the LACMA collections. But am I willing to go crazy on embroidery and tassels? Not sure yet.

Woman's drawstring workbag, "Ce panier de fleur" 1780-1800 Origin: Europe, France, from the Colonial Williamsburg collection. 

 Listed as a "Sewing bag" 1750-60, French, silk, from the Met's online collection. This one is very much to my liking; it looks easy to make and doesn't involve a lot of embroidery if I could find similar fabric.

 Late in the century at 1794, but it's pretty much just a plain sewn fabric bag with a channel for a drawstring...nice to know they existed! From the National Trust Collections. I think it's pictured folded in half. Actually if I attached handles to it, this would make a lovely modern-day bookbag...

1790 bag. Maybe other people don't mind this color scheme but I find it SO reminiscent of 1970's couch upholstery fabric :(  Still, another one that doesn't entail a lot of embroidery! Also from the National Trust Collections.

This is by far my favorite bag, because look how easy it would be to make! I like the bright cheery colors. There's no specific date pinned to this one, 18th century is the narrowest guess by the National Trust Collections.

And then, I found this...

A "handkerchief case." WHAT?! Like there wasn't enough to embroider with tapestries and pillows and workbags and samplers?! 18th century women apparently felt the need to embroider the bejaysus out of everything they could lay their hands on. I bet they would have embroidered their dogs if they'd held still long enough. Who needs a handkerchief case?!  

Incredulity aside, it's got an interesting description of materials used by the supposedly North American maker: Birchbark, Moosehair, Silk. I wonder if some frontier wife, longing for finer civilization, decided to make something pretty with the materials she had. Perhaps she gave it to her husband for his birthday and he said "How nice, dear....what is it?"

I didn't even look at reticules, gaming purses and the like! Nice to know though that if I run out of other projects, I can always make a handkerchief case.

Painted Devonshires...i.e., tax procrastination!

Alright, I am mostly done with my taxes, but as always happens with something boring, I started itching to do a quick project that wouldn't take as long as the new en fourreau I've been planning. With Angelus leather paints from Dharma, I had previously painted my American Duchess Devonshires a pretty sort of maize-yellow (ok it was a little more mustardy than anticipated).

 So pretty, but I'm always tweaking...

But ever since I saw Caroline's ridiculously gorgeous painted silk shoes, I have been dreaming about doing a little bit more to my yellow Devvies. So I was flipping through What Clothes Reveal by Linda Baumgarten and spied an adorable pair (page 19) of yellow (possibly more ivory, it's hard to tell because it depends on the lighting in the pictures) brocaded silk with blue trim, and fell in love!

 Sorry, terrible scan of the photo from the book but you get the idea

Much better photo cropped from this one at CW's website

Previously, the shoes had been coated with the Angelus leather finish because they were ready to be worn, so when I made up my mind to re-paint, I took the leather preparer/deglazer to them, which is fascinating stuff -- technically you could take off every coat of paint on the shoes and get right back down to the white leather every time you felt like having a totally different pair! 

I managed with just a few of the Angelus colors: white, yellow, champagne and sapphire, mixing to get the shades I wanted, and spent the last two nights painting away while watching the first season of Game of Thrones.

Not gonna lie...they spent last night beside my bed so I could see them when I woke up, haha. Are they exact copies of the brocade CW shoes? Nope! I couldn't see every angle in the photos and had to guess at a lot, and took rather a lot of artistic license with the flowers because really, plants are NOT my forte (I mostly paint medieval illuminations).  Also, the shine of the leather will always give the shoes away as not being fabric, but I am thinking about getting the matte leather finish (I had satin finish before) to see if it will cut back on the shine a bit.  Unfortunately, these shoes are WAY too fancy to go with any of my current gowns...guess I'll have to make a new one! Drat ;)

18th Century Vacation Part 1: Gowns, Waistcoats and Sundry

I'm not sure if I should put all these pictures under a cut...I don't think it's like LJ that stretches out the "Friends" page since my blogger dashboard only ever shows a fraction of people's posts. If the layout is a problem for someone and I need to cut it, please let me know! I will not at all be offended! Maybe just a little ;)

In advance, I would like to apologize profusely for the sad quality of the photos...Coming across these items was the farthest thing on my mind that day and the only camera with me was my iphone, which is PITIFUL in low light. Plus I was shaking a little bit like a child with a Halloween night sugar high.

