new mitts for a common woman

 When moving recently, a friend cleaned out her yarn stash and sent me a couple skeins of sport weight Briggs and Little. She didn't really like knitting with it and knew it was my very favourite yarn to work with.

I got a brown skein and a grey skein, and knew right away that the brown skein would be knit up into new mitts for myself. The first mitts I knit up for myself were worked in a leftover bit of hand spun merino that I loved, but there just wasn't enough yarn to give me the length I wanted. They worked for a while, but this working class chick wanted longer mitts, ones that I could tuck up under the cuffs of my wool gown and wear all day in January and not mind the cold. These new mitts will be long!

Basing my knitting pattern loosely on stocking patterns, I also took the plunge (with a gentle push from Colleen Humphries) and did a backwards loop cast on and a wrap and turn process to knitting the cuff. Now that I have finally jumped in with both feet, I won't go back...so much quicker and easier than purling alternate rows!

My pattern:

Cast on 85 stitches over three needles (25, 25, and 35 on the third needle which will work the seam) (2.25 dpn) using a backwards loop cast. Knit the first row back on itself and join. Knit the second row, wrap and turn. Knit. Wrap and turn. Continue until you have a cuff of 6-8 rows or about a fat half inch.

Knit in the round, in the centre of the last needle, work the 'seam' by alternating rows of plain knit with a "purl, knit, purl" row to form a fancy twisted stitch that appears in extant stockings as a 'seam'.

After about a half inch or so of knitting in the pattern, decrease. On the last needle (the one with the 'seam') knit to three stitches of the seam, knit 2tgthr, knit one, 'seam', knit one, knit 2tgthr through back loops. Knit in pattern for three rows. Decrease four times, then knit in pattern for three inches.

Begin decrease again using same method. Work in this fashion until wrist measurement is achieved.

To increase for the hand, on either side of the seam line pick up to stiches through back loops as often as as every purl row. Once the full hand circumference is achieved, opposite the seam line, set 16 stitches aside on a giant safety pin or stitch keeper to pick up later for the thumb. Once the stitches have been set aside, continue knitting in the round. Continue to knit in pattern until the desired hand length is achieved.

On the needle that is between the seam line and the thumb stitches, work back and forth to create the point, leaving the remaining stitches on the other needles. Once the point is created, pick up stitches along the sides of the point to begin knitting the final cuff. 

Knit one full round, wrap and turn. Knit one full round going in the reverse direction, wrap and turn. Continue this for 6-8 rows as per the starting cuff. Bind off.

Pick up stitches for thumb and knit in the round for desired length. Bind off.

*You can add purl stitches to the back of the hand for decoration or leave plain. You could also add stitches later in a contrasting colour that mimics the knit stitches.

new mitts in a good brown yarn

mitts from the Colonial Williamsburg collection, OBJECT NUMBER2018-255,1&2

In Search of Online Content: Using social media to keep your site in the public thought

Let's face it, for many of us in the heritage sector, gainful UNemployment is likely to be our future. Many of us are seeking out new ways to engage with history, but also keep abreast of life in the heritage sector. We are embracing social media like never before. Personally, I have an instagram account, this blog, a discord, twitch, youtube, linkedin, and two facebook accounts (personal and professional pages). There could be more I could jump on to, but this is what I am feeling comfortable keeping updated on a regular basis. 

That's important, keeping things updated. 

You need to be putting content on your pages. You need to stay in the public eye. Don't be worrying if it's perfect, just do the best you can right now with what you have at hand...which is likely a phone and your knowledge. Sites could be doing this sort of thing as well, with very little staffing resources. If a few or even just one person knows that it's their job to keep the social media updated, that could be their job going forward. A photo and brief blurb of an artifact, an upcoming lecture on Zoom, a pre-recorded bit of interpretation will all do wonders keeping your site in the public's minds so that when things DO reopen, people will want to come spend money at your site and visit you in person. It doesn't take much, but that presence should be on a regular basis. 

Since we have gone into lockdown, I have attended lectures, workshops, conferences. I have watched living history demonstrations, and folks in their own homes showing me how they do things. These, coupled with photographic updates of artifacts and new art projects have given me a community of people to follow and want to contact in person once Covid is through. As a few of my social media friends have mentioned in the past few days, it's important to get out and be seen, to strike new paths for heritage, arts, and the humanities going forward. Join us! Just do it!

Curtching Experiment

 Well, I took the plunge and made an attempt at the curtch!

