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Kitty Calash

~ Confessions of a Known Bonnet-Wearer

Kitty Calash

Tag Archives: costuming

Hints for a New Hobby

29 Monday Apr 2019

Posted by kittycalash in Living History, Making Things, material culture, Reenacting, Research

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

costuming, living history, Making Things, progressive reenacting, Research, sewing

The historical costuming/living history/reenacting hobby can be a daunting one to pick up. When I started, I was fortunate to have a background making things, including sewing my own clothes, as well as a career that taught me research skills, and gave me easy access to primary sources. Those factors made skill building relatively easy, though I definitely had a learning curve specific to what I was doing. As the season opens and people start to ease into new units, I thought about things I found that made this hobby a little easier to manage, and skills easier to acquire.

Same years....
Same years….
different class levels
different class levels

Know who (and when) you are. When you step into the past, who are you? Where are you from? What year are you representing? With answers to these questions, you can begin to sort out what you need to know, and where you need to look for answers. What you’ll wear in North Carolina is not what you will wear in coastal New England. The styles of 1750 are not the same as those of 1780– and fashion information traveled quickly from England to America. American colonists were as stylish (or more so) than their English counterparts. Wearing a gown 20 years out of date without alterations is only going to work well if that gown really shows its age (and you do, too).

Learn to do research. If you are going to strike out totally on your own, you need to be able to do research and sift through the sources you find to understand and interpret them appropriately for your situation. What is right for Costume College may well not be right for a camp follower, no matter how accurate the fabrics or construction. It seems so obvious (and in the case of a silk sacque back gown, it really is) but in other ways it’s not. Jackets aren’t going to be right in New England, and calicos are more common in Philadelphia and Rhode Island than they are in Boston.

Lance needles: the best I've used.
Lance needles: the best I’ve used.
Rowenta steam iron
Rowenta steam iron

Buy good tools. Really: tools matter. Sharp shears, sharp thread snips, good, sharp needles, sturdy pins, a pin cushion, a cutting grid, a steam iron, a sleeve board, a sturdy ironing board: all of these things make my sewing life so much better. (I actually own three ironing boards: a full size board, a table top board, and a sleeve board and use them all.) Tailor’s hams are also useful– that’s what I steam my caps on.

Ruffle attachment in progress. Possible thanks to the material and the needle.

Use good materials. Good fabric is expensive, but what’s your time worth? If you calculate the per-wearing cost of a garment, you’ll find that the “cost” decreases over time. One of my favorite gowns is made of $2.99/yard fabric from a mill store in Rhode Island. (I was very lucky to find a woven check that matched one in a RI sample book.) I bought five yards, so $15. I’ve worn that gown more times than I can count, and it is perfectly filthy. If we calculate $450 for hand sewing, the total cost is $465. Since April 2014, I have worn that gown 12 times (that I recall), making the per-wearing cost $38.75. I’d call that a good value. If we count just the yardage, it’s $1.25 a wearing and honestly, you cannot do better that that.

IMG_7948
IMG_7947

When it comes to shifts, the ultimate per-wearing cost is even less. My most recent shift of hand-woven linen with vintage linen sleeves would have been $450 in materials, and $425 in hand-sewing. $875 seems crazy, right? Consider the shift I made in 2011, worn to almost every 18th century event I’ve attended (I had two); I’ve worn that shift….45 times that I can recall. That’s $20.83 per wearing, a better value over time than the $2.99/yard gown. If a soldier’s coat can cost $800, and you are going to every event your soldier goes to, an $800 shift is as good a value as the coat, and possibly more essential.

Cost aside, the value of good materials is in the time they save in making. Well-woven linen is easier to sew and will need less mending over time. Sharp shears cut cleaner. Sharp needles sew better, and smaller needles give you finer stitches.

d’oh! surgical tape made this *much* better later.

Learn to sew with a thimble. Your fingers will thank you. I use a leather thimble with a metal tip (from the quilting notions section) and it helps. Thimbles are essential when sewing heavier fabrics like broadcloth and indispensable if you make your own stays (and you can expect bleeding even with a thimble).

