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Kitty Calash

~ Confessions of a Known Bonnet-Wearer

Kitty Calash

Tag Archives: Etsy

A Ruffled Apron

20 Monday Apr 2020

Posted by kittycalash in Living History

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aprons, covid-19, downloads, Etsy, history at home, patterns, sewing, things to make, vintage style

Last summer, in the midst of revisiting my vintage obsessions, I bought a pretty vintage apron online. It wasn’t quite large enough for me (some vintage things are, most are not), but it seemed like a pretty easy task to pattern and resize it for myself. Some months later, after working on other patterns and projects, I finally finished this one.

It seemed like the perfect time, now that I am home and wearing an apron much more often than I used to. For one thing, there’s more time to do housework and more need since we are always here; and, for another, I am definitely cooking more now that three of us are eating every meal at home (and one of us is a college boy, so the milk disappears at an alarming rate). I haven’t worn an apron this often since I was in college and Exene Cervenka was my style icon.

I’m pretty pleased with my vintage-not-historic project and have enjoyed wearing it. The fabric (just a hair over a yard) came from Hart’s Fabric, and while I would have preferred black bias tape, I had to use what I had on hand. Another decorative option would be a folded hem edge backed with rick-rack.

I thought about my Aunt Fran a lot making up the apron and drafting the pattern. While she ran a gift shop and tea room with my Uncle Ned in western New York State, they lived on a farm with a decrepit barn and enormous garden and, when I first knew them, a refrigerator some twenty or thirty years behind the times.

It might have been this one

The kitchen seemed cavernous, and I enjoyed helping make salad for the big dinners we had on August evenings, when all the cousins assembled from Colorado, North Dakota, and Illinois. I remember picking vegetables in my uncle’s extensive garden and my grandmother’s aluminum salad bowl more clearly than I remember Aunt Fran’s aprons, but making do, planning ahead, and being prepared were traits she (and the rest of my family) embodied, but with style.

That’s how I think of this apron: practical, but stylish, for when you have to work but also want to have some fun (I am all about finding ways to enjoy work.)

In that spirit, I made up the apron and made a pattern now available for download on Etsy. (I’m still shipping, but the paper version won’t be available for a day or so.) Maybe you’ll enjoy making a quick project that’s practical and pretty.

Pattern Cover
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Pattern Launch

08 Friday Mar 2019

Posted by kittycalash in Making Things

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bed gowns, Etsy, patterns, workshops

Last weekend, I had the pleasure of teaching a bed gown workshop at Washington Crossing Historic Park, using a pattern I developed after looking at extant garments, images, and messing about with muslins for several years. What I see– and I know there are different schools of thought– is a shift in the cut of bed gowns over the course of the middle decades of the 18th century. It looks to me as if bed gowns, like gowns, start to have smaller sleeves (for smaller cuffs), and to be a little slimmer in the body.

I’m really happy with bed gown I made, after two earlier iterations (and a wrapper).

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The difference is subtle from the front, but the wearing is the test. And I never wore the white one! (Though I still have enough of that fabric to make another bed gown.)

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There’s less fabric across the back of the blue bed gown, and I like that better than the more full gown, which I think trends a little earlier than the style of the white one.

Looking at runaway ads, prints, and extant garments, it began to dawn on me that really, the preferred garment fabric was a print, sometimes printed linen (“washed until the flowers have faded nearly white,” in one instance) but often printed cotton, calico, or chintz. In one ad, a servant wearing a dark calico bed gown ran away with a calico gown and a calico bedgown, and must have made a colorful sight with her striped petticoat– and a small looking glass.

In another instance, a woman ran away wearing a gown and a bedgown, trick I wish I’d known about earlier, for active winter events when a cloak was a hindrance. Reading ads and looking at images in a focused way helped me realize what so many people already grasped: that bed gowns are a seriously useful garment. As one test fitter put it, “It’s comfy, like it’s an 18th century sweatshirt.” Proof that the more we consider something, the better we understand it, and the more we may come to value it.

If you’d like to make your own, the pattern is available on Etsy. Full sized paper pattern includes all sizes A to G (finished bust 30″ to 54″) and illustrated instructions.

Bonus: I got adorable squirrel-themed thank yous that liven up my desktop!

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With a Down Look (as she looks for what she’s forgotten)

01 Friday Mar 2019

Posted by kittycalash in Living History

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American Revolution, bed gowns, Etsy, patterns, teaching, workshops

The patterns and instruction packets are printed, folded, and stuffed in envelopes; the fabric is washed and almost all cut (but needs more pressing); and the car needs gas. But other than that, and loading the car and packing my clothes and irons and … you get the idea… I’m ready!

On Monday, there will be a few paper patterns to post on Etsy, so if you’re looking for a bed gown pattern suitable for 1775-1785 with step-by-step instructions and a slimmer line, check out my store early next week.

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Hoods and Caps and Bonnets, oh my!

07 Monday Jan 2019

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

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

18th century clothing, common dress, Etsy, hoods, millinery, winter

Griselda Countess Stanhope. Mezzotint engraving by James McArdell after Allen Ramsay. British Museum, ca 1760

Let’s take a closer look at Griselda, Countess Stanhope. She wears a hood over a fine white cap, as well as a hooded cloak. Around her neck, she wears a fur tippet, and her hands are snuggled into a muff. While most of the “common” women in the colonies wouldn’t rise to the Countess’s ermine tippet, they did have hoods.

Thomas Howe Ridgate’s inventory taken 19 June 1790 in Charles County Maryland includes “3 velvet and silk hoods,” while Mrs. Elizabeth Lawson’s inventory, taken 3 May 1766 in Prince Georges County Maryland includes one velvet hood and one “Allamod” hood. (She also has “1 old Striped Bonnet,” as well as 2 Womens New Capes, and 1 Womans Life everlasting Petticoat, which bears further investigation.)

Hoods appear fairly regularly in prints, worn over caps (as in Countess Stanhope), under hats, and even under bonnets, as in this print from the Victoria & Albert Museum.

January, engraving, ca. 1780. E.3520-1953. Victoria & Albert Museum

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The mantelet hood worn over the bonnet, hood, and cap layers.

In the images above, I’m wearing a white cap, black silk hood, and black “stuff” bonnet, with a black silk mantlet over a silk neck-handkerchief. The hood needs some tweaking, size-wise, but the layers definitely recreate what we see in the print of “January.” The bonnet has an adjustable caul, so will easily fit over hair, cap, and hood; the hood has a drawstring closure at the neck that helps keep out the wind. Taken altogether, these layers are definitely insulating! Looking like an 18th century engraving is almost a bonus– but when you wear what they wore, you look like they did.

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2019 Planning Survey

03 Thursday Jan 2019

Posted by kittycalash in Making Things, Reenacting

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Etsy, planning, survey

Gentle readers: I’m planning 2019 and while I have some ideas for new things to offer on Etsy, I’m also open to your input.

On my mind for this year: winter hoods, new collapsing bonnets, and shaped reticules. What’s on your mind?

Please do me the favor of completing this survey!

 

Thanks!

 

 

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