Highland Wedding at Blair Athol, 1780 by David Allen

This was the painting I settled on to really study. It's a detail from Highland Wedding by David Allen, but other genre paintings from around the same timeframe feature a similar way of wearing the curtch, namely David Wilkie's Penny Wedding of 1818. This one worked for me though, so I worked from it.

I think her curtch is three layers. I say think, because there's no extant evidence available online anywhere...trust me, I have looked. I am working from the thought of wearing multiple layers of cap when I do 17thC living history stuff, but also veil wearing in the late medieval period, and also what/how modern veil wearing folks do. It's a best guess at this point, but it's my working theory and I wanted to see how well it would work.

I began with a forehead cloth found in the Manchester City Galleries collection Accession #2003.100/2. This one is from the mid 17thC, and the latest extant artifact of it's type I could find.

This is a tidy bit of using up linen pieces, and really could be from the scrap bin. For mine, I cut a rectangle from an old shift that I have been repurposing, and cotton 1/4" tailor's tape. In about an hour, I had a forehead cloth. I kept mine plain, without lace. The other pieces I used for my layering were my lappet cap and a square of hemmed, lightweight linen to use as the actual curtch.

I started by putting my hair up in a secure fashion to support my layers.

My bun has a cheap, dollar store hair support in it, I don't make thick enough hair on my own.

The next step was to add the forehead cloth...

I crossed the ties at the nape of my neck, then up around my bun and tied on top. Not pretty, might need a bit more fussing at this stage, I am not sure.

Then came my lappet cap, anyone who has done any late eighteenth-century living history likely has, or has seen one of these, they are ubiquitous...

So, I donned my cotton neckerchief from Burnley and Trowbridge, a gift from Laura and Angela that was perfect for this impression, don't you think? And added the final layer, the curtch itself. A large square of hemmed linen, folded into a triangle. I pulled folds from the ears and pinned with a small ring brooch at my chin, that's it, that's all for pins. Pierre played with folding my front points back over my shoulders to give two different looks. I am wearing my blue wool gown, surprised that everything still fit after a year of Covid and not being dressed.

So the verdict is, this works! It gave me the same look as the lady in the painting above, and in other genre paintings I have seen. It Did Not Move! The entire night of me moving around, cooking, doing dishes, eating, and all that. I say the experiment was a raging success!

Now to write a paragraph for the dissertation...

to Curtch, or not to Curtch?

 last night I was watching a little YouTube video* from the Highland Village in Iona Cape Breton. I won't go into how seriously wrong the costuming is, but one of the characters wearing the iconic curtch got me thinking...

Most people who study Scottish dress at all know about the curtch, and the portrait of an early eighteenth-century henwife at Castle Grant by Waitt, dated 1706.

Let's dismantle her clothing, shall we? Her bodice and sleeves are very much in keeping with seventeenth century clothing than anything that may have been worn by early nineteenth century colonial people in Cape Breton. Also, her curtch is multi layered and probably several types of caps, coifs and the final curtch. Her neckwear is also in keeping with earlier seventeenth-century styles.

When I started building the wardrobe for Mrs. McQueen, who was likely a highland woman who immigrated to North America in the last quarter of the eighteenth century with her soldier husband, I knew that this portrait would be too far out of date to be even remotely considered when reproducing the clothing items I needed. I have also been referencing another inventory of lost items claimed by another woman attached to a highland regiment to see if there were any other items that these women would have had access to while following their husbands all up and down the Eastern Seaboard.

No Curtches listed.

Yes, I know about the Highland Wedding painting by David Allen c.1780, and have used this as reference too.

We can see a lady in the back wearing a curtch headdress, but again, it's a series of caps, coifs and the curtch. There is a certain way of arranging and pinning the curtch in place as well, it's not simply a triangle of linen tied at the base of the neck like a 1960s bandana. The other women in this painting are wearing caps, ribbons, and one has her shawl or airsaid up over her head. Just one (maybe) woman out of possibly five wearing a curtch at this point, late in the eighteenth century.

There are other issues with nineteenth century descriptions of women's clothing from the eighteenth century. They tend to be far too simplistic in nature, add in the notion of a 'mob cap', and we have the potential for a hot mess of costuming to occur.

I am going to play about with a version of a curtch that I might be happy to wear, that more closely resembles the art of the period than what modern people are calling a curtch. I think it will be layers of the thinnest linen that I can possibly find. Not a single big triangle of heavy linen tied at the base of my neck over a messy bun or pony tail.

and maybe later, I'll go in depth over why the 'french' and 'english' bodice should die a horrible dumpster-fire death finally...

