Tag Archives: sewing

A Cloak for the Cold

04 Saturday Jan 2014

Posted by in Clothing, Living History, Making Things

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January 11

January 11, 1777. Providence Gazette

We’ve had a bit of snow and cold, which kept me at home (when there’s a parking ban, most businesses have to close, as most parking is on the street here). We have plans in another century this evening, so I thought a second cloak would be in order. The first cloak I made was based on one in the collection at work as well as on a Rhode Island runaway advertisement.

Long blue cloak, in 2012

Although I’m not displeased with the cloak, the length can be annoying and I knew that the blue cloak for a runaway was not what I wanted to wear with the sacque. So I sacrificed some yardage from the Strategic Fabric Reserve, read up on cloaks, and got out my scissors. A cloak is a fairly simple thing to make, so I don’t know why it took all day, beyond getting distracted, making dinner, shoveling, re-learning high school geometry, and trying to do a very careful job.

Hood, with lining, pinned to the body of the cloak

Because I’m tall and have long arms, I made the new cloak a little longer than I would have for a true short cloak: it is easier to trim than to add, though this is pieced on the fronts and on the hood and on the hood lining.

Pieced across the front.

The front piecing is more noticeable than I really like, but that’s how this came out and how cloaks often work out. I won’t really care, as long as I am warm and able to move my arms. When it’s really cold, as it is today, I can wear both red and the blue cloaks with a wool gown and petticoats and wool kerchief. Or perhaps I should just wear a sheep.

Back pleats. By a third cloak, I might get them really right.

I found the trick to getting the pleats/gathers on the hood to flip correctly was to work from the outside, or right side, once the back seam had been sewn up partway. It took three tries to figure that out, but somehow working the pleats/gathers from the right side worked. I did backstitch the pleats/gathers on the inside to hold them in place.

Inside the hood. with lining in place.

In all, this took less than a yard of yellow silk Persian, about half a yard of red wool twill tape, and two yards of crimson broadcloth, all from Wm Booth, and all but the Persian purchased as remnants. There’s a fair amount of broadcloth left, so a yard and a half with aggressive piecing might work, especially if you want a shorter cloak, and are not as tall as I am.

So Hip

02 Thursday Jan 2014

Posted by in A Silk Sacque, Clothing, Making Things, Reenacting

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I don’t always feel the need to enhance my anatomy; in fact, I rarely do, but then I started on the sacque. Ah, the sacque. I nearly abandoned the whole business but then I thought I’d look pretty silly dressed as the maid, or for George Washington’s funeral instead of his birthday party.[1]

I also don’t want to have a house littered with UFOs, because that is what my knitting stash is for. In order for the sacque to look right, I need hips. HIPS.

And while I planned to make panniers AKA pocket hoops, a simpler and easier solution occurred to me. Hip pads: I’d seen them on Sharon’s site and thought I could at least try a pair. They’d help my poor fake quilted petticoat (FQP, long story[2]), which will come in handy for a party in February. So I spent my New Year’s Day making hips and playing a bit with the sacque silk.

Half hipped, or me, right after my hip replacement.
Whole hipped: symmetrical, and wide.

To make the hips, I started out by laying a piece of muslin against Cassandra, and tracing a waist arc. I worked between the muslin and paper to create a paper pattern, and then made up a muslin, which I filled with polyester stuffing and then tested under the FQP. Better, no?

Then I added the seam allowance to the paper pattern (which you can download here and print at 100% if you have a waist in the 30 inch range and want enormous hips yourself) and cut four more of linen.

After three episodes of Death Comes to Pemberly[3], I had hips. They weren’t quite the same size, but my right hip is larger or higher or something, so I put the smaller one on the right and the larger on the left to balance my own deficiencies.

The alteration to the silhouette is pretty amazing, though Mr S did laugh. Perhaps this figure is an acquired taste.

[1] All I have right now to wear with the Celebration Spencer is a black petticoat, so I’d be rocking the 1799 George-is-Dead look.

[2] The story is that I have a real one basted onto a frame but I cannot fit both the frame and a sofa in the apartment. We chose sofa. I am sad but comfy.

