Stockings, and an epiphany

A while back I wrote about how we should all be knitting. I have been focusing on knitting stockings mostly, because the stockings that are available commercially are really not great. I have been working on developing a pattern for knitted stockings that more closely resembles what was worn in the eighteenth century so that we can start to have our legs covered in something better than Jas. Townsend’s cotton tube socks with the modern, ribbed tops.  I wrote about the differences between modern stockings and the extant, historical stockings in museums. Two questions have been nagging me though, how do I knit that long, thin, very sexy gusset at the ankle, and how do I knit one in a contrasting colour to the body of the sock? These are two things that pop up in historical stockings, especially fine ones in silk. I have also been looking for a finer wool thread in order to knit a finer, dressier stocking, one that will also fit better in my lady’s shoe. This term, many of my classmates have been asking what I have been up to, what sort of art I have been making? And while I put on a mad rush to create the clothing that I would need if I was able to participate in Colonial Williamsburg summer internship program, my main focus has been knitting stockings. My general response when asked what I’ve been up to, is that I knit a lot of socks. I have gotten to the point that I can knit a pair of men’s work socks without a pattern, remembering where I am in the production just by looking at what I am knitting. So those questions above have been nagging me a bit.

After Christmas, Mum bought me several skeins of new yarn to play with. I Then bought Mathew Gnagy’s stocking pattern for a 16^th-17^th century stocking (Gnagy 2017). Those of you following along on my Facebook page have read about my trials over how to add a contrasting gusset using Mr. Gnagy’s method of knitting the gusset in a downwards method, adding stitches to increase the width as you knit, and shaping the foot through short rows under the instep. It was not pretty, so I ended up ‘frogging’, or ripping the knitting back and re-knitting the foot several times before I was happy with the stockings. They ended up being a solid colour, with just the clock decoration above the gusset being a different colour. They also ended up being too heavy a weight for my shoes, but not all was lost! I learned from knitting that pattern up, how to work a fancier ‘seam stitch’ up the back of the leg, and thought heavily about how to make that contrasting coloured gusset, knowing that this wasn’t the method. The stockings ended up being gifted to a good friend of ours who will wear them with an appropriate Tudor era outfit, and the red matches his shoes!

In the meantime, I knit up another pair of working stockings for Pierre in my favourite NSCAD yarn that my friend Lexie Arnott dyed for me using marigolds. I later over dyed them with onion skins as they proved to be a bit too 'glow in the dark', and I thought some more.

The third pair of stockings I started this term, I referenced from Sharon Burnston’s stocking pattern in Fitting and Proper (Burnston 2000, 100). The body of the stocking through to the gusset knit up beautifully in the fingerling yarn that mum had bought. I got to the gusset section though, and problems began. I thought that knitting up the heel flap, closing the heel, picking up the stitches for the gusset and then knitting in the round was the way to go. What I ended up with was a seriously misshapen foot and gusset. I put the stocking on, and realized that the leg was also far too large for me. Without a word to Pierre, who was sitting there next to me as we watched TV that evening, I frogged the entire stocking back to ball stage. He simply asked ‘Not happy?’ I nodded, I started over again the next day.

Casting on again the next day, I ended up putting on 135 stitches over 3 needles, 45/needle. I worked six rows of garter band, purling one row, knitting the next. I then knit for about an inch before starting to decrease for the leg. Following my own pattern, I decreased five times for the top of the leg before knitting in pattern again for the meaty part of the calf. I had just started decreasing again for the calf, when I stopped for a bit and knit up a couple of samples to work things out in my brain.

The first sample I knit up in leftover yarn from Pierre’s cammo socks, and it's not pretty, but it wasn't meant to be. I cast on enough stitches to closely resemble an ankle. After knitting in the round for several rows, I began knitting the heel flap. With this sample, I followed Sharon Burnston’s graph, knitting a row, then on the purl row, knitting the first two and last two stitches of the row to form the little ribbing down the edges of the heel flap. At the six inch mark, I began decreasing for the heel, knitting two stitches together on either side, about 10 stitches in from the edge. I finished the heel in a three needle bind off, but I’m not entirely happy with the little ridge this method causes. I may decrease for the heel, but leave the final stitches to be caught up in the gusset knitting.

