Book Review: The Domestic Revolution

The Domestic Revolution by Ruth Goodman

 

I have a new favorite Ruth Goodman book. Embarrassingly enough, I ordered The Domestic Revolution: How the Introduction of Coal into Our Homes Changed Everything when it first came out in 2020, read it three times, but somehow never actually finished this post. The book is a bit of a departure from the author's previous titles, spanning the 16th to 19th centuries instead of focusing on a single century/reign, and it really delves the changes over that period rather than giving a snapshot of a particular time. As the subtitle suggests, this book explores the causes and effects of adopting coal as the primary domestic fuel in England. 

The book is 302 pages (excluding the bibliography), divided into nine chapters. The first of these discusses the various fuels that were used before the widespread adoption of coal; later chapters explore the factors which led to coal replacing wood as Britain's main fuel coal, the evidence for how/where coal use spread through the island, and the resulting the changes in land-use patterns, cooking methods, house fixtures, and cleaning practices that arose from domestic coal use. The primary sources are eclectic, including wills/inventories, charitable bequests, household manuals, cookbooks, surviving buildings, advertisements, patents; I find their use persuasive and the conclusions drawn from them plausible. The author also describes her own historical experiments where relevant (particularly concerning cooking and the idiosyncrasies of using different fuels) which I think adds a unique practical dimension to the discussion.

This is a fairly text-heavy book. The images, averaging just over six per chapter, are often copied from period sources. There are no color illustrations, and the modern images are mostly simple illustrations or diagrams (including grates, coppices, peat cooking fires, the reconstructed Mary Rose galley.) There were times when I wished I was standing next to a reconstructed oven with the author pointing out the relevant features, but overall the text carries the message and the book doesn't really suffer from having few illustrations. As always, the writing is approachable, and reads like a friend telling you all about their latest historic research project. The text does not use numbered citations, but the bibliography is divided by chapter.

Overall, I found the book enjoyable, and thought-provoking. I particularly like how the author ties the different subtopic to eachother: how land-use affects the availability of different fuels, how those fuels affect cooking styles and oven design; tracing the changes to English cuisine as coal replaced slower fuels; and even the different cleaning methods needed in a coal-burning versus wood-burning households.

*In addition to wood, the first chapter explores the practical aspects of other domestic fuels used in Britain prior to and aside from coal, including peat/turves, heather, gorse/ling, furze, and animal dung.

Score: Five Stars.

Accuracy: High.

Strongest Impression: An interesting synthesis of Ruth's many areas of expertise, this book caused me to seriously rethink the interconnected-ness of housework, energy, land-use, and foodways, as well as offering insight into how fuel choice shapes cooking (and many other things.)

Early 19th Century Pocket

 

 

 

Now every outfit has pockets.

Mea culpa for falling behind on posts. Again. I finally made up my long-planned late 18th/early 19th century dettached pocket last month, and then proceeded to not photograph it for some seven weeks.

Anyway, the patchwork is based on this early 19th century pocket from the Met. It uses larger square patches for the bottom of the pocket, and smaller squares and rectangles where the pocket narrows around the opening. As the Met has not kindly provided useful dimensions in their catalog, I used the measurements from a c.1840 pocket in the Old Sturbridge Village collection. I was able to draw a trapezoid from the height and two widths given, round the corners, and add a slit of the specified length. Very handy. I thought that particular example would suit this project, since it incorporates prints c.1790-1835, and mine mixes scraps from my Williamsburg haul with leftovers from a Regency dress (and chintz from a closer-to-mid-century quilting project). I lined the front and cut the back from a cotton ticking; the binding is narrower strips of chintz cut on the straight. Per both originals, I did not bind the outside edges.

I'm quite content with the capacity of this pocket, and have already used that to humorous effect in two museum programs. No one seems to expect me to pull a miniature sword out of my pocket (following the undersleeves, kerchief, hairbrush, sewing kit, knitting project, card case, pocket book, toothbrush, folding parasol, &c. This pocket can hold a lot). I do think I'll switch out the 1/4" cotton tape for a stouter article; it just digs in too much when worn without a corset, and I keep thinking the tape is going to break under the weight of items-that-fit-in-this-pocket.

Red Wool Cloak, 18th Century

 

Cloak!