Practice patience. Learning a new skill, or refining one you already have, takes time. It isn’t always fun. I get sick of sewing, and have to switch to something else (like cutting out, or research, or patterning) or take a break. Recognize that frustration is often the moment before you master something new, but also know when frustration means it’s time to stop. Just as we build muscle on rest days, our brains process skills when we stop. Then, the next time we pick something up, we’ll be stronger, or more skillful, than if we hadn’t stopped. (This New York Times article was helpful, and inspired this post.)

A purchased bonnet because it’s one I can’t make.

Buy what you cannot make. I thought I needed to make everything myself (with the exception of men’s hats and buttons) but that’s just not true. If you can’t manage fine sewing, buy a cap! If you hate assembling tricky things, buy mitts or a bonnet. I bought caps when I couldn’t make them as well as I wanted, and it saved me hours of frustration. I love flamestitch pinballs, but I can’t manage that needlework yet; lucky for me, I know someone who excels at it, so I can buy from her. Other people have skills, and buying things from them will save you time and frustration, so you can focus on what you really want to do.

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Not by Half (robes)

12 Friday Sep 2014

Posted by kittycalash in Clothing, Research

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

1790s, 18th century clothing, common dress, common people, Costumes, costuming, engravings, half robes

two ladies looking out a window in 1790s garments

The Frail Sisters, 12 May 1794. British Museum, 2010,7081.1077

Here’s the British Museum’s description of this print: “Two young women dressed in fine clothes in a room with decorated wallpaper, one sitting in front of the window looking onto the street, with a pet squirrel on her lap, turning to smile towards the viewer and pointing at herself, while the other stands behind her chair on the right. 12 May 1794.” It’s good to get the pet squirrel question out of the way.

This is another print that’s hard for us to read completely: you might wonder why they’re called the Frail sisters. Is Frail a proper noun, an adjective, or something else? It’s probably code: frail here may well refer to the strength of their morals rather than their biceps.

he frail sisters John Raphael Smith (1752-1812) Chalk (black and coloured) on paper (given a light grey ground) Height: 19.4 cm (circular); Acquisition Witt, Robert Clermont (Sir); bequest; 1952 D.1952.RW.4037, Copyright: © The Samuel Courtauld Trust, The Courtauld Gallery, London

The frail sisters
John Raphael Smith (1752-1812)
Chalk (black and coloured) on paper (given a light grey ground) Height: 19.4 cm (circular);
Witt, Robert Clermont (Sir); bequest; 1952
D.1952.RW.4037, Copyright: © The Samuel Courtauld Trust, The Courtauld Gallery, London

There’s another Frail Sisters drawing, also 18th century, probably late 1780s-early 1790s. This is appears to be a ‘straight’ drawing, but I don’t know: it could be an artist’s portrait of three prostitutes at play. Or it could be actresses (they weren’t so very far from prostitutes and courtesans).

Mrs Frail appears in William Congreve’s Love for Love; do these images also reference characters first seen in Restoration comedies? This is stuff I haven’t thought about in a long time, so I can’t yet unpack how the title and meaning of the print relate to what the women are wearing. And I might be over-thinking things a bit, so let’s step back and just look.

What is the standing sister wearing?

A half-robe, indoors. Time of day, indeterminate, but perhaps morning.

The Farmer's Door. George Morland, London: Published by J. R. Smith, King Street, Covent Garden, Aug. 4, 1790

The Farmer’s Door. George Morland, London: Published by J. R. Smith, King Street, Covent Garden, Aug. 4, 1790

A somewhat easier image to read is the print after George Morland’s The Farmer’s Door, from 1790. This genre painting presents the romanticized vision of humble life, with the farmer’s wife and her children (note the blue stays on the seated child).

Is the farmer’s wife wearing a half-robe over a quilted petticoat and apron? The quality of the images I can find is poor, and the coloring questionable.

