2020, The Year Living History Went Online

A lot can happen in a month. Just over a month ago, I was planning my summer construction projects, all geared around events we were planning on attending. Then, rather abruptly, we were told to self-isolate, then our border closed with our neighbouring country...something I had not seen in my lifetime.
It has been a rough month, I will admit. Been trying to keep up with projects, but my deadlines have shifted a bit, and some things have moved further up the to-do list than others. I am finding that I want to spend more time in the den with my husband and our boys, than down in the shoe sewing...

It is what it is.

The thing I have been enjoying though, is that the living history community started posting photos from past events on social media. We get to remember what we love doing, remembering the people we love being around sharing our nerd together. Other sites have started moving living history programming online. Fort Ticonderoga is hosting a lecture series you can check out here...https://www.fortticonderoga.org/center-for-digital-history/. I just noticed that History Camp in Boston will also be hosting lectures, their facebook page is here, https://www.facebook.com/HistoryCampOfficial/?utm_source=History%20events%20in%20New%20England&utm_campaign=088504d5ee-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_01_18_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c4221dc88a-088504d5ee-1210447797&mc_cid=088504d5ee&mc_eid=c116a2a136. Neal Hurst, Tailor is also hosting zoom chats and putting them up on the YouTube here https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCatJbAEjsOky12VsAAwjCLg. Minute Man NHP is also doing a fabulous job of leading up to the 245th commemoration of Battle Road this sunday, https://www.facebook.com/MinuteManNPS. We will be moving that commemoration online as well, so look for photos of lanterns belighting your friend's front stoops sunday night and into monday.

How will I incorporate this wonderful virtual living history experience into my dissertation, I am not sure yet. Needs to happen though. This is a once in a lifetime experience, just as important as my physical body attending the real-life events.

the Sestercentennial begins: Boston Massacre 250th

Yesterday marked the 250th anniversary commemoration of the Boston Massacre. The actual anniversary was thursday, but many of the commemoration ceremonies were this weekend. Photos and videos are being shared on social media, and I have to admit to a fair bit of jealousy and feeling left out, but when I watched the video of the event last night, I was glad to have stepped back from this event. It was beautiful, don't get me wrong, more that I would have felt 'far too much emotion' (tm). It was beautiful.

Seeing the event shared through social media has me thinking of my own living history practice, and what I need to be working on for this season's eventing. The first event we will be participating in will be the No Quarter event at Ticonderoga in May. Pierre will be a British soldier, working as a servant. I have pulled his white small clothes already, having made them the year before we moved up here as part of a naval midshipman's uniform. To round out his clothing for the event, he will need a brown work jacket, black half gaiters, and a black silk neck stock. The Fort is sending me a forage cap kit. All of this work will go into the dissertation, as one of my character sketches is of a British soldier. I will not be building a regimental for him, as he will not ever need one as more of a support soldier than a musket carrying one.

Paul Sandby RA, 1731-1809, British, London Cries: A Fishmonger, ca.1759. Yale Centre for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection. watercolour and graphite on laid paper.

For the 'Brown Work Jacket', we have very little evidence as to what they looked like, so I went to one of the best sources for working class people of the period, Paul Sandby. This image of a fishmonger shows some really great detail of a work jacket, right down to what the cuff should look like. Henry Cooke has an extant blue wool jacket (though of French provenance) in a very similar cut, and will provide excellent construction details. Now I just have to hunt for a good serviceable brown wool and get that cut so I can bring it with me to stitch while I am away next month.As for the half gaiters and neck stock, those will both come out of stash, thankfully.

Then it will be working on items for my own kit. I have stays that are almost ready for a fitting, then binding off. After that, a cotton short gown, based on the one in the Colonial Williamsburg collection and featured in Costume Close-up, page 43. That short gown is not strictly required for May, but will be needed for July when it's +40C so I don't drop of heat exhaustion like last year.

After that, it will be back to men's wear, as I will have two complete suits to build, and parts of two others to finish, plus a regimental to make over the summer months.

It's going to be a busy year ahead, and I can't believe that I am writing about revolutionary war living history RIGHT when it is happening! This is unintentional nerding out in the extreme, as when I began, I hadn't realized how close we were, and throughout my first year, I wasn't sure I would even make it this far. I'm doing this!

revisiting short stays

I have been getting new clients this year, which has been lovely, but will have to take a bit of a break from sewing for other people for a while in order to get caught up on my PhD work. When the whiteboard fills up, I get anxious, because I have given people my word that I would sew for them, and want to keep that word.