Based on an 18th century woman's cloak featured in Costume Close-Up. The original garment is in the collection of Colonial Williamsburg. As the garment was later altered, I used this similarly-dated (and similarly-constructed) cloak, also in the Williamsburg collection, for the facing width (2"), placement (on the outside, not the interior) and fastening information (ribbons).

I used 2 3/4 yards red broadcloth, per the original, though I didn't actually have to piece the hood (and the original was comprised of so many little strips that calculating out the sizes would have been more of a headache than actually sewing them together). The facing and hood lining are scrap silk from my collection. Due to the difficulties in finding silk ribbon of sufficient strength, I opted to use a stout replica hook-and-eye clasp on my cloak.

Overall, I'm pretty satisfied with the construction and fit of the cloak--all except the exterior silk facing, which looks rumbled no matter how much I iron it. And it was ironed at every stage of the process: after cutting, after the initial pass of sewing, and then as it was tacked down. I cut it along a pulled thread, so I know the silk's on-grain; at this point I'm pretty sure the problem is that I pulled the wool too tight relative to the silk as I was sewing the first seam. Alas.

Original: Embroidered Pocket, 18th Century

Pocket, English, mid-18th century. LACMA.

 

I've been reading a lot of Laurel Thatcher Ulrich's Good Wives, and selected this month's antique beauty in honor of this passage at the end of chapter 1:

"Much better than a spinning wheel, this homely object [the pocket] symbolizes the obscurity, the versatility, the personal nature of the housekeeping role. A woman sat at her wheel, but she carried her pocket with her from room to room, from house to yard, from yard to street...Whether it contained cellar keys or a paper of pins, a packet of seeds or a baby's bib, a hank of yarn or a Testament, it characterized the social complexity as well as the demanding diversity of women's work."

Also, I really like the embroidery.

Chirography Resources, 16th-18th Century

I need a good hand for 16th century writing, and thus started gathering this list of letter forms and copybooks available online:

Excerpts from A booke containing divers hands (1550-1602) including Italic and Secretary letter forms. [Columbia University Library has also digitized the title page.]

Incomplete alphabets derived from 16th-18th century sources (Italic, Secretary, and Chancery hands)

The Pens Excellency (1618) includes the forms for Secretary hand (pgs 13-14); Bastard-Secretary or Text (p.18); Roman (p.21); Italian (p.24); Court (p.28); Chancery (p.29); as well as the Greek (p.30) and Hebrew (p.31) alphabets.

The Pen-mans Recreation (1673)

The Paul's Scholar's Copy Book (1709)

Round Text. A new copy-book (1712)

Ink, 17th-18th century

I went looking for a home-made ink for 16th century use, and ended up finding a number of recipes from the 17th/18th centuries:

The Mysteryes of Nature, and Art (1654) has a page of recipes for different colors of printing ink, as well as a "good writing ink".

Naturall Experiments, or Physick for the Poor (1657) has instructions for red, green, blue ,and gold-colored ink. 

Eighteen Books of the Secrets of Art and Nature (1661) page 272 has a simple receipt with copperas, oak galls, gum arabic, and white wine

Polygraphice (1685) Another oak gall/copperas/wine/gum arabic receipt

Modern Curiosities of Art&Nature (1685) has recipes for India ink, powdered ink, "an excellent ink for writing", ink for parchment or grease-paper, silver and gold ink, etc.

New Curiosities in Art and Nature (1711): India ink recipe with horsebeans 

Three Essays in Artificial Philosophy (1731)

Dictionarium Polygraphicum (1735) the "Another good black ink" receipt with copperas, oak galls and stale beer looks promising. 

The Laboratory (1740):Same as others, uses alum, sal ammonia.

The Instructor; Or Young Man's Best Companion (1742) Like the others, with rock alum added

I decided to try the common combination of oak galls and copperas (aka ferrous sulfate aka iron (II) sulfate), which are both conveniently available at my favorite dye supplier. The main difference between the first and last of these seems to be the inclusion of alum in the later 18th century versions. There's also some variety in whether the solvent is water, beer, or wine.

 I went with the stale beer/copperas/oak gall/gum arabic version from Mysteryes of Nature, at a 1/2 scale (1/2 pint beer, 1 handful galls), though the vitriol quantity is not given (the gum is to be 1/3 that amount). So, I filled in from the Dictionarium Polygraphicum which calls for 2-3oz vitriol/3 pints solvent, which I ended up approximating as 1 tsp vitriol and 1/2 tsp gum arabic.

