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Kitty Calash

~ Confessions of a Known Bonnet-Wearer

Kitty Calash

Tag Archives: Quakers

Free-for-All Friday

24 Friday Jun 2016

Posted by kittycalash in Events, History, Living History, Reenacting, Research

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18th century, authenticity, common people, interpretation, living history, Monmouth NJ, New Jersey, Quakers, Research, Revolutionary War

Well, at least I can dress myself.

Well, at least I can dress myself.

Most sadly, my obnoxious yellow gown will not be finished for this coming weekend, so I will not be flaunting my goods in such flashy clothing. Instead, I will be dressed like a giant version of the darling Miss B, whom I fear does wear the Space Invaders print better than I.

The real point, of course, is the action expected for Saturday, June 25, at the Craig House. The press release is fairly general about how we’ll be representin’ New Jersey’s 18th century civil war, and no one has leaped up to portray Little Anthony the [Quaker] Insurrectionist, but here’s the scene:

Craig House is empty the day of the battle. John Craig is with the Continental Army, leaving Ann Craig to flee with chattel, child, and two slaves in two wagons. This leaves the house and remaining property vulnerable to occupation and depredation.

An armed member of the Association for Retaliation is snooping around the Craig house and catches Loyalist and Quaker refugees who are squatting/hiding, as well as a “London” trader. He can’t let them go, and he is afraid to move them for fear of the British by day and the Tories by night. The Retaliator is joined by a local farmer who has stopped by to check on Mrs Craig’s safety in the surrounding commotion of the troops moving towards the coming battle. 

“Disaffected” smugglers use the chaos of the war in New Jersey to continue trading with the British and Loyalists. The “London trade” feeds the taste for tea, fabrics, rum, lemons, and sugar that even the Revolutionaries cannot shake.

Quakers are viewed with suspicion and animosity for their pacifist, anti-slavery views, which gives the impression that they are Loyalists. Harassed in Philadelphia by various committees requisitioning blankets and other goods; by 1778, the Quakers’ abolitionist views make them vastly unpopular in Monmouth County.

These characters in search of a plot will encounter each other at Craig House and, with some history improv, portray the tension and conflict between New Jersey residents in the Revolutionary period. Want to come out? Craig House is here, and a visitors’ guide is here.

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Malaise or Ennui?

09 Tuesday Sep 2014

Posted by kittycalash in Clothing, Events, Fail, Living History, Making Things, Philosophy, Reenacting

≈ 17 Comments

Tags

19th century, 19th century clothing, authenticity, Clothing, common dress, Costume, Events, fashion, history, interpretation, Newport, Newport Historical Society, Quaker, Quakers, Rhode Island, Rhode Island history, style

image Hard to say which, but I am ill at ease and dissatisfied with my costuming. You might even call it bratty. But I don’t wanna be like Bridget Connor!

It started the week of the Stamp Act protest, when I felt quite tired of being the shabby, unrefined woman of the regiment and street vendor, and wanted a nice cozy shop like the milliner had. I was also looking forward to being a housekeeper again, and several weeks of moving boxes and volumes with red rot at work had me feeling generally filthy and unappreciated. Bratty.

When in doubt, sew. A new dress can’t help but cheer you up, right?

Well… sort of…

Last Thursday, we did a reprise of the Williams family letters program at the Newport Historical Society. The Williams family were Quakers, and the letters were from the early part of the 19th century, so for the program in March, I made a green silk cross-front gown based on the Quaker gown in the back of Costume in Detail. (Check out the schematic on the 19thus.come page; I didn’t see this until I was mostly done with the dress, but thank goodness I got it right!)

But it’s September, and Thursday was expected to be quite warm, so I salved my bureaucratic wounds in the $1.99 loft at the local mill store, and made a new Quaker gown, also suitable for a maid.

I ask you! Even though it’s my very own pattern based on sketches of original drawings, even though it fits, even though it cost $10, even though every seam is overcast and the whole thing is made with period correct stitches, it still fails to make me happy and cheerful and delighted.

image

This brattiness has resulted in a reappraisal of my approach– and a trip to Sewfisticated in Framingham. What did I buy there? Yards and yards of pink taffeta? Gold taffeta? Blue taffeta?

No.

Because they didn’t have the right colors in the right weave– too slubby– or in enough yardage. Brace yourselves: I bought brown.

Many thanks to Sew 18th Century for taking the photos!

Many thanks to Sew 18th Century for taking the photos!

It appears I do not learn from my mistakes. When I think, “Gee, I’d like a pretty dress,” I end up buying fabric based on the texture as much as the color, and I have to tell you, that brown taffeta has the most wonderful l hand and sheen, and I will look much more like a Copley portrait than I ever have before, so that’s something.

It seems I have created a set of mental rules for myself, a mission, if you will, for the historic clothing I sew and the roles I take on, and I only play within those rules.

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Friends in Newport

28 Thursday Aug 2014

Posted by kittycalash in Events, History, Living History

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19th century, 19th century clothing, Newport, Newport Historical Society, Quaker dress, Quakers

Costumed interpreters as 19th century Quakers

Interpreters at Newport Historical Society, February 2014. Photo courtesy Newport Historical Society staff

I’m so glad I have friends in Newport. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t get over to the Island nearly as often as I do now.

Next Thursday, I’ll be joining friends in Newport next week for a program based on letters in the Newport Historical Society’s collection.  This program will be much like the one I was part of earlier this year, but open to the public.

The letters are really interesting and entertaining, providing a window into Newport history that I know you cannot hear anywhere else.

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The Society of Friends

09 Sunday Mar 2014

Posted by kittycalash in Clothing, Events, History, Museums

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

19th century clothing, fashion, living history, Newport, Newport Historical Society, Quaker dress, Quakers, reading, Rhode Island, Seventh Day Baptist Meeting House, style

Courtesy Newport Historical Society

Courtesy Newport Historical Society

Last Friday, I joined my friends in Newport for a program at the Newport Historical Society.

We stood in the Seventh Day Baptist Meeting House behind the NHS’s headquarters building and read excerpts of letters from the Williams Collection.

This is a simple, elegant concept for a program, and works incredibly well if the correspondence have the gift for expression that these people did. Even quotidian details–the price someone wants to get for their dining set, the likelihood of moving one’s mother, who must be carried ‘as carefully as a box of China’–take on humor when read aloud.

Courtesy Newport Historical Society

Courtesy Newport Historical Society

The best letter might well have been the last one, read by Sew 18th  Century. The latest of the selection, the writer described a visit to Newport around 1844, arriving at the dock to the bustle of wagons, walking streets and finding a barber who knew the old fish hawker, the enormous jaw bone of a whale on a street corner, and even lifting the latch to walk inside the Seventh Day Baptist Meeting House where we were standing.

It was a lovely way to end the program, resonant with details the audience could connect with.

My dress turned out all right, and I managed to get it on and keep it on, which seemed a small miracle requiring only two pins.

When I tried it on at home, the front panel didn’t wrinkle, so I think I pulled it too tightly around me on Friday. I kept my bonnet on because I didn’t have time to make a new cap, so made do with the housekeeper’s cap from last fall. The chemisette was made by Cassidy, and saved me from the migratory ‘charms’ of a kerchief. The ‘shawl’ was a gift  Christmas from my mother, who rightly saw it as a scarf, but those who wish to keep warm do not quibble when they cannot find exactly what they want. Before I wear the dress again, I have to attend to interior seams of the skirt and scoot the cuffs down to lengthen the sleeves. Four yards of 48-inch wide silk was just enough, but needs a little tweaking when you’re a tall as I am.

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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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