So, the last few weeks I have been working on stays, predominantly for a new client, but also for myself. They are a compare and contrast in both cut and fashion, but also class levels. The ones for the client are a regency era historical cut, but covered in fine lace, and so are very delicate. The ones for me are revolutionary period, working class and serviceable. A tale in two class levels for sure!

Making new stays for a new body means trial and error, fixing and tweaking until I am happy with the cut. I hope to have them bound off this week for what will hopefully be the final fitting next week. Then I can drape a bodice for them and get the gown under construction. I also have a shift to make, and a Banyan for their spouse. They are excited to have someone make new clothes for them, and it is infectious, their excitement. If I could afford to hire someone right now, we would be seriously hard at it. But I am just one woman, and so things will get made in due time.

Some in-progress shots of the stays. I will be binding them off again today, after taking them entirely apart to tweak the side pieces. I also stabilized the edge of the lace along the centre back a bit more with some gold thread couched down over the scallop edge. The lace is made up of short pieces of gold thread over the netting, and very fragile. By couching a continuous length of more gold thread on top, those shorter lengths will be held more firmly in place. These stays will never be seen by anyone other than the client and their spouse, and so we can have a bit more fun with their femininity, and make a garment they will feel good wearing. I have to admit, they are really lovely to look at, but they took about all the patience I could find, lots of tiny hand stitches with a tiny needle and silk thread. Most people would have just said, "it can't be done", but I love a challenge.

My own stays, in comparison, are rough and tumble. I am tweaking my own stays pattern again with this set, having taken a large fish out of the seam between the front and side front pieces.

Like my very first set of stays made over 25 years ago now, these will also be green linen with brown stitching. Unlike that first set though, these ones are made from layers of linen and linen canvas, and synthetic whalebone, not the cotton canvas and steel boning from that first set. I also understand the stays making process a whole lot more, and so can fix fit issues I had with the last set (taking out that fish). These ones are going to be mostly machine made, as I have found my backstitch really closely resembles machine, I have a nice machine 'backstitch' and I would like to have these finished before the beginning of the season in May...with all that work on my white board, remember? And a research trip to Nova Scotia in April.

All the bone channels are now in, and last night while watching TV, I started on the great many eyelets I have to do. These will be both front and back lacing, so I can dress (and more importantly undress) myself. The eyelets down the back sections are finished now, the front eyelets will get worked tonight. Then, before too long, I will sew the pieces together, have a quick fitting, and be able to bind these off while I am away. The binding will be done by hand, and I am not sure yet what I want to bind them with, but linen tape is the frontrunner at the moment.

Once I get back from Nova Scotia, I have to get gaiters and a black silk neck stock made up for Pierre before opening weekend. We decided against the expense of the forage cap workshop at the moment, due in large part to me having to fund that trip. He will likely wear his monmouth cap for the weekend. If I can, I'd like to get a brown wool jacket made for him for that weekend as well, as that would have been his dress of the day as a servant over a regimental jacket. While he is smol, his shoulders are still too wide for the servants jacket that the Fort has in stock, and it would be good for him to have his own, so he can feel comfortable getting it all kinds of heritage'd.

After opening weekend, PhD stuff happens in earnest! I have a wardrobe inventory to reproduce, tweaks to make on Pierre's retired highland soldier's clothes, and my Shelburne Loyalists suits to make.

little sketch in the Ross-Thompson House museum

I also have a Regimental for Tommy, stays for Lynn on the whiteboard and any other reproductions I want to make based on my research trip. I have also been researching what the Waldeckers might have been wearing after the war, and wondering about cultural differences there.

I have a busy year ahead of me, stay tuned to watch what's new in the shoe...

Been a while...

My computer died shortly after that last post, and it being in the shop threw my whole game off. Who knew I would be so closely tied to my tech?

Anyhoo...

I spent christmas break knitting tuques for folks, got quite a few of those sent out. I was able to use some lovely hand-dyed Nova Scotia yarn from my sister in law to make up two of them. A grey monmouth for Andrew Kirk down in the southern States, and a lovely blue monmouth for Matt Zembo just north of Albany. I currently have a red French cap on the needles for Joseph Hayden out on the western frontier that I am trying out a new-to-me style of hemming that is more historically accurate than the purl row. I got yet another French cap made up for mon beau frere who fixed my computer, and knit up this modern take on the dutch sailors cap for my friend Lacey in New Brunswick.

So I am currently on tuque 5, I have one more of those on the list, for Jayar, then it's back to stockings.
January was the big push to finish up clothes for Pierre and I to wear to a Federal period event in New York at the Elmendorph Inn in Red Hook.