Ingredients assembled.

Coarsely cut oak galls, in a not-for-food-use glass jar.

The galls soaked in beer overnight.

I let the galls soak almost 24 hours, having intended to leave them overnight, then running into scheduling issues. The liquid stayed a dark, gross brown the whole time. [It also smelled of off-beer, as a warning.] I filtered through muslin to remove the galls and some of the scum, then added the vitriol and gum at which point the ink started turning black. I stirred it in a hot water bath as it darkened, letting it go about 2 hours total. This is more than was called for, but as some of the other recipes want you to heat it for days at a time, this seemed reasonable. I decanted the ink into a storage container (and my clay inkwell) and gave it a try.

Finished ink. It writes well with a steel nib, now to try some quills.

Original: 17th Century Printed Petticoat

 Dutch petticoat from the second quarter of the 18th century; the fabric is a printed cotton made in India.

Petticoat, c.1725-49, VAM.

While there's unfortunately only the one photograph, the magnified view is excellent: you can see every detail of the intricate four-color floral pattern. The fabric is described as glazed, and from the image, the petticoat appears to be faced in a plain white (possibly also glazed) fabric, with a narrow tape waistband.

Book Review: Costume Close Up

Costume Close-Up (1999) by Baumgarten & Weston

 

Another book-review that I keep neglecting to post. Costume Close-Up: Clothing Construction and Pattern, 1750-1790 by Linda Baumgarten and John Weston is a detailed exploration of 25 items of the late 18th century clothing from the Williamsburg Collection. Three are ensembles with multiple components, giving a total of 30 garments featured. 

 

The book itself is 120 pages. It begins with a 6-page introduction which broadly covers 18th century fashionable silhouettes, how to study antique clothing, 18th sewing techniques, and garment terminology. Excepting 2 pages of end-notes, the rest of the book is divided into 25 sections, each investigating one garment or ensemble. Thirty short 'side topics' (each about a paragraph long with an illustration) are scattered throughout the relevant sections to provide context on how the garments/materials were made, what kinds of people worn them, etc. There's also a 5-page spread of color photographs.

 

The different sections each begin with the artifacts' identifying information. Short paragraphs then discuss the garment category, the materials used in this example, any evidence of how this specific garment was altered, and the construction methods present in it. The last category is the longest, with each technique or point of interest getting its own short paragraph. Each garment or outfit has at least two black-and-white photographs (full length and a detail), as well as line-drawings of all its component pieces on a scaled page (in inches & cm). Where relevant, line drawings are also used to show embroidery patterns or particular construction methods. There are one or two asides depending on the item, often accompanied by a contemporary image of similar garments. For example, the #5 quilted petticoat has an aside addressing 'who wore quilted petticoats?' with an 1783 engraving of a woman wearing one, and a second aside on block printing accompanied by a c.1780 print.

Per the authors' introduction, this book is not a manual for sewing 18th century clothing, but was intended as an introduction to studying antique garments. I think that it does this job admirably, while also providing useful information for recreating specific garments. I appreciate the amount of detail that is included, and admire how approachable the authors have made it. I have my copy shelved right next to Patterns of Fashion 1, but I could see myself handing this book to a new researcher or repro sewist where I would hesitate to start someone on PoF.

 

The two things that would make this book even better are more color pictures, and an actual grid on the pattern diagrams. Admittedly, I believe the latter was a deliberate choice, as it allows the scales on the edges to be marked in both metric and standard, but I do personally prefer having the grid when scaling up designs. For the former, Williamsburg has digitized over 1200 items from their costume collection (including every item from this book that I've searched for).

Stars: 5

Accuracy: High. It's all original garments.

Skill Level: Suitable for all levels as a guide to garment study. Advanced for garment recreation (would be need to be comfortable scaling pattern diagrams, fitting, determining work order, etc.) 

Strongest Impression: Really shines on the details. Has the diagrams and descriptions of a Janet Arnold book, but with more pictures and more explanations.

Molasses Gingerbread, 1798

Revisiting this receipt from Amelia Simmon's American Cookery (1798, 2nd ed) which I originally tried in the third season of the Historical Food Fortnightly.

Upside: I finally have pearlash to experiment with. 

Downside: I miscalculated the amount of molasses, and ended up substituting in honey for about half of the volume. I also managed to put in only half the required butter.