Once the heel flap was complete, I picked up the stitches along the edges to knit the gusset. This proved problematic, as my edges are usually fairly tight, so picking up a stitch at every row was difficult (I fixed this in the second sample). I began knitting back and forth along the gusset from the top of the heel flap divide, to the other. This is called short row knitting, because you end up not knitting all the way to the end of each row, stopping and turning the work at the five stitch mark, then ten stitches from the end, then fifteen, and so on. My first sample is a bit nasty looking because I messed about with the number of decrease stitches, but also not having a proper edge to pick up stitches from the heel flap at every row.

Looking closely at the photos included in Burnston’s pattern (Burnston 2000, 101), you can see a nice firm edge to the heel flap as well, something I did not achieve with the first sample. I knit the vamp up to finish the sample to some extent, but I was already thinking of the second sample.

On the second sample, I worked a smaller heel flap, as I was more concerned with the edge between the gusset, heel flap, and front vamp.

The heel flap is knit up thusly,

First row: Slip one stitch knitwise, knit across.
Second row: Slip one stitch purlwise, knit two, purl to last three stitches, knit two, and purl one.

Repeating these two rows, the heel flap should be eight inches total, beginning the decrease for the heel at the six inch mark. I decreased for the heel on the knit rows only, the purl rows were just plain. Knitting the heel flap in this method gives you a stitch along the side of the heel flap to pick up at each row, and provides the nice little hard edge to the gusset that is noticed on the original.

Knit the gusset in short rows back and forth, keeping all the stitches on your needles, do not cast off at any point. Knit the gusset stitches back and forth from the top of the divide to the other. Begin to decrease at five stitch intervals, first row is five, then ten, then fifteen stitches from the edge. When you get to the end of each row, bring the yarn forward, slip the next stitch on to the working needle, bring the yarn back, and slip that stitch back on to the original needle, turn. Purl across, then do the yarn back, slip, yarn forward, slip back method, turn, and then knit. On the last row, I then knit up the side of the heel with the narrower gusset than the other side, so that I could start knitting the vamp.

The vamp is knit much like a heel flap, back and forth. On each knit row, I would pick up a stitch from the gusset on either side, and knit that stitch together with one from the vamp. The process went like this,

First row: slip first gusset stitch on to end of vamp needle, knit two together, knit to other side, slip stitch from other side of gusset on to end of vamp needle, then knitting those last two stitches together.
Second row: Purl one, knit two, purl to last three stitches, knit two, purl one. On this row, no stitches are picked up from the gusset.

The vamp is knit so that you are picking up gusset stitches from the knit rows only. This keeps from ‘gathering’ up the gusset as you knit and makes for a much smoother transition. The vamp is knit in this manner for 5 1/2”, then I went back to knitting in the round for the foot.

It is my belief that this is the method used to knit a contrasting gusset as seen in artwork (Styles 2008, 75) and some extant stockings from the period. In the first sample, I used scrap yarns, not really caring if they matched in weight or type of yarn. The second sample, I used one yarn throughout and knit up a much better sample. I think that if I were to dye a contrasting colour and use the same yarn type throughout the stocking, I will achieve the desired look I am after. I have returned to my stocking now, and will keep you abreast of future experimentation. So far, the stocking is working up nicely, and is looking like it will fit my leg much better than the first attempt.

Bibliography

Burnston, Sharon. 2000. Fitting and Proper, 18th century clothing from the Collection of the Chester County Historical Society. Scurlock Publishing Company.

Gnagy, Mathew. 2017. Seventeenth-Century Stocking with Brocaded Top. pdf, New York: self published.

Styles, John. 2008. Dress of the People: Everyday Fashion in Eighteenth-Century England. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.

