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Kitty Calash

~ Confessions of a Known Bonnet-Wearer

Kitty Calash

Category Archives: Laundry

Filthy Friday: Rolling with a Purpose

09 Friday Sep 2016

Posted by kittycalash in Clothing, Laundry, Living History, Reenacting

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Tags

18th century clothes, 18th century clothing, authenticity, common dress, common people, common soldier, interpretation, laundry, living history

“It looks like you rolled in dirt,” I said to the Young Giant when he dumped a gritty mess on my lap.
“I did,” he said, “but it was rolling with a purpose. We dug a fire pit, and then I had to keep the fire going. So I was on my belly in the dirt.”

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This was followed by, “Mom, you need to mend my shirt.” But first, I needed to wash that shirt.

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I’d like to wash that shirt right out of my hair, but there it is: it’s got to be attended to.

I did what mending I could before I washed it, since some areas seemed more likely to disintegrate further in the wash.

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That’s clean linen verus dirty linen, the 18th century wrestling match. Patch secured, I very nearly packed this into a priority mailing container for delivery to the esteeméd Red Shoes Laundry, but I took a deep breath, and put the lobster pot back in the cupboard. (Yes, I considered boiling this on my stove top on a 95° day. Wouldn’t you?)

Instead, I trekked down to the cool of the basement and ran the water as hot as it gets and added Oxiclean (used by some of the finest weavers I know when they encounter dyes less fast than anticipated.)

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The first tub achieved a kind of colloidal slurry of mud and sweat and soap. Delicious. Five rinses and an overnight soak later, dirty shirt became just a shirt again.

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I took advantage of the clear weather to dry this outside on the grass, hoping the later sunlight would aid in whitening.

Wondering about that patch? Wonder no more, compare:

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It’s another one of those “is it done? it’s perfect” situations. I’d love to wash my clothes with historically correct methods, but for now, the shirt’s clean enough for final mends and wearing in October. The winter should give me time to figure out stove top washing.

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Smell Ya Later

16 Tuesday Jun 2015

Posted by kittycalash in Clothing, Fail, History, Laundry, Living History, Reenacting, Research

≈ 9 Comments

Tags

19th century, 19th century clothing, authenticity, clothes, Clothing, common people, historical clothing, historical myths, historical reenactors, history, interpretation, laundry, smell

Wool on hooks, cat on prowl

Wool on hooks, cat on prowl

One of the most common questions you get when you’re wearing historical clothing is the undying, “Aren’t you hot in those clothes?”

A heavily perspiring visitor wearing practically nothing usually asks this question, and the standard reply is a variation of “Aren’t you hot? In really warm weather, everyone is hot. But natural fibre clothing wicks the moisture from the skin and helps to keep you cool.” My internal response (vocalized only once) is, “Why yes, I am—and thank you for noticing. I work hard for this look.”

The “aren’t you hot” question is often followed by, “Wow, and they didn’t bathe, so everyone really smelled.” You try not to think of that Monty Python sketch about Britain’s deadliest joke program in WWII and move the conversation on to weekly laundering of body linen, multiple shifts, shirts, and under-drawers, and the general hygienic practices of the past.

What struck me after a sticky weekend is how much I noticed the smell of modern people.

two tailors and a tailoress

two tailors and a tailoress

My traveling companions and I bathed on Friday morning, drove for 7+ hours in muggy weather, slept in our clothes, wore wool, cotton and linen in rain and thick humidity, sweated in the tailor’s shop, slept in our clothes again, and spent another warm, close, day in muggy weather, including grave digging and pall bearing. But as feral as my shift may have been on Sunday night, I never smelled us.

Mr H reported that his wool trousers were really stinky in the rain, and I think his white Spencer was well-seasoned even before this weekend, but I didn’t notice anything. Mr S’s soaking greatcoat was whiffy only at extremely close range.

What I did smell were modern perfumes, deodorants, and hair products. Those linger around their wearers and trail behind them, sometimes eye-watering in their intensity. I encountered lingering perfume in a bathroom at the museum, and we were overwhelmed by cologne at diner Monday morning: wow, people must really smell now, of petrochemicals.

more wool

more wool

This is not to say that homeless people and sulky teenagers don’t smell of unwashed bodies and clothes, but people in the past may not have smelled quite as badly as we think. They washed, if not bathed (bathing being full immersion washing) and by changing body linen and airing their clothes, they kept reasonably clean.