*if you really want to watch this video..it's here

Grant, I.F. (1989), Highland Folk Ways, Routledge: London

http://www.revwar75.com/library/hagist/britwomen.htm?fbclid=IwAR3YKwPy9r_zS13d6dK0BVMdx-9F889D_V012vva_Lyl39hAOHw4Y2mxjoE

fuelling the great shortgown debate?

 Back when rocks were soft and the famous bodice reigned supreme, your blogger was a newly fashioned historic costumer and re-enactor. I can't even think of myself as a living historian back then, I was as generic as they come. But in an era when women were turning out in a shift, petticoat, and their sneakers, I was a bit of an anomaly. I had graduated Costume Studies and theoretically knew how to dress people properly for history things.

I was asked to turn out at events to possibly persuade the ladies to dress a bit better. My first living history event I had a shift, stays, two petticoats, bum rolls, and a cap...oh, and a jacket my friend Sarah whizzed up on machine the two days before the event. Apart from the jacket, everything was made as part of our Costume Studies program.

But a lot of it was wrong...

The shift was from Cut My Cote, but the Italian camica, not a shift appropriate for the Revolutionary period of America. It had puffy sleeves I loved though...oh, and it was made entirely by machine from cotton batiste. My stays were cut from fabric from the scrap bin, boned with steels, because that is the only boning we knew about. The scrap bin idea came from my partner that year rage quitting the program right before our fashion show, and I was broke, and I wanted so desperately to join my class and not be left out. That started my making do with nothing approach to historic costuming. The petticoats also came from classmates stashes. The bum rolls my mum made in the middle of the night the day before the fashion show from factory cotton and poly batt.

The jacket was a lovely mustard wool from my grandmother's stash, lined in off white wool that we now line military coats with. The pattern came from Janet Arnold. That first event, I wore a straw tricorn-yes-tricorn hat made from a Sally Ann find, and my sunglasses because of the perpetual migraines I had at that age. I thought I looked fabulous.

We started getting orders almost immediately. The ladies weren't interested in stays back then, or as everyone called them, corsets, mostly because of all the old wives tales. And there have been some doosies over the years. What I could encourage them to wear though were bedgowns/shortgowns/jackets. And Sarah and I made them by the dozen, out of printed cotton we bought at Fabricville, from linen if we could find it, I don't think there were any wool ones back then, because women also didn't want to be hot...everything was always too hot.

I had a good early run with the 18thC, but then took a big huge break because of divorce and ex husband living in one of the major living history towns in the province, and I needed space from him, and time to work on my career, which at the time was the 19thC and the Halifax Citadel.

But where am I going with this?

I want to tell you that I learned a bit about appropriate clothing in living history contexts. I want to tell you about how important that context is for creating a valuable and historically accurate living history impression. When I finally got back to the 18thC, I knew a bit more about context, but was still wearing a jacket and that trusty green wool petticoat. Because, after all, my primary focus was on dressing other people.

This jacket was made from the scrap from a suit made for the curator of the museum I was working for. It was a warm garment, and this event was late september and cool. I was closer to accurate, but you'll notice my shoes are my modern mary janes with vibram soles. But was I appropriate for the event? Closer, for sure, and warm enough.

Going to Louisbourg the following year, I knew I wanted a gown. This jacket-petticoat situation was ok, it was cut from historical patterns, but not accurate enough for me. This may have been the last event I wore this jacket to...so a life span of two events.

The following year, I was gone from the museum and had a bit more time on my hands...so got to gown making.

a bit better...Mum is wearing a proper jacket now, instead of a green quilters cotton print bedgown. I look back on these photos though and still see things to fix...apart from the encampment things that also need fixing. Like the coloured silk apron worn underneath my gown, the matching necker all tucked in. I think I am wearing that old camica in this photo...because yes, I still own it, and it's got sleeves! And yes, I wore this my first time to Ticonderoga too, to a Rev period event. Because I thought that an older dress was better than no dress at all, and we had real life shit to deal with alongside starting my PhD. I don't think there are any photos of me at that event though...that's cool.

So I start to really tuck into my PhD work. Now is the time I really get to focus on Revolutionary period stuff. Work out for myself what I should be wearing and get those things made. After all, there was a lot of time sitting in hospitals dealing with Mum's chemo, and most of the things I was working on made the day go by a bit faster with her napping. I got an english back gown or two made, and some new clothes for Pierre, and knit a lot of stockings as I worked out the pattern so that I was happy with it.