Neutral: On my second time making this dish, I finally realized that there's no ginger in the receipt.

Mixed together 2 lb (~7 cups) all-purpose flour, 1 Tbsp cinnamon, and 2 tsp cardamon, cut in 2 oz unsalted butter (should have been 4 oz), then stirred in about a pint of combined molasses and honey, and finally 8 oz of cold water with 4 teaspoons of pearlash dissolved therein. I mixed this into a sticky dough with a stand mixer (which was basically at capacity), then worked the dough by hand to incorporate the last of the dry ingredients. I pressed this dough into a 9"x13" glass sheet-cake pan (buttered), and baked it for 30 minutes at 350F. 

The gingerbread had a perfectly decent texture; the tops were pretty ragged, which made me second-guess whether the dough was too dry. I definitely could taste the honey, which was fine, but just not quite how it's supposed to be.  All in all, this is a perfectly serviceable gingerbread receipt, and relatively quick and easy. 

1780s Stays

For the second day of Christmas: the stays I cut out a year ago last April. I actually finished binding them over the summer, but never managed to photograph the finished garment. The chamois leather was much easier to sew than any other sort I've work with; I ended up using a regular sharp needle rather than a leather needle, and it didn't have any sticking trouble. 

Finished Stays

I realized after I'd committed to the style that the shoulder straps really shouldn't have been bound. I also watched a couple of Luca's videos on original 18th century stays (via Foundations Revealed) while doing said binding, and now want to completely re-make these stays, with slightly different grainlines on the pieces.

Underarm guards are based on several examples in PoF 5. 

Easing the leather around the curves got easier as I worked, but it was still annoying, and there are several points I've less than pleased with--but I can live with that as an alternative to re-doing the binding.

Still rather pleased with the eyelets, if not the tab binding.

Mareschal Pomade, c.1775

This is a fun variation of the common pomatum with mareschal powder. I used for the base the same lemon/neroli pomatum that went into the hard pomatum, figuring that it would work well with the spices in the powder.

Mareschal pomade. It's quite lovely,
and will probably be my go-to receipt for 18th century.

The pomatum is a bit paler than I expected, but it still has a mild spicy scent. I was pleased to discover that the spicy odor is imparted on the hair (it's very faint, but pleasant). Otherwise, this pomatum worked just like any other I've made and used. It's one of the mutton-fat tallows, so a bit on the hard side compared to my earliest Victorian ones, but practically that just means I have to work a little slower (digging out small pieces of pomatum and rubbing it in my hands to warm it up).

Mareschal Hair Powder, c.1775

Back to The American Duchess Guide to Beauty, with a hair powder variation. This is builds upon the basic hair powder, but colored and scented with powdered spices.

Favorite cosmetic jar to open. It smells so nice!

 When I first looked at the recipe, I was concerned that this powder would be too dark for my not-quite-brown-or-blond hair, but it turns out to be a perfect light brown shade, which works fine. It also has a nice spicy scent (noticeable in the hair, very noticeable while applying the powder).

Left: pomaded & powdered hair. Right: au natural. 

Ultimately, there's little difference in color between powdering my hair with the common powder versus the mareschal. The common powder is a little lighter when applied, but I'm not convinced that's entirely the powder (versus my inexperience in applying it).

Left: common hair powder. Right: mareschal powder.

Hair Powder, c.1772-1784

Basic hair powder, from  The American Duchess Guide to Beauty. I appreciate that they worked out quantities for each ingredient, the original receipts being a little...intense. And sometimes vague:

230. Common Powder. The best Starch dried is generally the basis of all Hair Powders; sometimes worm eaten or rotten Wood, dried Bones, or Bones calcined to whiteness, which are sifted through a fine hair sieve after they have been beaten to powder. This kind of Powder readily takes any scent particularly that of Florentine Orrice, a root which naturally possesses a violet smell. Of these Roots the whitest and soundest are made choice of; they are to be powdered as fine as possible, and this can only be done during the summer season.

231 White Powder. Take four pounds of Starch, half a pound of Florentine Orrice Roots, six Scuttle-fish Bones, Ox Bones and Sheeps Bones calcined to whiteness, of each half an handful; beat the whole together and lift the powder through a very fine sieve. 

--The Toilet of Flora (1772)

In addition to these white powders, the Flora also gives two recipes for gray hair powder (tinted with wood-ash), and one "flaxen-coloured" (with yellow ochre), the latter with an observation that the powder can be tinted any color. I may someday feel brave enough to try one of those...

