13 Wednesday Jun 2012
Posted in Museums, Uncategorized
≈ Comments Off on Another Kind of Chaos
Tags
This gallery contains 7 photos.
Call it caffeine-assisted design, but this is how the prep for the new exhibit has gone this week.
13 Wednesday Jun 2012
Pattern and re-pattern, trying to get a robe a l’anglaise to fit properly. After I made new stays at Christmas, the brown dress that sort of fit really no longer fit.
Eventually, cutting muslins and re-stitching and pinning and undoing and redoing will get you to this.
I used a mirror and my husband took photos of the back, since I couldn’t manage that. Then I borrowed a friend from work to help with the sleeves, since the pin-behind-you method wasn’t working well. After I re-cut the sleeve head and found that a better fit, both sleeve heads are re-cut and seem to be working, so I’ll stitch them in by hand at work.
The goal, from patterning on Sunday, is a finished dress by Saturday afternoon’s tea for Rochambeau. Depends on when the tea starts, I think.
10 Sunday Jun 2012
Posted in Events
≈ Comments Off on Partners in Crime
Mr. S in his 6-hour coat
Ah, partnerships. They don’t always work the way either partner thinks they will, and one always has more power than the other. Suffice it to say that my partner, who is also my husband, did me a solid and came down to Water Fire’s Gaspee Project last night. The Regimental Captain and his family did, too, and for that I am truly grateful.
The Gaspee affair really was a crime: it was an act of revolt by Rhode Island citizens against the Crown, but Lieutenant Dudingston saw the evasion by the Hannah as a crime, and it was—her captain was supposed to submit to boarding and inspection. The raid on the grounded Gaspee and the wounding of Dudingston was also certainly a crime.
I didn’t take any photos at Water Fire last night, but plenty of people wanted their photo taken with me in my crazy bonnet.
People love that bonnet
One man confessed to me that I reminded him of his childhood trips to Steppingstone Stables [sic] and the two white-footed Clydesdales, Big Tom and Big Jerry, that pulled the wagon. I didn’t think I was that big…but what he meant was that seeing me dressed up “old-timey” reminded him of other times and of the past, and helped him connect to something beyond his immediate moment. I think he’d had a good time down at the new Sabin’s Tavern, but he had a moment that made him reflect on something that gave him pleasure, and that’s a good thing.
09 Saturday Jun 2012
Posted in Clothing
≈ Comments Off on Fashion Plate Treasure Trove
Tags
The interwebs: evil bringer of spam and annoying chain emails, but also home to fantastic surprises like the Casey Fashion Plate Collection at the LA Public Library. I can sit in New England and browse thousands of images from 1780 to 1880, a virtual time warp J. Crew catalog of “I have to make that!” and “Color! Regency in Color!”
You can’t blow them up to the kind of size you’d want, but if you know clothing, the enlargements they allow are probably enough to get you where you need to go.
Now I have more ideas than I have time, but at least some will use up fabric I bought at the silk store in Pawtucket, and remnants from Wm. Booth Draper (I think I have enough wool/silk “stuff” for that blue spencer.)
Red. I love red. And that’s a lot of detail that holds up pretty well under zoom. Thank you, LA Public Library!
08 Friday Jun 2012
Tags
Men’s 18th century coats amaze and delight me. On some of the earlier fine suits, the pleats are exuberant but controlled, layers of fabric tucked together in the skirt.
You could argue they’re feminizing, and somewhere I read that men’s suits have evolved in cut and design to make the male body less threatening. You could argue that they have the formal appeal and function of a peacock’s tail, signaling financial health and status.
This is perhaps most true of the tails on court coats, fancy and fine yet restrained, conservative, and non-threatening. After all, you cannot exceed your rank.
Fortunately for me, I need only construct a simple linen coat by tomorrow. The back seam was sewn this morning, and I started on the pleats. The pattern lines did not clearly mark the peaks and valleys, so I’ve played with it four times.
Kitty Calash 