This was a new-to-us period, really, at this high level of accuracy. So it took a serious amount of work to get everything finished. I also made some clothing pieces for the same event for Tim MacDonald, who came to play fiddle and other fun instruments for the event. And, last minute-like, when my friend Laura was here for an extended weekend visit, we banged out yet another suit for a young gent back home in Nova Scotia. They were able to have a fitting with it this past weekend, and it's shaping up to be a lovely start for this new person to the world of living history. Due to the lack of computer, my instagram got many of the images of these builds. You can check out the photos here... https://www.instagram.com/kellyarlenegrant/?hl=en

The event at Red Hook was a famous success, and, of course, it went into my dissertation! On that note, I sent off the introduction and first chapter to my primary supervisor yesterday, so I will be back in the studio shortly. I have projects I need to get tidied up before I leave for more fieldwork in April.

Right now, I am doing a bit more Federal/Regency/1812 stuff for a couple here in Montreal who portray upper class folks. We have joked that we might turn out to the odd event as their servants, if our schedules allow. I am also rebuilding some of my summer wardrobe based on an inventory of a woman attached to the 84th RHE, done in Halifax, also for the dissertation. I cut new stays the other day, of layers of linen and linen buckram. My old stays are still serviceable, but I have wanted to tweak the shape, and make a better set. Things have been busy in the shoe!

Caps: At some point, we have all done it wrong...

Caps are one of those things that make or break an outfit. They are the easiest to fix, and yet, at some point, many of us have gotten things horribly wrong.

My mum at Louisbourg in 2013, bless her soul, I hated that cap.

See, even I have made some horrible mistakes. I dressed my mum in a hurry for this event, without having time for a fitting, and the cap was made in the car on the way to Louisbourg. It was a horrible style, made of too heavy a linen, and she wore it so that it swallowed her face. I hated that cap, and as soon as we were home again...actually as we were packing up, it went into the fire.

Figuring out what style of cap to make means doing some research...really, lots of research. Cap styles change dramatically over the course of the 18th and into the 19th centuries. As a friend recently said, caps are one of those things that can update an outfit in a heartbeat. They were simple and fairly inexpensive to make, and could be done up fairly quickly and easily with a bit of skill with a needle and thread. You might not be able to afford a new gown, but there's usually enough scrap to cut a new cap.

Kitchen Maid, Chardin mid century

An early layering of two styles of linen cap, a frilled under cap, with a plain lappet bonnet worn over.

Margaret Styles Manning 1770

 Two similar styles of cap to the one Mrs. Manning is wearing above, all late 18th century, but worn by a variety of women.

two servants late 18thC

Another style of cap, worn to frame the face, not to swallow it, and of a fine cloth that you can imagine you could see through.

The point I am trying to make here is that too often, we try to cover up our modern hair by wearing caps far too forward on the head. Modern cloth names have confused fine cotton muslin with heavy cotton broadcloth, so we buy cloth that is far too heavy for cap making. I wear my hair fairly short most times, but the thing I have done is to grow out my fringe so that I can pull the front of my hair back out of my face. I have made the investment of fine cottons and linens to make caps with, even going to the extreme of cutting up a second hand, thrifted linen shirt that was a good weight for cap making. And, I have changed my cap styles to be the 'common dog' of cap styles. I now wear a lappet cap like the three grouped images above, and another style closer to the portrait of the two servants. The choice of which one to wear comes from how much of my own hair I have to deal with, and which outside hat I want to wear, but also what I am going to be doing throughout the day, and what I am wearing for a gown.

me, in my lappet cap

When I moved into the early 19th century for a job interview and an upcoming event, I knew that I would have to make some new caps to go with the new wardrobe. My caps from the 18th century just wouldn't work.

This image seems to me to have the feeling of combining the two styles above. It frames the face, but also covers the hair. This was a good look for what I wanted to do, and so I pulled together a bunch of images of extant caps to work from.

my pinterest page is full of similar styles of caps

A cap similar to the lappet cap from the 18thC, which could tie under the chin, with lots of flouf.

My interpretation, leaning towards the mid to late 18-teens

test run

So I seem to have gotten the front of this cap fairly decent. I am framing my face with the cap, nice bit of room for my curls at the front, fits the nape of my neck nicely. You can see though, that the back needs some help. Either I have to make the caul smaller, or add to my hair with some rats (or both). Yesterday, we went out and bought a hair piece (a rat), and I will try that out with the cap to see how things work out. I am close, and far happier with the results than I imagined.

