Regency on a Shoestring: Part One - Short Stays from the Scrap Bin

WILKIE, David; The Cottage Toilet; Wallace Collection, acc#P352; Oil on Panel, 30.1x38.4cm 

My plan over the next month or so is to make new, working class Regency era clothing for myself and possibly Pierre. The thought is, if I can do this project from my stash of fabrics, seriously on the cheap. I want to use pieces that I found on the discount wall at Fabricville, from scraps from other projects, and as quickly as I possibly can. Quickly, but also accurately as possible. I may be in the position of building a wardrobe again, and I want to show the site that this can be done cheaply and accurately, and that the interpretation staff can work in the clothes.

And because every good historical outfit begins with the foundations, I started by building new stays. I have been messing about with short stays for this period for a while now. My long line stays are lovely for standing looking pretty, for dancing as the most strenuous activity one could undertake. Friends who have acted as guinea pigs to my experimentation have needed working stays, one where they have the support and definition needed for the period, but also can do hard physical labour. Getting dressed by oneself is also a major issue. When I first noticed the above painting, I thought maybe the ladies were wearing a shorter version of an eighteenth-century stays style. And so, dug out my trusty, well fitting eighteenth-century stays and traced them off as a good starting point.

Front edge, top line, back edge all faintly traced off.

 Once I had the rough guide, I drew in my style lines and cut apart my new pattern. I would later slash into the top edge at the front to insert my bust gussets.

A rough draft

Pattern is flipped, so I would have clean lines to work with. The Centre back is extended to form a wrap around closing.

I cut all my pieces from scraps from the bin. Yes, scraps. From other projects. The 'fashion' layer wasn't even scrap from my bin, but from a friend's, so literally cost me nothing! The fashion layer is a linen stripe, interlined with unwashed factory cotton, the pink stripe is left over bits from my eighteenth-century work gown and will be used as a liner.

I wanted to have a light coloured outer layer so that I could wear any kind of gown fabric over it and the stays fabric wouldn't show through. The far right fabric is the striped linen fashion fabric. I used leftover thread from another project to sewing the bone channels. I picked the thread I had the most of, and that turned out to be pink.

Now, there is one thing that I have given up ever doing by hand ever again, and that's stitching bone channels. Never say never, right. That might come back to bite me in the arse later, but for now, I'm doing them by machine. I have a 'back stitch' stitch on my machine that unless you are nose to fabric, looks just like my hand stitched back stitch. The stitch is a giant thread suck though, so you need to have lots to start with.

 Here you can see my bone channels all stitched, and my bust gussets stitched in place. I use nylon zip ties for boning. I find they more closely resemble actual whalebone than anything I have seen. I use the 1/4" wide ones, and trim to length with heavy duty scissors. I stitch my gussets in by hand for better control and a nice finish. I can do them by machine, but it's fussy. Doing them by hand is so much easier and quicker. I added cotton twill tapes to the back extensions, long enough to tie in front of my body, under the bust.

I already have two good working shifts, so threw one on and had a quick fitting. Fitting notes: Bust gussets were too big, the centre front line was too floppy, and I needed shoulder straps for support. I also added a buttonhole to slide the under flap's tie through so I could tie it nicely in the front.

I spent the rest of the afternoon cutting a busk for the centre front edge and stitching in a twill tape pocket for it. Then I fixed the gusset issue, cut shoulder straps and stitched those on, and finally, started to lay in the lining. All that is left now is to finish stitching the lining in, binding them off, and working four eyelets to the shoulder straps.

I was really not happy with how floppy the front was, and so will likely add busks to any set of stays that I make with bust gussets. I find when you slash into that top edge, the edge just gets too floppy all around. The busk will keep the front firmly in place between the breasts, and I should have the right silhouette of boobs (separate) on a platter. The bottom edge of these stays are tabbed to allow for more room over the body, and to prevent a hard bottom edge. I was also able to have the ties sit over the stays, right under the bustline, which I wouldn't have been able to keep in place with modern reproduction short stays patterns. Having the ties slip down on to my body as I work would drive me mad, as I have a thing for tight ties around my body. Waistbands are the devil's work.

I will finish these tomorrow, then back to men's wear for a bit...I still have actual paid work to do.

When did we start equating Working Class with Homelessness?

There seems to be a disconnect in how we actually live, and our perceptions of what class we hang out in. Most of us are working class people. Plain and simple. The actual middle class pay more in taxes every year than many of us earn, and that's with ridiculous tax breaks. The truly wealthy, the 1% are making more money each year than many of us can even comprehend.

OK, so now that I have established that we are, for the most part working class, how do you see yourself in your daily life? Do you get up every day, bathe, put on clean, relatively new clothing, and go out and work your job every day? Do you sometimes, but not really all that often, get dirty, really dirty in your daily life? I know in my life, the most I get dirty is my hands, even when I'm in the garden. I might need to take a bit of care with my fingernails at the end of the day, but that's about it.