Hair Powder

Aside from the optional cuttlefish, sheep, and ox bones, this receipt is very like the violet powder used in the 19th and early 20th century (which itself has persisted into the 21st as baby powder). Scented starch is apparently quite versatile.

Powdered hair and natural.

I've never used hair powder before, and was pleasantly surprised at how it turned out. I had to apply a lot more than I expected, but the hair powder didn't get everywhere like the various powder rouges I've made. And while white powder lightened my hair by a few degrees, it didn't turn the hair pure white. When I washed it out, the powder came away instantly, without any fuss.

I haven't tried sleeping in pomaded-and-powdered hair, but that experiment is indefinitely postponed. Unless I start attending multi-day 18th century events...

Barbara Johnson Album, 1746-1823

I was very excited to find that the whole Barbara Johnson album has now been digitized by the VAM. The older version of their site only had about four pages, that I could see, and the reprints have been cost-prohibitively out-of-print ever since I started looking for it. The only downside is that the images in the web-browser can't be enlarged to see details--but you can download high-resolution copies.

If anyone is wondering why this is a big deal: this is a 77-year fabric & fashion scrapbook from the mid 18th to early 19th century, with fashion plates and fabric samples which are labelled with the year and type of garment they were used in. It's an amazing primary source.

Hard Pomade, c.1775

More hair care from The American Duchess Guide to Beauty: a hard pomatum. As with the Victorian version, it's a variation of a softer pomatum with wax added. 

Hard pomatum, in fun shapes.

I used a combination of lemon and neroli scents for this batch of pomatum; I think the combination of scents works nicely.  I also followed the advice to set the hard pomatum in molds, which should make it much easier to use than the Victorian hard pomatum that I set in a tin. The important lesson I'm taking from this experiment, is to always have the small rose molds on hand for any extra material.  

Liquid Rouge, c.1772-1784

Another receipt from The American Duchess Guide to Beauty [adapted from The Toilet of Flora]: liquid rouge. Out of respect for the modern authors I will not be repeating the whole recipe, but the original is well in the public domain for anyone interested in looking it up themselves.

A different shade of red.

As usual, I scaled the recipe down further, using the usual 4 Tbsp = 1 oz approximation for the powdered materials. If anyone's interested in trying it on 1/8 scale as I did, use 3/4 tsp where an ingredient calls for "1oz" and 3/8 tsp for those calling for "1/2 oz". This is a weight to volume conversion, but it appears to work.

This shade of pink is the exact color
I turn when contemplating sunlight.

With different coloring agents, this rouge produced a more orange-red shade (which also looks more blood-red in the jar), than the cochineal-carmine rouges I've otherwise attempted. The final product does have the much-vaunted "transparency" when applied; it also has a very light color saturation, and closely matches my actual skin-tones when blushing/exerting oneself/venturing into sunlight. The picture above makes it appear more subdued than it is in person. Careful layering would be needed for a more dramatic coloring, but I could see this rouge making a more "natural" effect than most of the others. There were some solid particles to deal with, even after two weeks of waiting, but I was able to let the rouge dry and then gently brush the residue off. A faint stain remained on my hand even after washing; further experiments in water-stability will be needed.

In another difference from the 19th century, I found it interesting that the Toilet of Flora recipes were called "carmines" instead of "rouges".  They also all use brazilwood dust for the coloring, where the later rouges favor cochineal (or carmine, which is defined in the 19th century sources as refined cochineal). More intriguingly, recipe #250 for "the Turkish method of preparing carmine" mentions that cochineal or "red sanders" (red sandalwood, perhaps?) can be used in place of the brazilwood. Within fifty years, this will be entirely supplanted by cochineal derivatives.

Common Pomatum, c.1772-1784

Finally playing around with the receipts in The American Duchess Guide to Beauty. That is, I finally found a place to order mutton tallow.

The common pomatum seemed a good place to start. It's quite like the later Victorian pomatums I've made (melt two fats together and scent as desired), but this time I decided to do things properly and use the mutton tallow and leaf lard, rather than beef tallow and the hydrogenated lard that my grocery story actually carries.  The receipts in this book are adapted from the Toilette of Flora (1772-1784*), though the modern recipes have a number of advantages: the authors have scaled them down to a more manageable amount, and they describe the actual process in more detail. With pictures.