The cap itself is made from materials gifted to me from a friend, fine cotton mull and a bit of hand-made bobbin lace that was 'just enough' for the frill.

I should be able to wrangle a kitchen well enough in this style, not having to worry about it shifting on my head at all. Hopefully my sausage curls will stay nice and tight. Modern hair shellac might be deployed for the day of, just to be on the safe side. My hair is cut fairly short, at chin length these days, but if I decide to go shorter next cut, I could still rock out a historically correct hair style by keeping the front fringe forward and curled to within an inch of its life. I'll have to deal with that caul though...

Regency on a stoestring, but also the historical stash busting challenge...

The last week or so, I have been working on Pierre's clothes for the dance at Red Hook in February. From the stash, I pulled out a piece of navy wool twill that the tag said I paid 5.65$/metre for. I remember buying it, humming over it, thinking I didn't need any more fabric, but my friend Jenny telling me I couldn't go wrong with having a good navy wool in my stash...most men like wearing navy.
At that price too...

So I cut new high waisted trousers for Pierre and got those made up. (I still have a good chunk of it left)

The only construction shot I seem to have taken...

Then I went to the tickle trunk of old garb pieces and pulled out a regency era waistcoat that Garth left for me to do something with. I have always been in love with the cloth, it is a fabulous rust coloured wool with a blue pinstripe. The waistcoat construction left quite a bit to be desired though. The person who stitched it didn't do a bad job, per se, but didn't understand the fine points of historical sewing or tailoring. So, I set to it with a seam ripper and carefully unpicked every last bit of it.
And yes, I should have probably taken a before shot, but I've been bad at that...

The collar was easy, remove the iron on interfacing, re-block the wool with the iron, find a piece of linen from the scrap box big enough for a collar, find a piece of canvas from same scrap box to cut same, re-build collar properly. The guts literally came from the scrap box, not from new cloth.

Next up, I tackled the pockets. The original pocket bag was put in more like a facing around an opening and would never lay flat, the welt itself was top stitched in place by machine. Thankfully the pocket opening wasn't cut too big for the welt though, so once everything was unpicked and re-blocked, the pocket went back together quite easily using the correct method. The welt itself is a bit wonky, but I'm looking at it now as having more heritage. The new pocket bags also came from the scrap box, still no new cloth cut.

Once the pockets were re-built, I interlined the waistcoats fronts with a small leftover piece of red cotton broadcloth as my canvas. I didn't need the qualities of hair canvas for this, since I wouldn't be rolling a lapel or anything, I just needed a good bit of cloth to support the wool. Since I rarely prewash my fabrics, the broadcloth still has its sizing, so was nice and crisp. And there was 'just enough' for a couple of waistcoat fronts.

The lining and backs came from new cut cloth, my dwindling stock of lining linen. Plain, unbleached, and unwashed, so nice and crisp. This waistcoat will never see a laundry tub, so there's absolutely no need to launder any of the fabrics for shrinkage. Tailored garments should never be washed...brushed, hung to air, if absolutely need be, a trip to the dry cleaner, but only as last resort. 

Once the waistcoat was back to waistcoat form, I needed buttons. This was the only piece left to create self covered buttons with, and I did not want to order metal buttons...cloth covered may be a pain in the hands, but honestly, they were the common dog of buttons in the era, so I suck it up and cover buttons.

This is the little circles cut for button covering, the button molds are bone gaiter buttons from my stash (yes, I have a metric tonne of gaiter buttons, my grandfather kept all the dead buttons, just in case), and ALL THAT'S LEFT OF THE WOOL! Seriously, that's really all the remains of the old waistcoat. I had to cut the buttonhole placket off as the original buttonholes were put in vertical instead of horizontal. The wool for the buttons came from what remained of that off-cut piece. 

Since I didn't even want to run to the fabric store for thread this week, I used another trick from the bag and blended two thread colours to give me a 'close enough' colour for the new buttonholes.

The buttonhole was whipped around closely with a brown sewing thread. Then, I worked the buttonhole stitch in a dark red twist. The two colours together work fairly well on the rust coloured wool.

Last weekend, while on a drop off to the second hand shop, I had the thought of going in and seeing what sort of hat I could find to re-work into something for this suit. I came out with a gnarly old porkpie that was destined for the tip, for sure, due to it being in such rough shape. When we got home, I threw it in a hot wash with some soap, not really minding if it would felt up any...because seriously, it was in bad shape, and I paid so little for it. Once washed, it was pulled on to a hat block I made years ago from Styrofoam and left to dry. Once dry, it got a couple sprays of shellac and set to dry again before finishing.

