Renovated Renaissance Smock

After four years of wear, I decided to remake my first 16th century smock.

The problem was that the sleeves were too short by an inch or two. It was wearable, but any sort of arm extension would leave the cuffs tight below the wrist, and putting strain on the side seams below the gussets. Unfortunately, I really like how the buttons and cuffs turned out, so lengthening the sleeve ended up looking like:

• Remove sleeve from smock.
• Remove gusset from sleeve.
• Piece 3" strip of linen to upper sleeve (and fell the seam; piece width includes extra allowance for felling).
• Reattach gusset to longer sleeve and close the extra underarm seam length (and fell the seams).
• Reattach sleeve to smock (and fell the seams).
• Take apart the side-seam at the same time, and re-do it with proper felling so the allowances stop fraying.
• Decide that the collar pulls weird, and add the shoulder gussets omitted last time.
• Piece neckband to fit the larger opening.
• Realize the neck is now too large, revert to earlier size, but add small tucks to ease the fabric. 
• Make new thread loop fastener, replace broken thread reinforcement at center front slit.

I'm more excited for this shift than I probably should be.

The process ended up more involved than it's appearance would suggest, but it's now more comfortable and fits better (and hand-sewing linen is always a treat). I think the most surprising thing was how large and awkward the collar stitches looked to me as I was undoing them--my default stitch to reattach the collar was about half the length of the previous work.

HFF 4.12: Get Saucy

The Challenge: Get Saucy--Make a sauce, relish, or topping.

The Recipe: Sauce d'Oignon/Onion Sauce from A New System of Domestic Cookery

The Date/Year and Region: 1844, Philadelphia [from 67th London edition; 1st London edition 1805]

How Did You Make It: Boiled half a onion in 1 cup of milk. Attempted to crush the onion, then boiled it a second time in 2 Tbsp butter, with a splash of the milk. Added a splash of white wine vinegar, and served hot.

Time to Complete: About 40 minutes

Total Cost: All ingredients on hand already.

How Successful Was It?: Tasted fine--basically just of onion. I served it over chicken and mashed potatoes, and thought it was very tasty. The texture was a bit chunky, however. I think if I were trying this again, I'd cut the onion much finer to start, and try to have an appropriately-sized mortar and pestle for the crushing. The boiled onion pieces were so soft that neither a knife, nor any of the other implements I tried was very effective on them. 

How Accurate Is It?: The texture, as noted was less sauce-like than I think it is intended to be. I used skim milk and a local yellow sweet onion, though I think a white onion would work very well. As none of the other proportions were given, I just sort of guessed. I think it turned out pretty well, though I probably could have gotten by with less milk and a little more vinegar.

Onion sauce on chicken and potatoes.

Original: Early Worth Gown

Worth & Boberth Gown, c.1862-1865. The Met.

I love the pale purple color of this dress, and the interesting placement of the self-fabric trim. Not so sure about whatever's happening with the tails(?) on the front bodice, though...