April: Buttons and Fastenings

April's challenge was buttons and fastenings, and at first I was completely stumped by that prompt! Ladies' clothing in the 18th century doesn't have cool fastenings, or at least not ones that are both functional and pretty! I contemplated sewing a riding habit, and making death's head buttons to go on it, but I don't really need another riding habit, or anything else with buttons. I started looking at different extant garments in online collections, and kept finding myself drawn to yellow silk jackets and gowns - then inspiration struck! I could make a yellow silk jacket with a stomacher, which functions as the fastener, since it keeps the jacket closed.

The stomacher goes on first, pinned to the stays, and then the jacket pins closed to the edges

 I quickly realized that I could expand this project. After all, one of the things that I'm most passionate about is self expression through historical fashions, and this was a great interpretive opportunity. If I added black bows to the stomacher and paired it with a black petticoat, I could talk about how fashion is interpreted in both the 18th and the 21st century, and hopefully draw parallels between the two.

In the 18th century, after the American Revolution, black was often seen as a color that showed support for the new American government. We may wear red, white, and blue to be patriotic today, but black would have also been recognized as a patriotic color in the late 1770's through the 1790's. So, in the 18th century, my black petticoat shows that I am most definitely not a loyalist!

It's only fitting that I began this project while watching the Stanley Cup Playoffs!

In the 21st century, my outfit can be interpreted a little differently. Specific colors and color pairings in clothing today often represent support for a specific team or school, and I wanted my new jacket and petticoat to do that too. Even though I live in Virginia now, I was born and raised in Pennsylvania, and all of Pittsburgh's teams have the same color scheme: black and yellow (gold). As someone who loves hockey, I can dress like a bumblebee to show my support for the Penguins!

The entire outfit is silk, and the jacket is lined with linen. I won't be able to wear it every day at work, although I should be able to wear it on days at the Capitol or the Palace, when I can be a little bit fancier. I was very fortunate however to be presented with an opportunity to wear my new ensemble almost right away! Colonial Williamsburg hosts a spring garden party every year that is an incredible event, and one of my friends invited me to go with her! I finished my jacket and petticoat in time, and also helped two of my friends pattern and sew new gowns to wear as well!

I even got to wear a wig to the party! And it had a bird in it!

The garden party was wonderful, and the fireworks at the end were fantastic!

For the actual construction of the garments, I didn't do anything too fancy. I leaned pretty heavily on the J. P. Ryan Ladies' Jacket pattern, as well as a few extant garments in the V&A and the Met in order to draft my pattern, and simply added bows to the stomacher. I did have to hem all of the ribbon by hand, as you simply can't find good, wide, taffeta ribbon anymore, even though it was available in the 18th century.

The ribbons decreased in size as they went down the stomacher, which looks great, but takes some planning!

The petticoat was also pretty simple, I sewed a standard petticoat and then added ribbon I had cut from the same silk, with the edges pinked, and then gathered.

April was such a nice month that I could sew outside most days!

Pinked and gathered trim...

...courtesy of my awesome pinking shears!

 I was delighted to meet a few people at the Garden Party who recognized my outfit's nod to Pennsylvania, and it was a lot of fun to dive in to discussions about the evolution of color and self expression over the last 250 years of fashion!

Talking about fashion history while sewing at work is obviously one of my favorite things!

I am eventually planning to sew some matching garters for this ensemble, but until then I will simply say... Let's go Pens!

Day 29: Ensemble

I had big plans for this post, but unfortunately a couple of things derailed it. Primarily, getting sick and not having anyone to help take photos were the biggest factors, but the rainstorm today and the fact that my outfit is mostly silk certainly didn't help either!

If you remember a few days ago, when I posted about my UFO, I said that I was hoping to get it done in the near future - the near future is now! The original gown, from Snowshill Manor, was made of white silk, but for an outfit perfect for both travel and autumn I thought that brown silk would work better (and be far more practical).