In another version here, the kerchief is clearer and seems to go over a long-sleeved garment with a short skirt.

Selling Carrots by George Morland Date painted: 1795 Oil on canvas, 76 x 63.5 cm Collection: Brighton and Hove Museums and Art Galleries

Selling Carrots
by George Morland
Date painted: 1795
Oil on canvas, 76 x 63.5 cm
Collection: Brighton and Hove Museums and Art Galleries

In Selling Carrots, there is another short-skirted garment with long sleeves worn over a petticoat and with a kerchief.

Without getting overly distracted by titles and meaning, I think there are clues to how these half-robes or jackets are worn by women of different classes, aspirations, and locations. For rural women who are not gentry, these appear to be comfortable working clothes worn all day. For urban women, they seem to be worn early in the day, and sometimes out of doors, perhaps even to the lending library.

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Half Robe or Jacket: How Do You Wear One?

10 Wednesday Sep 2014

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

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

18th century clothing, 19th century clothing, bonnets, Costume in Detail, Costumes, costuming, Federal style, frock coats, half robes, Isaac Cruikshank, living history, National Trust Collections UK, Regency, Research, resources, tailcoat, What Cheer Day, Yale Center for British Art

Half robe, 1790-1800. National Trust Inventory Number 1348749,

Half robe, 1790-1800.
National Trust Inventory Number 1348749,

What Cheer Day is coming, and I hate to miss an opportunity to make a new gown (despite having just made one, and despite needing to make some waistcoats and trousers for the event). While I lay awake last night, I pondered my options, and whether a half gown would be suitable.

Although I have concluded it probably is not, I was curious about how these should be worn. Where can you wear such a garment? Is it only suitable for at-home use?

This is the robe from Nancy Bradfield’s Costume in Detail, replicated by Koshka the Cat here, and approximately by me, here.

CostumeinDetail_p84
CostumeinDetail_page83

Since I will be a housekeeper again, I think a gown is more correct for me, but that doesn’t stop me thinking about half robes, and whilst scrolling images by year at the Yale Center for British Art, I found this by Cruikshank:

ladies in a lending library

Isaac Cruikshank, 1756–1810, British, The Lending Library, between 1800 and 1811, Watercolor, black ink and brown ink on medium, lightly textured, beige wove paper, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection

There’s a lot to love in this image, even with its fuzzy “between 1800 and 1811” date. Not only do we get an array of reading material (Novels, Romance, Sermons, Tales, Voyages & Travels, Plays), we get costume tips and– special bonus– a dog gnawing its leg.

(If you are curious about some of the books in the Library at the John Brown House, check out this tumblr bibliography. I’ve been using it of late, and the representative genres are quite similar to what we see in the Cruikshank.)

We also get a chemisette on the lady at the counter, along with a very dashing hat, a fancy tiered necklace on the lady in pink, who also carries a green…umbrella? Parasol? With just a veil, that seems likelier than the longest reticule ever.

I like our Lady in a Half-Robe and her deep-brimmed bonnet showing curls at her brow. She and her companions show the range of white and not-white clothing seen in early 19th century fashion plates, and the range of head wear, too.

Undress for August, 1799. Museum of London

Undress for August, 1799. Museum of London

The last question I’m asking myself, though, is whether the yellow garment is a half-robe or a short pelisse or a jacket. And can you wear a half robe out of doors? And what did the ladies of the period call that garment?

In this fashion plate (featured by Bradfield on page 84, found by me at the Museum of London), the lady on the right is certainly wearing a short upper body garment, and I’d wager that she’s out of doors or headed that way, since she’s carrying a (green) parasol. Bradfield calls her garment a “jacket,” and until I can find the text of the Ladies’ Monthly Museum for August 1799, perhaps that is the term we should use instead.

While two images aren’t a lot of evidence, it does appear possible to wear a half-robe or jacket out of doors for informal visits in clement weather, and finding two is as good a reason as any to look for more.

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