So when we look at a historical interpreter who is wearing accurately constructed clothing, that fits well, and is in decent repair, why is it we place that interpreter in a higher class than they actually are? I work in the eighteenth century mostly. My wardrobe consists of gowns and petticoats for the most part. I do own a bedgown that is well tailored to my body that I wear for warmth over my gown like a cardigan. I work in my gowns. If I'm going to be getting really dirty, I might take my gown off for a minute to do the job, and then put it back on again...maybe. I just don't get that dirty, and can't be arsed dressing and re-dressing throughout the day, so I just stay in my gown.

I've been confused by other interpreters for being a different class because I am wearing all my proper clothes. Or for being a different culture because I am wearing a sacque backed gown when all the other women are wearing jackets.

Nope. I am the same as them, a working class woman, going about her day. I may be much older, or just wearing a different fashionable style. Today, all women don't go about their day in exactly the same kind of outfit. We each have our own personal style within the fashion of our era.

This morning on one of the 'show us your impressions' pages on facebook, a man posted his interpretation of a 1830s farmer. He was perfect in my eyes. I hope to one day dress my staff as well as this man was. People kept putting him in a much higher class level though, mainly due to his clothes actually fitting, and he was wearing all of his clothes, and wasn't looking destitute.

There is a huge difference between working class and homelessness.

We have to start dressing out our interpreters in properly constructed and well fitted clothing. We need to teach them that the fit will make the clothing more comfortable, that natural fibres are a beautiful thing! We need to teach them to wear all their layers and pieces and accoutrements so that they actually look like the people we are trying to represent.
One size does not fit all. We need wardrobe staff who are trained to create and fit the interpreters. Who know how to do research on the extant garments in our museum collections. We need to value those wardrobe people we do have on staff as much as we value the curators, and archaeologists, and historians. We are historians too, and the work we do is as valuable as getting the paint chemistry correct in our historic buildings, the artifacts cleaned and researched properly, or the names and dates on the labels correct.

Last week I got to see quite a few costumed interpreters. I felt an overwhelming need to fix every single one of them, even the better ones needed to have their clothing taken in a great deal to actually fit. I will be writing about this subject over the next month or so for the dissertation. Trying to situate my research into the greater interpretation conversation. I will also be constructing a couple of pieces for two gentlemen who are very much within the scope of working class interpretation, as well as an outfit for myself to wear to an 1820s museum site in the Fall.

A couple of groups for you to check out...
Living History ~ show us your impression
Womens Living History ~ Show us your impressions
Historical Interp Playas!

There are others, and not every impression is perfect, but the people who post in these groups are trying really hard to make themselves look the very best they can.

Not homeless, nor am I upper class, just a working class woman going about her day circa 1776

News from the shoe

Just after my last post, I got a midnight message from our favourite Boxer breeder in Nova Scotia asking if I could take a repossessed puppy. She was driving to New Brunswick to take two dogs, one of hers, one from a sister breeder in Ontario, from a home that was breaking up. We quickly made the choice to meet her in NB and take her dog home with us, sight unseen. We had no idea what to expect, neither did she, but we arrived to find a healthy dog, albeit untrained. He took to Pierre right away, big relief, I was worried he might be afraid of men, and I'd have to do all the rehabilitation on my own. This is a photo of the three of us, shortly after our breeder drove off in the other direction with the female puppy to send home to Ontario. I think he might like us. His name is Beer, Dutch for Bear. His birth name from the breeder. He likes the cats, and is mostly trained now. He is a smart boy and may one day soon be able to walk off leash.

So our lives have been dealing with house training, and puppy rehab, but also car issues...and finally a research trip.

My trip had been planned for months. I was ready to go back in April, right after passing my proposal defense. Museum schedules and our own life kept pushing things around though. Finally I decided to fly down to Nova Scotia, and Pierre booked my ticket, so I was going, whether everything was ready for my trip or not!
I landed in Nova Scotia on Tuesday the 2nd of July, and Lacey Bean picked me up at the airport and drove me to Bear River, my headquarters for the week, the home of friends Jenny and Jayar. Jenny is my research assistant extraordinaire. She has edited most of my work on this PhD, and knows how to road trip well. We packed coolers and the car on Wednesday morning and headed off to our first museum on Wednesday morning.

