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~ Confessions of a Known Bonnet-Wearer

Kitty Calash

Search results for: criss

Criss Cross, or, My Checker’d Past

09 Monday May 2016

Posted by kittycalash in Clothing, Events, Living History, Making Things

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

19th century clothing, Clothing, Costume, dress, fashion, Federal style, Making Things, sewing

Every now and then I look up from what I’m doing (tiny stitches, usually, though sometimes budget math) and realize that Objects in Mirror are Closer Than They Appear. Oops. It was just yesterday I was daydreaming about miniatures, and now I shall want a paintbox and brushes in a mere six weeks– and those six weeks are punctuated by a courier trip, a couple of exhibits, not to mention shepherding The Young Giant through prom and finals.

Top: check silk taffeta, Artee Fabrics Bottom: check cotton, Mood Fabrics

Top: check silk taffeta, Artee Fabrics
Bottom: check cotton, Mood Fabrics

This weekend, thanks to the SFR hunt for collar interfacing of an appropriate weight, I realized I’d better get a wiggle on my own sewing, and managed to hunt up the orange check from hell, pop it in the washer, and hunt up the pattern I intend to use.

Mrs Catherine Morey oil on canvas by Michael Keeling, 1817. (c) Walker Art Gallery; Supplied by The Public Catalogue Foundation

Mrs Catherine Morey oil on canvas by Michael Keeling, 1817. (c) Walker Art Gallery

I’m stuck on that 1817-1819 range because of someone’s eventual and particular Mode of Transportation, so I was super pleased to find this portrait while trolling the BBC’s Your Paintings site. Actually, I’m pretty over the moon about this image, since it places that cross-over front firmly in 1817. I’ve made a version of this form already, so I can but hope the next iteration will be even closer to correct for the period, once I tweak the pattern a bit.

The pattern: therein lie so many rubs, often going the wrong way. Still, I remain enamored of the check and of the cross-front gown. Any checkered doubts were dispelled when Alison for reminded me of the sort-of-cross front check gown at the Met, whose catalogers are hiding behind circa 1820 which allows leeway back to 1815. Behold, of course, the ruffled neck of the bodice (I do expect mine will fit a bit better since I am squishier than a mannequin, and possess appropriate infrastructure).

Morning dress ca. 1820. British, cotton.
Morning dress ca. 1820. British, cotton.
Metropolitan Museum of Art, Purchase. 1979.385.1
Metropolitan Museum of Art, Purchase. 1979.385.1
Marcia Sand Bequest, in memory of her daughter, Tiger (Joan) Morse.
Marcia Sand Bequest, in memory of her daughter, Tiger (Joan) Morse.

Speaking of infrastructure, the appropriate stays are finished, entirely hand-sewn, and ready for deployment in pattern fittings before they debut at Genesee.

File_000 (1)

Six weeks to Genesee: at least one 1817 dress, another sheet, a portfolio and paint box, followed immediately by 18th century stays, a front-closing gown, and a bucket repair. Surely that’s all manageable, right?

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Criss Cross

05 Wednesday Mar 2014

Posted by kittycalash in Clothing, Living History, Museums

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Clothing, Costume, fashion, Making Things, museum collections, Museums, Newport, Newport Historical Society, patterns, Quaker dress, Quakers, Reenacting, Research, Rhode Island history, sewing

Dolly Eyland, by Alexander Keith, 1808. (c) The New Art Gallery Walsall; Supplied by The Public Catalogue Foundation

Dolly Eyland, by Alexander Keith, 1808. (c) The New Art Gallery Walsall; Supplied by The Public Catalogue Foundation

I like Dolly. The colors, the textures, the style of her gown, shawl and cap all please me. She’s rocking some serious class for a woman headed towards a certain age. And she’s wearing a cross-front gown, which is what I settled on for my Quaker costume. 

Taffeta dress, ca.1800-1810, Originally found on Villa Rosemaine site, where it does not appear now.

The trouble with making a gown based on an artistic sketch in a book is that you don’t have the most complete sense of what that garment looks like, or how it goes together.

Not to worry, I went ahead anyway, because this is as close to Everest as I will ever get.

But I wanted comparable garments to help guide me. Ages ago I found the gown at left on a French costume site. That’s helpful, in that it explains the trickiness of assembling and wearing this style of garment. Three pieces coming together in the front may be one piece too many. 

In making up my pattern, I used the pattern for the Spencer as a starting place because I knew that the set of the sleeves and arm scye were what I wanted. No reason to re-invent that process!

That left me with the luxury of concentrating on the neckline.

That took a few goes with the tracing paper and muslin:  I did lose count after a while. There may have been tears, there definitely was swearing. Mr S at one point made jokes about this process appearing on the Discovery Channel’s “How it’s Made” as “the Quaker dress.” He’s really very patient, and I do understand the selective deafness he’s had to develop as a defense against the dark arts of sewing historic clothing.

Thank you, Cassidy, for the chemisette!

Eventually, I had a decent lining and even some silk bodice fronts. I fiddled with the fronts, and settled on gathers instead of pleats, but couldn’t quite figure out where the casing went. Some days I can process drawings into objects, some days I can’t. I’d just about reached the point of cutting it all up into the gown I always make when I discovered that the excellent women of the 19th US had patterned the gown from the drawing, too. (If you don’t already use this site, I highly recommend it. Excellent work.) Those pattern pieces look like my pattern pieces, so I decided it was worth carrying on with what I have.