[3] I’m ambivalent. Though I do love Trevor Eve, I wondered why there was not more changing of dress for various times of day

The Historical Sew Fortnightly: 2013 review, 2014 plans

12 Thursday Dec 2013

Posted by in Clothing, Historical Sew Fortnightly, Living History, Making Things, Thanks

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The Andes Candies coat at Saratoga

I didn’t get nearly as many things made for the 2013 Historical Sew Fortnightly as I wanted to. Some of the challenges didn’t appeal to me,  but mostly I just couldn’t keep up! Reenacting ate a lot of my life, especially in the late summer and fall. The Andes Candies coat and the What Cheer Day sewing, while totally gratifying, happened when I was thinking about the “Green” color challenge. But, on the positive side, because I’ve waited and played with Spencers, I have a much better pattern plus what I hope will be an entry for HSF #25, the One-Metre Challenge.

Looking ahead to 2014, I can see that July and August are going to be tough. We expect to have a lot going on at work, and the reenacting season will be in full, heavy swing. (Starting July 19th, there are five weeks in a row of events and work. We won’t be able to do everything, so there will be some figuring out to do. Also, our house will be a mess.)

The 2014 Challenges Announced Thus Far:

Last year’s mending. This year: more lost buttons.

Challenge #1, Make Do and Mend, will be a chance to fix things I know are awry. There’s a petticoat hem come undone, some binding that needs reattaching, buttons popped off waistcoats, and haversack straps to be shortened. That’s all without even looking: Imagine what I’ll find if I look (or maybe not, it could get ugly). I think this challenge will help me tidy up after last season, and prepare for the next. There was mending last year, too.

Challenge #2, Innovation, is a little more worrying. I’ve got a major dress project underway, and will have to adapt that to this challenge. Fortunately, I think compere fronts on sacques might count as an innovation, so that will help keep me on track.

Mrs. Elijah Boardman and her Son, William Whiting Boardman. The Huntington Library, 83.8.15

Mrs. Elijah Boardman and her Son, William Whiting Boardman. The Huntington Library, 83.8.15

Challenge #3, Pink! Will probably not be mine. None of the things I plan to make are even remotely pink. I thought I had some pink silk and was about to ditch the sacque for a pink Ralph Earl, but it turns out that silk is more lavender than pink. I looked at some pink silk, but then Sew 18th Century helped convince me to buy the cross-barred silk instead. And, like yellow, pink can be unfortunate on me, unless it is coral. Of course, pink can mean red if you’re making traditional hunting clothes…so this could still get interesting. And I know of a receipt for 5/8 of a yard of pink satin…which sounds to me like a waistcoat.

Challenge #4, Under it All, will probably have to be pocket hoops or other skirt supports for the sacque. I have been working on a faux quilted petticoat, with limited success (it may qualify for make do and mend…), but would need hip pads to round out the silhouette properly. Have you noticed this is a bit out of order? Yes, I need the skirt supports first, but six weeks in advance is plenty of time! Well, from this vantage point, anyway. It’ll look like madness on the other side of New Year’s.

I know I’ll miss deadlines and fall behind, I know I’ll get distracted in the summer and stop reading about all the great things people have made, but thanks to the HSF, I’ve kept more on track and become a better seamstress, than I was a year ago. Many thanks and kudos to the Dreamstress and everyone else around the world who joined in, and will join in, on this international sew-along.

Muff-ed Up

11 Wednesday Dec 2013

Posted by in Clothing, Making Things, Museums, Research

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Remember the Amazon? She has the dressed-up dog and the Muff of Doom. I’ve gotten a little obsessed with her, and that obsession has led to some interesting places.

The Muff of Dooms Past. Poor minks.

For one thing, it’s winter, and everybody has cold hands, so everybody is making muffs.

Here at Crazy Scheme Central, I had thought about making the great Ikea sheepskin Muff of Doom, but that’s a place I generally don’t go until after the Christmas madness, when the store in Stoughton does look as if it had been plundered by orcs.

Instead, I bought a Muff of Dooms Past at an antique store. I wouldn’t buy a new real fur anything, and I do feel bad about the poor minks, but at least no new minks were harmed. Or sheep. But golly, it’s soft and delicious and it’s easy to see why people wanted fur, given that we’re essentially hairless mammals. It measures 11 inches high (not including decoration) by 11 inches wide at the narrowest point, and 14 inches wide at the base.