When the socks from Jas Townsend just won’t do anymore: Learning to knit period stockings

I learned to knit as a child. After about twenty rows of just the knit stitch I was bored, told my mum, “I know how to knit!” and left the unfinished object in a pile at the bottom of her knitting basket. I didn’t ask to learn again until I was an adult. When Mum taught me to crochet as a teenager, she handed me a hook, a ball of yarn, and a book of crochet patterns. She showed me how to get started and then told me to “figure it out”. I made pillows for my grandmothers that year for Christmas from the patterns and the giant ball of cotton yarn.

When I started working for historic sites, there were knitted projects that I wanted to do. I was not content to farm out the much needed items to knitters and risk being seen by my bosses as not working hard enough. So mum once again showed me how to cast on, how to purl, how to knit, and then left me to figure things out. That winter I started with the Victorian working woman’s shawl, the Sontag. I made five that year. Since then I have moved on to other projects, figuring things out as I go along. I have found that I learn better this way.

Since beginning this degree I have been knitting stockings. I started thinking things through a couple of years before this in my desire to have a better, more historically accurate stocking than what is currently available commercially. Especially for Pierre, since people see his socks more than mine, being hidden by petticoats. I started with a sock pattern from the 1940s to learn how to knit in the round, how much to cast on, and how to shape the sock. I frogged that sock a few times before I figured out how to do a proper eighteenth-century garter band instead of the ribbed top to modern socks. A modern sock top has a knit one, purl one stitch for ten or twelve rows to give an elastic top to the sock, an eighteenth-century sock top has alternating rows, usually about six, of knit and purl to form a non-elastic top that acts as a ridge to hold the sock garter from slipping off the top of the stocking. I knew the heel pattern was modern, but at that point, I was happy with the outcome. Pierre received two pair of white worsted stockings that year, he saved them for wearing with his historical midshipman’s uniform.

With mum’s diagnoses I have been pumping out stockings as fast as the needles will allow. I have developed that sock pattern to give me a stocking that I like the look of and that I can basically knit in my sleep. I have also changed the heel flap for a plain stocking-knit heel instead of the 1940s double knit. Pierre now has enough stockings to do about a week, and I have begun knitting socks for the other men in my extended re-enacting family. I have just recently found finer yarn and am attempting to knit finer socks for myself, finally. My pattern is good, but I am still not entirely happy with it. They are still far better than what is available at Jas Townsend or other commercial retailers. The heel on my pattern is still modern, in that I ‘turn’ it back and forth to knit the little pouch for the heel to sit in, and historical stockings don’t have those ‘turning’ stitches. The instep gusset is also different on historical stockings. A friend in New York has been working through seventeenth-century clothing in much the same way I have been working through the eighteenth-century. He has developed a stocking pattern that has the correct heel and instep gusset, albeit much more fancy than what I would need. So, a few weeks ago, I bought the pattern from him. I finished off the new pair of stockings I had on the needles for Pierre and pulled out some lovely merino stocking yarn mum had bought me for Christmas. I am not following Mathew Gnagy’s pattern perfectly. I used his casting on numbers, but have been knitting my own pattern up until the ankle point. His garter band was a brocaded band, whereas mine is plain. His back seam stitches are also far fancier than mine. At the last decrease, I returned to Mathew’s pattern.

At the same time, I have been reading about stockings, the materials used, colours, fashionable vs. plebeian stockings. John Styles Dress of the People (Styles 2008) is a lot to digest! On page 75 is a painting that I have looked at for years, John Collet’s Modern Love – The Elopement (Styles 2008, 75). I love the old woman’s ragged and patched petticoat, but Styles would have us also look at the ‘old hag’s stockings, grey with red clocks and gussets! O. M. G! In recent weeks friends have been discussing stockings, most especially their colours. A valued peer of mine is of the opinion that all stockings should be white, and while I agree that the majority of stockings I have seen are white, they are also made of ‘thread’, which could be linen or cotton. The stockings that I am reconstructing are in wool, and throughout Styles book he mentions that worsted stockings were also knit in colours, grey, brown, and other earth tones predominantly. Styles is also talking about common people, who scholars refer to as ‘plebeian’. My peer also lives in what was considered a big city in the eighteenth century, a fashion capitol so to speak. My theory is that stockings would have been predominantly white, but that other colours would have been seen on working men and women of the period. And then we have these fancy, two coloured stockings on a very common woman in the Elopement painting.