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A Dress for Red Hook

11 Tuesday Feb 2020

Posted by kittycalash in Clothing, Events, Living History, Making Things

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1813, 19th century clothing, Federal style, New York, Red Hook, Regency, sewing project

Portrait of a Couple in the Country, Josef Reinhard, 1809

We recently returned from an event months in making, as all the best ones are, with many people making new clothes and venturing into a new era: the early Federal period. Initially, I expected to portray a widow, but ended up portraying a milliner suing for damages resulting from a breach of promise of marriage. This afforded Drunk Tailor an opportunity to be caddish and impatient, and gave me the chance to be aggrieved, which I do enjoy.

Because I initially thought I was portraying a widow, I checked through my stash for appropriate fabrics, and, finding only yardage already designated for future projects (coming in March! yay!), I ordered black gauze from Renaissance Fabrics. The local fabric store failed me, and somehow I got fixated on transparency and weight: I wanted a particular drape that a heavier stuff could not provide.

I looked at fashion plates of mourning wear but came across an 1809 painting by Swiss painter Josef Reinhard and fell in love. Still, here I was on the train tracks to mourning attire when I was portraying a forsaken milliner. Fortunately, the event organizers provided documentation from local newspapers, and a plausible case could be made for being in mourning for my recently deceased father– adding another layer of poignancy to my abandonment and financial precarity.

The gown I made is my third run at an early 19th-century surplice front.  The pattern I scaled up from An Agreeable Tyrant was a reasonable place to start, though my shape has changed somewhat in the nearly three years since I first started on that. In the end, I found that the shape of the lining or base of the canezou was a better starting point. Using that back and the general shape and grainline of the front, I re-draped the front bodice pieces to my current size, adjusting the line over the bust and adding an underbust dart, based on darts seen in period Spencers.

Fronts
Fronts
and back
and back

It took about three muslins before I had a bodice that fitted well; then it was on to the sleeve. Thankfully, that only took two muslins to rework the curve of the sleeve head and the shape of the underarm, and adjust the grainline to correct the drape of the arm.

I like the contrast between the white chemisette and the black gown

The surplice or cross-front gown appears in many images; it’s a comfortable form, and uses relatively little fabric to achieve the effect. It would also be a good form for nursing mothers, and while that was not a consideration for me, I do like the way the neckline can show off a chemisette.

I wore this over a pink wool petticoat and the white bodiced petticoat/gown that I wore under the canezou; I’d prefer a black petticoat but the one I is made for 1790s gowns and required shortening. In the future, I’ll make a black or grey silk taffeta to wear under this gown. But first I’ll need new linen petticoats since two have disappeared.

The hem edge, as always for me, was little uneven despite measuring carefully multiple times, but a ruffle solved that and added weight to the hem, helping the skirts hang and move better. The trim is based on a drawing in the Nantucket Historical Association collection and uses a quantity of black silk ribbon (which I can buy wholesale thank goodness!).

I’m generally pleased with this pattern and the finish of the gown. The lessons I’ve taken from this experience are about packing lists (and not putting the box of bonnet behind the door where it is invisible) and accessories. Once you have a pattern that really works for you– a well-fitted bodice or waistcoat, coat, and trousers– what you need to round out your look are accessories. Those are the pieces that can expand your wardrobe, dress it up or down, and generate multiple looks from just a few pieces. If that sounds like capsule wardrobes or fashion magazine advice, well, just because you saw it in Mademoiselle or Glamour doesn’t mean it isn’t useful advice.

Portrait of Sarah Comstock Coffin and Children, ca. 1815. Nantucket Historical Association, 1917.0034.001
Portrait of Sarah Comstock Coffin and Children, ca. 1815. Nantucket Historical Association, 1917.0034.001
IMG_1428

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Fave Friday: Full-On Federal

04 Friday Aug 2017

Posted by kittycalash in Clothing, History, Research

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

19th century clothing, CoBloWriMo, fashion, Federal style, personal, Research, resources


Favorite Era? Easy-peasy! Federal, of course. Whether furniture or fashion, the early Republic is my thing. I spend a fair amount of time in the 18th century, since there are so many events in that time period, and while I loved the story of the American Revolution as a child, the early Federal* period intrigues me more. Furniture, porcelain, wallpaper, and clothing from 1790-1820 all appeal to me, as well as the notion that women’s roles were in flux in the earliest decades of the United States.

“American Women and French Fashion,” from The Age of Napoleon

I love the idea of women in mercantile businesses and trade, and the way that milliners provided access to fashion (and you can read more about that in The Age of Napoleon).

Merrymaking at a Wayside Inn, watercolor on paper by John Lewis Krimmel. 1811-1813. Metropolitan Museum of Art, 42.95.12

I also love the way that American women (and men) translated European high style into a vernacular, as seen in John Lewis Krimmel’s watercolors of Philadelphia and surrounding areas.

This is a time period I’m comfortable in (yes, the stays are part of that comfort) but aside from comfort and aesthetics, I think it’s also because for a brief time, women had slightly more freedom than they had previously.

It was short-lived, and Republican motherhood was confining in its own way before the “cult of womanhood” blossomed fully. But ideals of freedom and fashion very briefly aligned, and for that, I love the Federal– and vain creature that I am, I think it suits me.

*pre-Andy Jackson, amirite?

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