In addition to the fact that the entire outfit is made of brown silk - petticoat, stomacher, and jacket - there are many things you can add on to this outfit to make it a true ensemble, and this gown is specifically 'accessorizable' since both travel and changing weather require lots of accessories! In the photo, I've paired it with a brown felt hat that I might add trim to in the future. However, I could also also wear my calash with it, a market bonnet, a different brown calash (I have some scrap silk I'm contemplating using for that), or a hood. Additionally, I can wear a cape or a mantle with this gown, and mitts or a muff for especially cold weather. It can also be worn with or without hoops.

Essentially, I'm hoping that this outfit will be my most versatile one yet, and that there will be lots of ensemble possibilities here! As soon as the skies clear and I start to feel better I'll hunt down some friends and edit this post with some new pictures of all the different ways you can make an ensemble out of one 18th century outfit. Until then, happy sewing!

Day 10: Visual Source

            As an interpreter in Colonial Williamsburg, I’m in costume every single day. While I sometimes wear my own 18^th century clothing after sending it through the review board, most of the time I wear clothing from my allotment, made by our Costume Design Center. About a month ago, I paired my brown jacket with my blue petticoat, and one of my friends told me that I looked like a painting she knew!

The Chocolate Girl, by Jean-Étienne Liotard, 1745

            Obviously, I looked it up, and the similarities were striking.

            It only took me a moment to decide to replicate the rest of the outfit (and maybe the petticoat and jacket eventually, but not quite yet). The apron would be easy to make, and the cap, while slightly different than other caps that I’d made before, wouldn’t present too much of a challenge.

            For the apron, I was fortunate that I had a length of linen in my sewing stash, so I whipped up a pinner front apron using the portrait and a few other extant garments as my references. I mostly used the apron from Costume Close-Up, although I altered a few of the measurements to make it fit both my body proportions and the look of the portrait better.

            The cap was a bit different, since I had to do some more guess work and a lot more research, but it did come together. You’ve probably already seen my post from Day 2, but if you haven’t you can go back and check it out.

            The final step was to stage a photo shoot in the only place that made sense – the Charlton Coffeehouse! They serve sipping chocolate made using an 18^th century recipe, and so I posed with one of their trays and some china, and the help of a few of my friends.

Day 6: Book Recommendation

            I have a lot of costuming books, and especially historical costuming books. So, choosing a favorite is pretty difficult. However, Fitting and Properstands out to me, being one of my first costuming books, as well as the first book I drafted a pattern from.

            My parents got it for me as a reward for finishing an extra online class ahead of schedule, as well as buying me my first pair of 18^th century shoes. I’ve sewn a gown, mitts, shortgown, and a calash so far from the patterns in the book, and it couldn’t have been easier to follow!

            In a similar vein to The Cut of Women’s Clothes, the book places traced patterns on a grid, so they’re easy to reproduce exactly as they exist in real life, but they can also be sized up or down to fit each individual. The book also provides the thread count for the materials, instructions for the construction, photos of the original garments, and a written history of both the generic idea of the type of garment as well as the extant piece itself.

            I highly recommend this book, especially for those costumers who are just entering the historical costuming world, or anyone who is learning how to draft patterns. And, even if you don’t make anything from it, it’s still a wonderful book to flip through and learn from!

A Jacket and a Holiday

I posted a bit ago and mentioned that I bought new fabrics during a sale at Mary Dickinson's. Well, I have already made a new jacket with one of the fabrics that I bought!

I wanted to make a swallowtail jacket, so I used the JP Ryan jacket patterns and did view D with a modified front that pins closed like view A.

Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures of the construction, because I sewed the entire jacket in one day during work, and therefore couldn't take my phone out to snap any documentation. I cut out the fabric the night before, and after leaving work the next day I put on the recently finished jacket and wore it to a cricket match.

Then, on the Fourth of July, I paired my new blue and white jacket with a red petticoat, a white apron, and a red silk market bonnet that I whipped up that morning and trimmed with a white ribbon for a most patriotic look. Even though I had the day off, I went into work to compete in the annual Independence Day tug-of-war. I was on the Patriot's side, and we won two out of three times!