Tallow, mostly without the sheep odor...

One thing I learned, was to soak the tallow in advance to get some of the odor out. I ended up letting it go for two weeks, because even with changing the water regularly the sheep smell wasn't fully dissipating.

Common pomatum.

In lieu of the suggested scents, I decided to experiment a bit, and used both jasmine and neroli. In retrospect, using two florals was not a good choice--I should have used a citrus or a spice oil with one floral to get a more interesting mixture. It's not bad, just a bit boring (and mostly only jasmine).

The finished pomatum is more solid that the versions I've made with beef tallow. It's not quite as hard as the ones with wax added, but you can't just scoop it up in your fingers either. In use, it seems to function no differently from other pomatums I've used.

*At minimum, editions of this book appeared in 1772, 1775, 1779, and 1784.

Update on c.1780 Stays

 After cutting them out last year, I put the pieces for my late 18th century stays in a safe place. I finally found them again in late February, and have finished no other projects since then.

Fully boned, eyelets bound, and attaching the binding.

The stays are made of a double layer of linen canvas, stiffened with artificial whalebone. Chamois leather guards the underarms and will be used to bind the raw edges. I started out lightly boning the stays, just along the seams and openings, but decided on the first fitting to fully bone the garment instead. The boning channels are machine sewn with cotton thread; the eyelets and leather are hand-sewn with waxed linen.

  

So many eyelets.

I had also originally intended these stays to lace only down the back. Reflecting on my 1820s long stays, and what a pain they are to lace, I decided to switch to a front-and-back lacing style. I hadn't accounted for the relative ease of spiral lacing versus cross-lacing behind one's back, and after going to all that trouble, I'm not sure it was worth it. 

And the three eyelets that I had to remove.

After some slight miscalculations, I ended up with 13 eyelets down the each side of the back, 14 on the front, and four at each shoulder strap, for a total of 62 hand-bound eyelets. I actually ended up sewing 65, as I was four eyelets into the second front piece before remembering that these stays were going to be spiral-laced, and thus the eyelets needed to be staggered. As I had done already done on the back panels.

Fortunately, I'd managed to open the eyelets with very little thread breakage, and managed to cut off the stitches on the three extraneous eyelets, then carefully darn over the broken threads. After the first, I found that darning from the inside made a neater and less visible mend. The structural integrity of the stays does not appear to have been compromised, though it is frustrating to have this error in the most prominent place on the garment.

With the chamois leather underarm protectors appliqued into place, all that remains is to attach the leather binding on the upper and lower edges of the stays, then cut and attach a lining made of lighter-weight linen. Even with my best sharp needles, and a very thin, supple leather, the stitching is noticeably slower and harder on my hands than a moderate-to-fine linen or cotton.

Plaited Straw Hat

Hat of indeterminate vintage

It's a completely hand-plaited, hand-sewn hat. Shaped free-hand. The plait is 7-strand "Dunstable" (except not really, because it's quarter-split rye instead of whole straws, but I used the "over 1, under 2" plait). There's about 12 yards of plait in in, and on the order of 40-50 hours work. 

The year is a bit open-ended. I had intended it to have a very shallow crown, similar to one I saw in a Bruegel painting (almost flat, but very slightly convex--suffice to say, that attempt got rapidly out of hand). And while most of my sources do point to 16th century for early examples of plaited straw hats in Europe, they seem to have picked up more in England in the 17th century. However, the splits are a more recent innovation, supposedly dating to the early 18th century, but rapidly multiplying in form and use from the early 19th.  I could use it for working-class, rural 19th century summer-wear, though what little documentation I've found for such humble items suggests a flatter shape would be more likely.

I'll be talking about this project (and a ton of research done along the way), this Saturday at the Fort Nisqually virtual program.

18th Century Linen Petticoat

 Another project from the "to do" basket: a basic linen under-petticoat from The American Duchess Guide to 18th Century Dress-Making. Three years later, I finally made a project from the book.

The material is a mid-weight linen from Fabrics Store, with the waistband of 3/4" linen tape (bleached) from Burnley & Trowbridge. The petticoat is entirely hand-sewn, which went a bit quicker than expected. Considering that it languished in the in-progress basket for most of a year, it was a little embarrassing to realize that I could have finished the whole thing in the span of two Christmas movies.