The Museums by the Sea in Shelburne, Nova Scotia are jointly run by the Nova Scotia Museum and the Shelburne County Historical Society. If you ever get to go to NS and are a fan of the eighteenth-century, you need to visit this town. The waterfront district is as close to as it was in the 1780s as humanly possible in 2019. The museum site takes up a full block with the Ross-Thompson House and Storehouse along with other buildings that house the modern Historical Society museum exhibits and collections.
I knew there were menswear pieces from the last quarter of the eighteenth-century at Ross-Thompson, mostly because friends have taken photos, but also through my own visits there. There are three separate menswear outfits, one complete ditto suit in green corded silk, one frock coat and matching waistcoat in brown and polychrome striped silk, and one silk satin frockcoat that used to be the colour of turmeric. When I saw the striped suit of clothes in the flesh, I was vibrating, and so started with that one.

This suit doesn't look like much in this photo, but OH. MY. GODDESS! It is impressive! The stripes of polychrome are in three shades of green, another couple shades of pink, and blue threads in a narrow fat quarter inch silk satin woven stripe. This alternates with twill woven stripes of gold coloured silk threads. There are death head buttons in the polychrome colours over a horn button mold in a six spoke style. The buttons on the waistcoat are also polychrome, four spoke style over a wooden mold. These pieces took me until Thursday noon to finish drafting. We took lots of photos. These will all be in my dissertation along with patterns and construction notes. The week went up from there as we found more hidden treasures in the pieces. I finished the first batch of work at the Ross-Thompson house Saturday morning. The rest of the morning, we took photos of things I want to look at more closely the next time I am down, hopefully in October. Three different pair of shoes and a man's leather pocketbook are in the collection of the Historical Museum that will need a day or so of detailed notes, measurements, and photos. But they will have to wait until the museum closes for the season.

We stopped in to visit the Barrington museums (another Nova Scotia Museum site) on the way back to Bear River. No costume pieces really, but good information from our friend Sam who is the director there. And hey, any time we get to visit friends in the system is a good excuse to stop the car for an hour or so.

Sunday, Jenny was being filmed for the CBC TV show Still Standing. The episode will air in the Fall of 2021. It is exciting to see her Millinery business featured on a national broadcast. I hope it will be good publicity for her. She is an amazing hatmaker and milliner. She is my go-to for trims and frills when clothes require them. I am a cutter first and foremost. I don't usually do decoration.

Monday, we had planned to meet up with the Bean again at Ross Farm museum in New Ross Nova Scotia. No relation to Ross-Thompson, but another site in the Nova Scotia Museum system. The farm is the only working farm within the system, and was founded by a Loyalist soldier at about the same time my own family's land claim/grant was being finalized in Pictou county. The site is interpreted at 1820, but costumed interpreters! In working class clothing! It was supposed to just be a wander around to see how things are done through the dissertation lens. I had an opportunity land in my lap to see things up close and behind the scenes though, as the site is also looking for a new costumer, their current one is looking to retire in the next two years. We sat and had a good chat with their new Site Director, and I was asked to come back on Wednesday to meet the costumer, let her meet me, and for everyone to get to know each other a bit better. I am on board with their, "could be up to two years" timeframe for employment. I am also perfectly fine with the seasonal aspect of the job. Hey, if it means we get to go home to NS, and I get to work in my field at a really cool site, I could work this job into retirement. I have no illusions of grandeur for after finalizing my PhD. I could very easily go back to working at Atlantic Fabrics or Fabricville!

The thing that really hit home this week was the lack of a good working budget for all of the sites I visited. The NSM is trying to make-do across the board with nothing. It is no wonder that sites can't hire actual trained historical costumers. They really can't afford to hire summer students to be interpreters. They certainly, often, can't afford the site director's (very low) salaries. The second thing that many were frustrated with were situations where they just didn't have the expertise to be able to put up beautiful and accurate exhibits, again, lack of staff. There is a small curatorial staff in Halifax, that are trying to bring a massive system into the 21st century that was broken when it was first developed. The pubic also doesn't fully understand how museums should work, and so donate tonnes of things to the sites that may have no actual provenance or use to the museum. Just because it's old, doesn't mean a museum can use it, or has the means to store it properly. Keep your auction finds in your private collections unless you know and can relay the backstory of the item to be donated. Also, the museum isn't your Salvation Army drop-off point for housewares you no longer need. Most of the stuff donated to the Ross-Thompson house to be used in their costume interpretation was garbage. Polyester drapes and housewares that have no use for making historic costume, if they had anyone to sew said garments.

This week could also be summed up by interpreters and living historians asking me if their clothes were accurate, and me having to reply 'no', but that I understood why, for many, various reasons, but not limited to no money and no trained staff.

This next week will be finishing Pierre's sexy full gaiters and a neck roller for his French Canadian impression for Fort Ti's Montcalm's Cross event next weekend, and trying to finish a ditto suit to send home to George for a fitting before August. Then it's on to other contracts, writing a chapter for the dissertation, and some new modern clothes for me.

Busy Grrrl is Busy.