Pupils of nature Maria Caroline Temple delt. ; TS. sculp. London] : Pubd. April 30, 1798, by S.W. Fores, No. 50 Piccadilly, corner of Sachville [sic] St., [1798]. Lewis Walpole Library Call Number 798.04.30.01+

Pupils of nature Maria Caroline Temple delt. ; TS. sculp. London] : Pubd. April 30, 1798, by S.W. Fores, No. 50 Piccadilly, corner of Sachville [sic] St., [1798]. Lewis Walpole Library Call Number 798.04.30.01+

The Muff of Dooms Past is not nearly as large as the Amazon’s muff, or as large as the ones seen in fashion plates and satires.  The sad little tail-and-paw fringe has precedent (see left), though I believe at least one tail has been lost. As far as I can tell, with no label, this is probably a 1950s muff of local manufacture (there is a fur company, now in Warwick, that started in Providence, and is now going out of business). It could be earlier, but the flexibility of the pelts suggests a more recent vintage.

The Met has some fantastic late 18th/early 19th century muffs of a color that screams warmth. The size of the brighter one is just 8 by 7 inches. In case you think that’s anomalous, here’s another muff of similar type and size.

They seem small compared to the Amazon’s muff, and even the Student of Nature’s. And yet, there they are. It’s hard to know exactly where the measurements were taken, and if they include the extreme fluff of the feathers; I tend to think not, but that the measurements are for the firmest part of the muff. (That’s how we would measure, and then include the largest “fluff” measurements in a ‘special measurements’ field with a note.) There is a 1780-1820 swan’s down muff at the V&A with a record but no photo or measurements.

Satires are hard to use: we know they’re depicting some grain of truth, usually in the background details, but also in what they’re portraying. How do we interpret those enormous muffs? They appear over and over, in consecutive years of satirical engravings and fashion plates. Maybe the way to interpret them is to see those muffs as the extreme end of fashion– Alexander McQueen muffs, if you will– and the extant muffs represent the more reasonable dimensions of fashion. I wouldn’t call red feather muffs typical, and I wouldn’t suggest we all carry them. But based on what exists in museum collections, maybe a smaller-than-satire muff is within the bounds of reason for actual use.

(Not) Spencer Closure

14 Thursday Nov 2013

Posted by in Clothing, Making Things, Research

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Jacob Issacs by Ralph Earl, 1788. Dayton Art Institute

No, I still haven’t written to the museum in Sweden– I had fabric shopping to do. Well, not had to, but when someone offers to take you to a new den of iniquity crack house fabric store you haven’t seen before, you go.

Reader, I scored. Mr S will have a new fabulous and toasty waistcoat thanks to a 5/8 of a yard remnant of the coziest Italian double faced wool I have ever petted. It should be a kitten! Mr Isaacs here has a lovely black waistcoat and while I cannot achieve that fabulousness without a new pattern (sigh) and I think that waistcoat is silk, you get the general green-and-black idea. Mr S totally has that hat.

Coat, French, 1790s. MMA 1999.105.2

But in thinking about the Spencer issue (and yes, I scored some on-sale broadcloth so I can make another one on the way to cutting into that K&P wool), I asked Mr Cooke about clasps, since the Spencers I’m interested in are so very clearly grounded in menswear generally, and uniforms particularly. The answer was what I’d expected: buttons and buttonholes or braid loops on dragoons’ and hussars’ coats, hooks and eyes sandwiched between shell and lining on center-front closing uniform coats.

So I went back to look at menswear, because somewhere the phrase “miniature frock coat” rattled in my head, and I knew I wanted to re-draft the pattern for the front anyway, to get closer to the high stand and fall collar of the Swedish original.

The other collection that’s extremely useful is the LACMA collection, because they have patterns up on their website.

Man's Banyan Textile: China; robe: the Netherlands, Textile: 1700–50; robe: 1750–60 (M.2007.211.797)

Man’s Banyan
Textile: 1700–50; robe: 1750–60 (M.2007.211.797)

I’ve already started to crib a new two-part sleeve pattern from a frock coat pattern, so now I think the next step to getting the look I want is to crib from the LACMA banyan pattern. It’s earlier than the Spencer by some 30 years or more, but the neckline looks like a better place to start.

And, bonus, along the way I’ll learn more about menswear to the ultimate benefit of those guys I sew for.