It was finished with a length of green twill tape, likely from my days at the Citadel, like close to 20 years ago, and a small mother of pearl buckle from the stash, possibly from the 1940s, but a great colour. The nappy spot on the side of the hat are actual holes. Pierre wants to keep them, even though I could needle felt some more wool in to repair them. The lining came from the scrap bin again, and is pieced...

I marked the circle piece with his name in black ink, just 'cause.

Pierre's coat will come soon, made from cloth from the stash again, but in yet another wool...so no pieces will match at all. He will be a tecnicolour man of the lower sorts. We are likely to be in the kitchen, and would be of the lower sort anyway. I will take photos of the finished outfit when it's all said and done...

But first, our dance master needs clothes, so I am on to that.

a long, drawn out exercise in costume design research

This degree boils down to me wondering how we can make a better effort in how we look at living history events in Nova Scotia. Since clothing is always the first impression a person gives to the world, it's doubly important to get that correct when doing living history. The visitor to your site may never enter into conversation with an interpreter, they may simply come to see, to watch. So what can we do when preparing for the next event? Make sure we have the details of our clothing and accoutrements as correct as we can get them.

This means constantly researching, constantly striving to improve.

If you have been following me for any length of time, you'll know I am taking this opportunity to completely overhaul our kit. This was mainly begun due to the simple fact that neither Pierre nor I had a whole lot of clothing and personal material culture to begin with. Up until now, it has been my job to dress other people, so if we went to an event, we were the last dressed, often badly, with me usually still sewing the night before. Now, I have the opportunity to sit down and take the time to do what I have long wanted to do, really think about how we should look. I have been wanting to build a new suit of clothes for Pierre for a while. I thought about our ancestor, Peter Grant, the man who received the original land grant in Pine Tree. What would he have looked like? He may have worn a kilt during the war as part of his uniform, but afterwards, several of my research nerd friends and I figured breeches were still the common nether-garment of choice.

 The project started with a piece of fabric pulled from the scrap bin at NSCAD that was big enough for waistcoat fronts. They were cut, and tucked into a big Ziploc bag for later, along with the scraps. Then I started collecting the other fabrics I would need, and thought about how I would like him to look. The left-over bits of a suit I made for myself last Fall provided the fabric for his new frock coat/jacket. Then my brother and I going through a box of family heritage revealed a MacKay tartan kilt of my dad's that could be cut up and made into something else, since it was seriously moth eaten, and useless now as a kilt.

Neil Gow, by William Say (1773-1857), after Sir Henry Raeburn. Published by T. MacDonald, 1815, 213/4 x 15 7/8inches

I had been thinking of this painting of Neil Gow for a while. His jacket and waistcoat are of an earlier fashion, more 1770s than 18-teens, but also the tartan breeches and cut cloth hose (a challenge!). I had all the fabrics now to complete this suit for Pierre. And I had the time, between contracts and dissertation edits.

The almost finished suit! I have some minor tweaks to tidy up, I cut his breeches waistband far too big, and those bubbles in the sleeve head need to be steamed out, but otherwise, this suit is finished. His waistcoat is a classic 1770s cut, lined and backed in natural linen, buttons are self fabric covered, working pockets. The coat is based on one in the Glasgow Museum and a Continental jacket pattern developed by Fort Ticonderoga. I wanted a working mariner's cuff, and so used the Glasgow museum jacket for that reference, and the cut of the jacket, pocket placement, and collar came from the Ticonderoga pattern. The breeches are a standard fall front style, but I didn't use fall plackets, choosing to have a clean line of sett across the front. The breeches are completely lined in linen to provide stability to the wool, but also to hide any small moth holes in the cloth. The hose are single layer of bias cut tartan.

Once I have made the final tweaks to the suit, Pierre can have it to wear, break in and gain some heritage. Then it will truly become his, as his body warmth will allow the wool to stretch to mold to his body. Then, the pulling at the front button won't happen. I can't make the man not stand at attention-at ease though, he is after-all, a military man. His clothes will become more his though, through wearing.

No new fabrics were used in this suit, all came from repurposed or leftover cabbage from other projects, including linings. Even his hat was re-shaped from a slouch felt he wore after SCA tournements, and was in seriously rough shape. In fact, the only new piece of clothing in this image is a new neckerchief, which is mine, a gift from a friend. Though I do like that pop of red.

What might Peter Grant have looked like? I think he might have looked like this...though perhaps with red hair.