All these items come from the Old Exchange in Charleston, SC, and I didn't see any signs prohibiting photography or online sharing of images, so I'm hopefully not breaking any laws!

 

I highly recommend reading the history of the building on their website if you're curious: I probably should have because then I would've learned that "Charles Town" was the fourth-largest and purportedly wealthiest city in colonial America. Holy cow, NO idea. Anyway, super cool that pirates and signers of the Declaration alike were kept prisoner in the dungeon...it was incredible to press my hands against the very brick they had walked and sat on. And the ball room where George Washington danced...anyway, I may make a separate post on architecture/gardens later. 

On to the artifacts! I'll reiterate some of the labels so you don't have to squint, but I THINK you should be able to click on pictures to get them larger (Edit: NOPE. Apparently they're not ALL clickable. I've got them up on my Flickr though if it's easier to see.) If you'd like to use them elsewhere (even with the wretched quality) please ask me first :)

Knitted Mitts

"Lace fichu and cuffs, origin unknown" (uh oh, "fichu." Hallie Larkin would have something to say about that...)

Lace that appeared in a portrait in 1759

"Memorandum File" just looks like a stitched wallet to me but of course I couldn't see the inside. It's cute...I like it better than flamestitch.

 

"Wedding fan 18th century owned by Elizabeth Allen Deas." GORGEOUS. 

 

"Huguenot Relic - Ladies' silver stomacher." This was beautiful...it looked like doily of metalwork and spangles, and I guess would have been sewn onto an actual stomacher.

 

Cute!

 

Ugh, the stitching of young girls back then makes me feel woefully inadequate.

 

Waistcoat belonging to unknown

 

Waistcoat belonging to Henry Laurens

 

 

Waistcoat belonging to General William Moultrie

Waistcoat belonging to Thomas Sumpter

And my favorites...the two gowns. It must just have been my backwoods ignorance to be surprised that both were sacques...with such a thriving international port to both the Indies and England, clearly they were a lot more cosmopolitan than I first thought! It probably should not have been such a shock to me because in my area where French colonial wills exist from 1720-50, anywhere where a silk gown was mentioned, I'm guessing it would probably have been a sacque. Again, sorry for the poor quality, the phone camera and the glare off the glass cases were not helping.

First gown, a "Dove's Neck Brocade Dress" notable for the silk supposedly having been produced in South Carolina:

Is this "fly fringe"? It's very pretty trim.

The stomacher opened down the middle...is it "compere" even if it doesn't have buttons?

 Closeup of the sleeve ruffle, and you can see the pleating at the hip just beyond it, I'm assuming to help the gown smooth over panniers or pocket hoops.

The sleeve cap/shoulder

Sorry, very poor shot of the back...my mother would NOT let me get down on the floor and shimmy under the case to take a picture. What do you mean, polite people don't do that in a museum? Dang.

Gown #2, a "Yellow Brocade Dress":

Close-up of self-fabric trim on sleeve

Probably linen lining from what I could see of it, and I really liked the serpentine trim. 

 

View of the stomacher

And the woefully inadequate back-view. Very pretty gown...wish it was in good enough shape for them to put on a mannequin but the silk had so many tiny shreds in it that I'm sure they didn't want to put that much strain on it.

What do you think? Did they do a decent job dating these items? I wasn't sure about some of the wording or dates on a few labels but I'm too amateur to do any disputing. It was just lovely to have a chance to be so close to all this and I'd go back in a heartbeat if I got the chance...with a better camera.

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!