My new stockings are grey, I have a bucket of yarn downstairs, surely there is a good red in it somewhere. This week, not only am I learning a new style of heel and instep gusset, I am also learning how to knit with two colours, carrying threads, working a clock, and setting the second colour into the instep gusset ‘just right’. Figuring things out. This has been a stressful couple of weeks. Preparing for a trip to Colonial Williamsburg for the summer, the birth of a new grandchild almost a month early, Pierre travelling to Newfoundland to visit our daughter and me staying at home to hold down the fort, alongside my usual routine of reading all of the things and looking after mum. I knit to help deal with the stress. The challenge I have set out for my brain allows me to focus more. By the end of this experiment, not only will I have a new pair of stockings, I also hope to have a new pattern written up for historically accurate, plebeian stockings, maybe even with contrasting clocks and gussets.

My reading this week

Baumgarten, Linda. 1999. Costume Close Up: Clothing Construction and Pattern, 1750-1790. Colonial Williamsburg Foundation.

Burnston, Sharon. 2000. Fitting and Proper. Scurlock Publishing Company.

Gnagy, Mathew. 2017. Seventeenth-Century Stocking with Brocaded Top. New York, February 15.

Styles, John. 2008. Dress of the People: Everyday Fashion in Eighteenth-Century England. Yale University Press.

Idle Hands are the Devil’s Playthings: You Could Be Knitting….

On social media lately there has been a call for more activities for the ladies, more women’s material culture being represented at events.  For most of its history, the living history movement has been focused on the major battles of North American history, and with it, the major focus has been on the men.  Women’s roles have been relegated to that of camp drudge, prostitute, or silk dressed ‘belle’ out to view the encampment.  As living historians have expanded their research, we have found that any number of roles for women could exist.  Camp following women were not just soldier’s wives or prostitutes, but could be tavern keepers, merchants, Loyalist refugees, immigrants, the list could go on as far as your imagination will allow.

So what should we, as women, be doing in camp? 

As I prepare for this upcoming season, I am working towards goals set out by the more progressive members of our community.  I have already completely hand stitched our clothing, I’ve been doing that for over a decade now.  I’m working on the little things, the accessories that round out our impersonations.  Getting those little things right can lead to a bunch of little, short term projects with a big bang for the buck.  Lots of accomplishment feelings can go a long way when you are mid-way through a gown that feels like it is taking forever to finish.  I also have a lot of time sitting and waiting right now, and so need little projects that I can take with me as I sit in waiting rooms.  My latest project has been knitting stockings for Pierre.  His legs are the most visible, and so I have started with him.  The eventual plan will be to have all three of us in knitted, period stockings and that none of us have to carry with us modernly constructed, over-the-knee socks.

Eighteenth-century stockings are different from modern stockings in relatively few ways.  Starting at the top edge, the ribbing is constructed differently so that instead of being elastic, like modern socks, the ‘gartering’ is a fat rib to allow for your garters to hold up your socks.  The top band is knit in alternating rows of knit a row and purl a row, instead of knit one, purl one on the same row.  Does that make sense?  The garter rib usually also is only about ½ - ¾”, rather than a fat 2-3” band of ribbing.

Stockings should also come up, over, the knee.  Unlike modern knee socks, these stockings have to extend up beyond the knee band of your breeches.  It drives many a living historian nuts to see sloppiness of socks drooping down around the ankles, or having to constantly struggle to keep your own socks up because they are just too short.  The stockings I’m working on started off as a modern knee-length stocking pattern that I added 5-6” to the length, I also added more stitches to the initial cast on so that there would be enough room for the lower thigh to be comfortable in the sock.  I think I may have added 20 stitches to the cast on.  I then have two separate decreases to the leg, one from top of stocking to the knee, and then a second from the calf muscle down to ankle.