I'll try to do another post on market bonnets soon, hopefully with all of the documentation that they deserve - they seem to be coming into fashion in the reenactment community, and I want to have one easy reference to send anyone with questions to! I have been sewing a lot of market bonnets recently, both for myself and as commissioned work, so if anyone is interested in buying one, please feel free to contact me! (I've been charging about half of the going rate on Etsy, so it's a good deal, and they're entirely hand sewn!)

I Finally Sewed a Realistic Outfit

I desperately want to experience 18th century life. However, I'm more into the balls and silk gowns than the washing and cooking. So, as a result of that, I have a lot of upperclass clothing, but nothing I can get dirty. This is problematic, because I am in William and Mary's reenacting club, the College Company, and my impression is that of a camp follower - definitely not a lady from the gentry class!

When I made the blue striped gown over the summer, I intended that to be my reenactment dress. And it has been for most of the year, but I still felt a little overdressed at some events, and I was still hesitant to get it dirty - it was a replica, after all!

So, I knew that I needed to make something even more casual - a shortgown.

Over spring break, my mom and I spent a Mother-Daughter Day together shopping, and we revisited Verna's Fabrics, the same store that I bought the material for my Dolley Madison dress from. I was initially shopping for some cotton with sewing themed prints so that I could make modern clothes that express my love for being a seamstress, but I was also keeping an eye out for anything I could use for a historical project. I found two great cotton prints (I've already used one of them, I'll post about them when I've finished both projects), as well as a nice white cotton with a small purple design that I'll be turning into another Regency gown. At the far end of the store, after our cart was pretty full, I saw a barrel with rolls of fabric sticking out of it. The fabric was soft and in a lot of pretty colors, and the sign above read 'Homespun'. I was ecstatic. This was just what I needed! So, I grabbed a roll of the prettiest purple fabric, and bought enough to make a shortgown.

The gorgeous fabric with some pins and markings, ready to be cut.

I am very fortunate to have such great friends, because when I got back to school, my wonderful friend Fiona, from Ruffles, Not Rifles offered to help me pattern and drape it! We spent a fun Sunday afternoon cutting it out and getting the back pleats right, and then I started sewing! We looked at Costume Close Up for references, but shortgowns are easy to pattern because they're just rectangles and straight lines. It went very quickly, which was good - it meant I still had time to sew a petticoat and an apron before the National Event at Mount Vernon!

Starting to cut it out...

...Fiona cutting it so I can take pictures...
(These pictures were taken the last week of April - our apartment is just really proud of our Christmas decorations)

...and the basic shape of a shortgown! The bit on the side that sticks out from the curve allows for a pleat.

I tried it on immediately after cutting to make sure that it would fit

and then Fiona draped the pleats on me so that it was a little more fitted!

These are the pleats from the back, pinned in place.

The basic shortgown, all pinned and ready to be sewn!

I still had some leftover white linen from my shift laying around, so I turned that into an apron. Then, using some 'larkspur blue' linen that I got from a sale on fabrics-store.com, I whipped up a petticoat. I was especially in need of a new petticoat to wear with my shortgown, since my other petticoats are all made out of questionable materials... To make my petticoat even more special, I used twill tape from the Fort Frederick Market Fair that I attended a few weeks ago! The color is an almost perfect match!

The outfit came together in about four days, and I got to wear it for the reenactment this past weekend! Unfortunately, it was a little cold, so all of the finished pictures I have also feature my cape, but I'll post more of just the new outfit soon.

This is me and my friend Morgan - the shortgown had just lost a pin, so it's gaping a little, but I fixed it soon after. My new apron, as well as my mitts from my lovely roommate, and my new market bonnet are also featured here!

I re-pinned my shortgown, just in time to meet General Lafayette! He was wonderful!

This is one of my favorite pictures from the event on Saturday. Claire and I hadn't realized that we matched, or that this picture was even being taken!

I'll put together a post soon about the events of April and May, because there sure have been a lot of them! I'll add in pictures that better show off my new clothes then. As always, if you have any questions please feel free to contact me. Happy sewing!