There was plenty to whiff in the past: wastes of all kinds, stagnant bodies of water used as dumps, rotting foods and corpses. But I’m not convinced that we haven’t simply exchanged one set of smells for another of different origin and intensity.

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Wash on Monday

02 Tuesday Sep 2014

Posted by kittycalash in History, Laundry, personal, Reenacting

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Tags

laundry, living history, mindfulness

shifts and petticoats on a line

Living history laundry

We spent Labor Day laboring at home: even the Young Mr spent the day working on a five page essay (due Wednesday) for history class. I spent the day tidying the house and washing clothes from all centuries.

Of our historic clothes, I don’t often wash more than body linen (shifts, shirts, stockings) but the petticoats had not been washed in some time; in the end, I washed the tow and blue striped one, but only aired the Virginia cloth and madder linen. Since I may not wear these again this year, washing and airing seemed warranted.

It’s incredibly easy to wash in this century, with the luxuries of indoor plumbing, a hot water heater and a washing machine. At Walloomsac, though I didn’t do any laundry, we were always fetching water, and I think of how much water we use, and how easily.

chintz and checked clothes on a  clothesline

Red, white and blue

While I stitched a dress (new, though the mending pile is growing), I listened to biography of the Buddha, and thought about mindfulness and living history.

What is there to learn from sewing a gown, or hanging my wash on the line? How much does it matter that sunlight makes my shifts brighter, or that the dress in my lap is not a exact replica of an extant garment, but rather one made using period techniques, a close analog of a period fabric, and is cut to period style?

So little remains of the vast middle and smaller lower classes that it would be stifling to limit oneself only to exact replicas. And in any case, we can never recreate the mindset or worldview of the people of the past. We can only mimic their processes, read their words, and study the things they have left behind in our best attempts to understand them.

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Any old Shirts?

24 Monday Mar 2014

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

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

10th Massachusetts, 18th century clothes, Bridget Connor, common dress, common people, fashion, interpretation, laundry, living history, shirts, style

DSC_0041
The photos people have of the Millinery Conference at Williamsburg– well, they’re a little envy-inducing. All the silks gowns on such a beautiful site are a little overwhelming if you like historic costumes, but if I was all about silk gowns it might be harder to do what I am doing.

I did discover a fool-proof way to unnerve the teenager in the living history household. If you get dressed in your 18th-century clothing early enough on a Sunday morning, the child will ask, “Um, Mom? Are you just fitting, or do we have an event?” You get one glorious moment to decide whether or not to torture the child before he figures out that even you are not crazy enough to go to an event in March without stockings.

Bridget’s gown is done, but for the hem, which is turned up and about a quarter sewn. I tried it on yesterday to make sure it fit. I threw most caution to the wind and made up the new Golden Scissors English Gown pattern without making  a muslin because I’d checked my own self-fitted pattern pieces to the English Gown pieces and found them nearly identical. Anything likely to need work– shoulder straps– I knew could be done in the lining and not matter terrifically.

Why, you ask, did I bother with a new pattern? In part because my own has migrated (my backs have been trending too wide of late) and because I needed a solid, step-by-step guide to more correct assembly. The sleeve pleats still annoy me, mostly because they get done on a dress form and not on me, but they allow movement and that really counts. DSC_0047

The stomacher front style is a compromise: I want to be able to wear this at events earlier than 1782, so I’m working on the assumption that Bridget didn’t migrate to the more fashionable center-front closing style in the 1780s because she couldn’t.

The accessories are chosen because they were affordable ways to upgrade appearance: it takes hardly any chintz for a stomacher, and a handkerchief is bright but small. The hat is more common than a bonnet among working women, and the mules were chosen because they appear in an engraving of a crippled soldier and his family. All Sandby’s women wear heeled and buckled shoes in styles not to be found ready-made in my size, so  mules are my compromise.