The third main difference is the heel.  Most stockings I have seen have a plain knit heel, no modern fancy stitches to make the heel knitting thicker to last longer.  As boring as it sounds, plain knit heels are the majority.  But if you come across an oddball outlier, I’d love to see it!

There are many references to historical stockings in books such as Sharon Burnston’s Fitting and Proper (Burnston 100), or Linda Baumgarten’s Costume Close Up (Watson 75), the latter being frame knitted, but holding similar characteristics to their hand knit counterparts.  The stockings I am studying are from the New Brunswick museum collection, accession numbers 59.81, OTTY 22586, and OTTY 22587.  These stockings are all knit in fine thread, possibly cotton or linen and are white.  References from run-away ads from American sources in the period also mention woollen stockings with varying colours, such as blue, heathered grey, and even red.

Publication: The Pennsylvania Gazette

Date: August 30, 1764

RUN away from the Subscriber, living in New Britain Township, 

Bucks county, a Servant Woman, named Catherine Palmer, about 5

feet high, well set, of fair Complexion, full faced, pretty 

fresh coloured, with brown Hair, has a Scar on her Breast, and 

another on the left Side of her Head, grey Eyes, supposed to

be about 29 years of Age, sometimes says she was born in

England, but talks with the Scotch Accent; she is much given

To Liquor, and Chewing Tobacco; Had on, and took with her when

            She went away, a long Calicoe Gown, with purple Flowers; a

Striped Linen short gown, Kenting Handkerchief, and a blue and

White one, three Shifts of homespun Linen, one with the

Sleeves something finer than the Body, two Linsey Petticoats, one

Blue and white, the other red and white; two Caps, one

With Cambrick Border, and the other with a Lawn one; Black

Bath Bonnet; a Pair of Pockets, one the same Stuff as her

Gown; a Check Apron, a Pair of new Shoes, her Buckles not

Fellows; a pair of Woollen Stockings, with blue Gores, Stole a 

Pair of blue Stays, new Silk Handkerchief, about 8 yards of

Fine Linen, a Pair of red Worsted Stockings, and several other 

Things supposed to be taken by her.  Whoever takes up the said

Servant, and secures her in any Goal, so that her Master may

Have her again shall have Five Pounds Reward, and reasonable

Charges, paid by John James, jun.

N.B. All Masters of Vessels are strictly forbid to

Carry her off. (The Accessible Archives - the Pennsylvania Gazette)

In a very quick search on Pinterest this morning, I also came up with several instances of women of all class levels knitting.

 a Girl Knitting; MERCIER, Philippe 1689-1760; Nation Galleries of Scotland

 Serving Girl Knitting; BOUYS, Andre 1656-1740; MET

 Woman Knitting; DUPARC, Francoise 1726-78; Musee des Beaux Arts, Marseilles

 Countess Tolstoy nee Lopukhina; ARGUNOV, Ivan 1768

Given that it has taken me a month and a half of knitting to produce one pair of stockings for my husband, it seems as though we should all be knitting.  Everyone needs socks.  The ones you can buy commercially just won’t cut it anymore for several of the events we want to participate in.  It’s time we stepped up our game and started knitting our own stockings.  It is also a good way to keep our idle hands busy, and interpreting an activity that many of us enjoy already.  For those of you needing an actual pattern to follow, there are several available through places such as the Plimoth Plantation and the Modern Maker.  I am also currently working on a pattern based on my own research which will be published in the near future.

Bibliography

Baumgarten, Linda and JohnWatson. Costume Close Up: Clothing Construction and Pattern 1750-1790. New York: Costume and Fashion Press, 1999.

Burnston, Sharon Ann. Fitting and Proper: 18th Century Clothing from the Collection of the Chester County Historical Society. Texarkana Texas: Scurlock Publishing Co. ,Inc., 1998.

The Accessible Archives - the Pennsylvania Gazette. 30 August 1764. accessible-archives.com/collections/the-pennsylvania-gazette. 26 April 2016.