Dressing for Winter

It's that time of year again.

Good winter event safety and warm clothing advice from millinery genius Anna Worden Bauersmith. See also her articles on clothing layers, and how Victorians kept warm in different situations.

Suggestions for children's and infants' warm clothing from Liz Clark. She also has relevant garment projects: a shawl, and a sunbonnet that can be made as a tufted hood.

Colleen Formby's sontag pattern also makes for a warm knitted garment. Virginia Mescher wrote a simple muffatee pattern, also knit. [I compiled a list of warm clothing projects at one point, but not all the links are currently active].

Need 1850s/1860s project inspiration? A quilted petticoat, a sontag, fur cuffs, winter hood and red riding hood, tufted hoods, and a girl's hood.

Coif-Wearing

I'm going to need to keep this in mind for my next one: How to Wear the Coif. I love the "experimental" part of experimental archaeology/history, and how we can refine our understanding of material culture by trying things, and changing our hypotheses as necessary.  [See also, Jane Malcolm-Davies and Ninya Mikhaila's work on 16th-century dress support.]

Original: Cotton Dress, c.1914-1918

On the 100th anniversary of Armistice Day, a WWI-era dress.

Dress, American, c.1914-1918.
The Met

Book Review: Regency Women's Dress

Regency Women's Dress: Techniques and Patterns 1800-1830 by Cassidy Percoco.

"Dress" is not limited to dresses: this book contains patterns for two chemises, two sets of stays, and three outer-garments (two spencers and a morning robe), as well as nineteen dresses. The earliest date on any garment is c.1795, the latest c.1827.  The narrow scope and large number of examples allow for greater specification than in many books of this type. The "type" being books diagramming the construction of garment artifacts, such as Janet Arnold's Patterns of Fashion series or Jill Salen's Corsets: Historical Patterns and Techniques.

The book starts with a three-page overview of fashion changes through the ~30 years in question; I liked that the table of contents employed sketches of each garment, making a nice fashion timeline for comparison, as well as a visual reference. Each garment featured in this book in an original from the late 18th/early 19th century, with full citation.  All the garments are held in American collections (mostly in New York, or else Old Sturbridge Village in Massachusetts).  Knowing the whereabouts of each garment is useful, in that looking up additional images of the garments online is almost required in order to make any of them.

I really love the scaled pattern diagrams of each garment (two pages), the inclusion of contemporary images and fashion plates (most of one page per garment), and the description of how the garment is assembled (also most of a page). Each garment also gets a colored photograph, and a pencil sketch. The problem I'm having with making any of these garments is the lack of comprehensive images: the line drawings are front-view-only, as worn, and the photograph is always a detail shot. While this is great for seeing the fabric (and occasionally the interior), not seeing the whole thing is really hard when you're trying to actually construct something. There's a ~3" tall line-drawing of each finished garment, shown from the front only as it is worn, but that's like trying to sew from the image on the back of pattern envelop (with no back view included).  The assembly information is descriptive rather than instructive--which makes perfect sense, but also makes internal and back views more necessary, for figuring out which seams should cross over which others, etc. Particularly for things like figuring out how to fasten the bib-front dresses (pins? buttons? additional ties?), there is simply not enough information included in the written instructions, and not enough back or internal views of the finished garment (photograph or sketch) to answer the question.*

The format begs for comparison to the Patterns of Fashion books: I think that Regency Women's Dress makes a nice addition to this genre for its narrow temporal focus, and inclusion of multiple garment types. I also like the color photographs of garment detail and the use of contemporary illustrations for context; but I think that the lack of detailed whole-garment sketches makes this book harder to use than Patterns of Fashion. 

Stars: 3**

Accuracy: Very high. All original garments, with some useful context.

Difficulty: Advanced. Additional sources or a lot of assembly know-how will be required to make the garments (above the usual 'scale and fit' skills).

Strongest Impression: Potentially a nice all-in-one reference for Regency/Empire styles, including undergarments, dresses, and some outerwear. However, there isn't quite enough construction information (and/or detailed images) to make the garments without consulting additional sources. A good reference for costume designers, and almost an amazing one for reconstruction sewing.

*For the other garment I've tried so far, a chemise, an internal photograph of the sleeve seams would have make construction infinitely easier. The written description of joining the sleeve to the main garment was almost impossible to follow: the sleeve is encased in the two-layer strap, and that is then sewn to the front/back pieces.  How, then, is the sleeve attached to the front/back without leaving a weak raw edge or a lumpy transition to the felling?  A photograph would have solved this instantly: instead, I spent a lot of time trying to find photographs of similar pieces, and finally ended up sewing several half seams, tacking down other pieces, and going back to finish seams out of order. Even so, there's a slight lump where the sleeve seam allowance transitions from being faced to being felled.

**I revised this down to three stars after attempting a further three garments from this book. Between scaling issues on the stays, a lack of fastener information on the bib-front dress, and sorely needed construction explanations on both gowns, this is simply not an easy book to use. You really need additional sources (or, ideally, a picture or sketch of the interior and back view of the garment) to actually make most of the garments I've attempted.

Another Regency chemise

Made a new regency chemise, this time based on a c.1800-1820 original in the Albany Institute of History and Art, featured in Regency Women's Dress. The Albany Institute does not appear to have digitalized the original (or any undergarments), but their collections database has some very fun shoes, hair-work pieces, and a few dresses.

New linen chemise, style c.1800-1820.

The material is a light-weight linen from Fabric-Store.com (IL-020, I believe). It's entirely hand-sewn, with all the seams felled (having learned my lesson about linen raveling along unfinished seams). I adjusted the front width and sleeve depth to my measurements--the sleeves were a necessary change, but I ended up taking in a lot at the front sides after having expanded them.  As I found out last time I tried to made a regency chemise, I run into trouble getting a garment that sits securely at the neckline but is also cut generously enough over the bust. With the Victorian chemises I've made, the extra material is simply gathered into the yoke or band; with the Tudor shifts, I just cut the shoulders to fit and then flare the front sides out as needed.  Here, I ended up cutting the bust wide enough, then fiddling with the strap placement and pinning in the excess material at the sides. It's not perfect--the front neckline still gaps slightly and the straps are sitting further out on the shoulder than they probably should be--but it's an improvement over my first regency shift, and quite comfortable.

I'm going to put my thoughts on the pattern in a separate book review. 

In other news, linen is still a pleasure to hand-sew, and I routinely hit 14-16 sts on all the seams this time.

Bruegel Paintings

This awesome on-line resource comes from the Kunst Historisches Museum Wien. In addition to extreme zoom-in capabilities on twelve of Bruegel's 1559-1568 paintings, Inside Bruegel also has infrared photographs of the paintings.

ALHFAM Western Regional Conference

Was in Tacoma this year.  I really enjoyed the speakers on Thursday, who spoke on topics ranging from audience participation to historic roads, and cultural sensitivity to carriage restoration (also musical programs!). On Friday, I got to take a watercolor workshop, and learn about the relationship between military cartography and landscape painting.

I am not Edmund Coleman.

(I also taught a workshop on hair-dressing. There was less paint involved.)