I still think Bridget looks too clean and too pretty, but until I find fabric I like for a bedgown, this will have to do. The details, should you care for them:

Hat, Burnley and Trowbridge, lined with a Wm Booth remnant, trimmed with B&T ribbon. My hair is out up with straight pins from Dobyns & Martin, and under the hat in a lappet cap with the strings tied on top of my head.

The coral necklace is from In the Long Run, I’ll replace the grey poly ribbon with black silk ribbon once it’s in from Wm Booth.

The neckerchief is from B&T, again, and selected because the pattern was similar to the one worn by the young woman in the Domestick Employment: Washing print.

DSC_0051The gown fabric is from the second floor discount loft at the Lorraine mill store in Pawtucket. It’s 100% cotton, yes, it really does flame, and I’ll just have to be careful. (The women who cook in cotton at OSV are probably vastly more graceful than I, and do not fall into things.) It’s a light brown and white tiny check weave, and looks a great deal like a homespun gingham. I chose it because it tends to wrinkle badly and should show the dirt well: in short, I chose it because I don’t expect it to wear particularly well.

The petticoat is from the last of some ‘madder’ linen Burnley & Trowbridge had a few years ago, and the mules are from them; I think the apron linen was, too, but I can’t remember.

Those shirts are blue and white check from Wm Booth, and I have no idea how they got into my apron. Stop asking, or I’ll get my stick.

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Pinner Aprons

23 Thursday Jan 2014

Posted by kittycalash in Clothing, History, Laundry, Making Things, Reenacting, Research

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

18th century clothes, apron, Clothing, common dress, Costume, fashion, laundry, Paul Sandby, pinner apron, style, watercolors

Mr & Mrs Thomas Sandby. Watercolor by Paul Sandby. RCIN 917875, Royal Collection Trust.

Mr & Mrs Thomas Sandby. Watercolor by Paul Sandby. RCIN 917875, Royal Collection Trust.

On Saturday, Sew 18th Century and I went out for lunch and fabric shopping. Along the way, I brought up pinner aprons, and that I’d seen them in British prints. She said, “You should blog about that!” and I went back to check my sources. Fail! There was an English print after a French original, and that doesn’t count!

So I shelved that idea, and went about looking for more Paul Sandby images of soldiers and maids and tents, and found instead Mr and Mrs Thomas Sandby. Ahem. Pinner apron alert.

Fluke, right? Well, no, not exactly.

Lady Chambers and child. Watercolor by Paul Sandby, RCIN 914409. Royal Collection Trust.

Lady Chambers and child. Watercolor by Paul Sandby, RCIN 914409. Royal Collection Trust.

Because here is Lady Chambers and child, with Lady Chambers in a pinner apron.

The thing to note, though, is that “apron” here is a decorative, almost ceremonial garment made of black silk, while the maid engaged in Domestick Employment is wearing a working garment of [probably white] linen.

Domestick employment, washing. Mezzotint by Richard Houston after Phillipe Mercier, 1736-1775. British Museum 1876,0708.23

Domestick employment, washing. Mezzotint by Richard Houston after Phillipe Mercier, 1736-1775. British Museum 1876,0708.23

Well, can I wear a pinner apron as a Continental army laundress or not? Probably not, though I will be going back through all the images of laundering I can find. It would be so useful and protective a garment!

No, instead, it looks as if the black silk pinner apron was a fashion adopted by the British upper class probably in imitation of the aprons worn by young girls. These fleeting, black silk accessories were probably adapted to some other use when the fashion had fallen from favor. (You could make a lot of mitts out of one of those.) Sadly, I don’t care enough about the elite to go chasing inventories and more images, but someone else can. I think I have seen a few other examples of this style, but cannot immediately place them. My sense is that these are not common.

I’m much more interested in laundresses and maids. Doesn’t she look sassy? We could call her Bridget. 

A country girl, full-length, facing front, leaning against a fence & a tree. Watercolor by Paul Sandby. RCIN 914438. Royal Collection Trust

A country girl, full-length, facing front, leaning against a fence & a tree. Watercolor by Paul Sandby. RCIN 914438. Royal Collection Trust

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