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.

Hourglass Album Quilt, Quilting Update 1

Checking in on another long term project.

Elise dress fabric, Tracy dress fabric, Nancy dress fabric,
my work-dress fabric (×2), my wrapper fabric, and
a bunch of fat quarters from the Oregon City conference

Handquilting is a good activity for being home, especially in the winter (it's very nice to have the wool quilt thrown over one's lap), though it does tend to get pushed aside for whatever projects come up that have actual deadlines. This year, with no events, I ended up having few urgent historic garments and thus finally found time to work on it. 

The quilting the cascading hourglass album, ended up being my November/December and probably January/February/March/etc handsewing-by-the-TV project. I do like having something 'in hand' that can be picked up and sewed on at will. It was especially nice for this year to have this particular project, covered in the names and fabric of absent friends

Barbara Brackman's post about period quilting methods helped me decide on an approach.  As much as I love the intricate curved patterns seen on 'blank' portions of quilts, my skills are not up to the standard.  So, I opted for a triple-line diamond pattern, found in Ms. Brackman's Quilts of the Civil War. I'm using sets of three lines, spaced ~1/4" apart from each other, with ~1.5" between groups--just enough that they line up with the diagonals of the pieced seams. The original quilt I based the design on has a diamond quilting pattern, though I couldn't get a close enough view to tell if the diamonds were single or in multiples.

I'm aiming for ~8 stitches per inch, as reported of the original.  After the first couple of lines, I am consistently getting 8-10 stitches,  Measuring the first completed square, the triple diamond pattern is requiring 96" of stitching per square (so, about 322 yards 24" of quilting or 116,160 stitches for the blocks, excluding the border). The stitching is greatly compacting the batting, making a very dense and thin quilt, while the basted areas are thick and fluffy.

*For fun and future reference, in 1864, Godey's got rather flowery about autograph quilts. The description specifies that the quilting should go around the autographs. Considering some the text blocks I have, some compromise willbe needed on that score. So far, the writing is still legible when quilted through.

Picture

Matching Patterns on Curved Seams

...is very important, when you need to be wearing the garment in 9 hours.

Really pleased with these.

Hexagon or Honey-Comb Patchwork

Here's one of my on-going projects: a hexagon patchwork quilt.  It's to use up all the little odd pieces left over from sewing garments.

The inspiration is a quilt in Eileen Trestain's collection, which I encountered while taking her class at Marge Harding's Century of Fashion Conference in 2015.  The original had 1.5" hexagons arranged into rosettes, which in turn were arranged in concentric circles with a dominant color in each ring. Two white hexagons separated each rosette.  While Ms. Trestain's quilt was dated c.1830s-1840s, an almost identical design--albeit with a striped background and only one intervening hex--shows up in this 1870s quilt at the Met.  The International Quilt Study Collection and Museum has another like it from the 1820s-30s, with what appears to be a chintz medallion at the center.

Hexagon patchwork is still used today, under the names "English Paper Piecing" or "Grandmother's Flower Garden". A description of the method appears on page 300 of Eliza Leslie's The American Girl's Book (1831, page 313 of the 1857 edition).  It even calls for arranging the hexagons into rounds of colored calico, with white hexagons at the center of and between each ring.

The method apparently remained a patchwork staple from (at least) the 1820s into the twentieth century, as attested by the many surviving quilts with hexagonal pieces in various arrangments: rosettes (and another), concentric "rings" of color, stars, and even random; these quilts could also get rather complex (even recursive) and may be organized in lines or around a central motif.

Tudor Ensemble

Today I dressed 16th century for the first time, in order to accompany Elise to the local Ren Faire. Though originally aiming for the early-mid century (late in the reign Henry VIII), I ended up making a few basics from The Tudor Tailor.  It turned out that Elizabeth I was holding court, so the lack of specificity served me well.

Smock and kirtle.  

In addition to the smock previously described, I made a side-lacing kirtle with gored skirt.  The material is a brown linen-cotton blend (mea culpa) that I picked up at Hancock's a few years back.  The skirt is all hand-sewn, as are the eyelets and bodice finishing, though I did use a machine on some of the internal bodice seams to save time.  The bodice is lined with linen, and its front is interlined with canvas and more linen.  After wearing it once, I determined that some boning is needed along the eyelets to keep them from collapsing in an unsightly manner.  Otherwise, I was pleased to find that the canvas provided sufficient support.

The head covering I chose was the headrail, a square yard of hemmed linen; it worked incredibly well to keep my hair up and out of the way.  The hairstyle was two braids crossed around and over the head; the rail was folded and pinned over the hair. The Tudor Tailor explains how to do this, with illustrations. What surprised me most was that the rail--with one hairpin, two straight pins, and two linen strips--kept all of my hair up for twelve hours without needing adjustment.

Rounding out the ensemble, though un-pictured, are a pair of knee-length linen bias-cut hose (blue, of course), a small drawstring purse worn inside the kirtle, and a rough pair of leather turn-shoes.  I consulted Grew, de Neergaard, and Mitford's Shoes and Pattens for background on the latter, but as it's latest finds date from c.1450, it's at least a half-century out of date for this project. Pratt and Woolley's Shoes (VAM) was more helpful, as it includes two shoes from the 16th century, though both are men's.  It's noted that women's shoes follow similar, though less ostentatious, lines.  Even with the leather soles glued on to the sewn cloth ones (yes, that's why they're no pictures, it was rushed and very amateurish), the shoes held up all day, and even resisted the rain until the tail end of the event.  I didn't finish my garters in time, but two strips of torn linen tied in garter knots sufficed.

This outfit is still very much a work in progress.  Before it's next outing, I intend to add sleeves to the kirtle (laced at the shoulder), bones the side opening, and more eyelets. There will also be proper shoes, an apron, and hopefully a gown to over the kirtle.  I'm thinking green...