Getting better, but not there yet. I look at this photo of P and I at the Battle Road event and want to fix things. He wore his checked shirt instead of the white one I was making, because it wasn't finished yet. and I am wearing my new apron I was so proud of weaving, even though a checked apron is a working garment and this is my best dress. The snap sack is also more seven years war period than rev period...would it have even lasted that many years in period? I also get him to button his coats now, something that was a bit of a sell.

All this to say I am a work in progress...like constantly. And also maybe to help you see that there are times and appropriate places to wear things. That maybe with me picking apart my own kit, you can train your eye to see better, to learn that just because it's "18th century" doesn't always mean it's appropriate to wear.

Currently, I am recreating Mrs.McQueen's inventory from the 84th. I have posted the contents of her inventory taken at her possible death before in this blog. I am recreating bedgowns/shortgowns/jackets from all the available sources. Will I actually wear any of them to events? I'm not sure. I know the one I made based on the one in the Colonial Williamsburg collection I likely will pass on, to someone who does a dutch impression fr upstate New York. I think the cotton print patterns I used aren't really something that Mrs.McQueen would have worn, even in her 'on the foot all over the east coast of North America' state. I will keep the wool one I made, as that is great worn as a cardigan over my gown (I also wear it with my jeans and T-shirts on the everyday), and the long wool one will be similar, another layer worn to keep warm. I have two others I want to make, one with a print from B&T, lined in linen, and another just a single layer of white linen, both from Fitting and Proper. As Mrs. McQueen, I will wear the hell out of the linen one and get it good and heritaged. The B&T textile might also get some good heritage and be worn when it's beyond hot. But these short/bedgowns/jackets are all for a poor or working woman, on foot behind the army. So worn in Garrison, or when I am under canvas with the 84th back home.

They will not be worn to any of the more upper middling events in New England. I have new gown cloth to make up for those events.

I have a list of impressions I am building out for this PhD, and learning from each project what is appropriate and what is not, given the site requirements and the event. 

I have Highland Man finished, his uniform bits are also almost finished...I need to deal with buttons for his brown cassimere jacket, finish his gaiters, and get the fixings for a forage/Garrison cap, I'd also like to make him another knit cap, or I might order one from Sally Pointer.

Mrs. McQueen is still a work in progress, but I am getting closer.

My former Waldecker (Dutch-Germanic) soldier is also a work in progress, as is his wife. I mean, how else should my friends who live along the Waldecker line, speak passable Dutch, and himself sports a fantabulous moustache dress? No, He cannot shave his moustache, it makes him money as George V. This impression was one of potential compromise. There are a few moustaches depicted on 'Hessian' soldiers in period sketches. And J is getting a bit older and doesn't want to be playing soldier all that much any more.

Loyalist man is more upper middling, and I finally have the cloth in hand, just need to clean up the other projects before I get to that. I honestly also want to paint his portrait so he can walk along the street in Shelburne or Saint John with it slung over his shoulder as per the portrait of John Murray in the New Brunswick museum...though I am no Copley! Murray felt the need to bring his portrait with him to start over again in New Brunswick. Why? I do not know. People bring the oddest things with them when they are refugees. I will also be tweaking the suit I made for P above to better reflect what I now know. And yes, more shirts are in the works so that he has white linen ones as well as a few checked.

And my Loyalist Lady will be a better gown outfit for myself, including a quilted cote and cotton print gown.

There are other things I need to get made up, an overcoat for P that I now have both fabric and Henry Cooke pattern for, in house. Shoes are also on the list, currently a new pair for P, and then when I get a bit more money saved, a working set for me. So you see, work in progress...

constantly.

Spring 2020: a Tale of Two Jackets

 As I sit here on a crisp late August morning, I have pulled on one of the jackets I made this Spring, the brown cassimere for Pierre. It was to be his work jacket, to be worn over British small clothes while we worked at Fort Ticonderoga on their opening weekend. Needless to say that event didn't happen.

The jacket was finished though, and will be used as part of my dissertation collection.

The first weekend of Covid-19 lock-down, back in March, I went over to my favourite wool shop on the island of Montreal. The gentlemen who own this shop on the upper end of Saint-Hubert street carry the finest wool suitings and coatings from all over the world. I expect to come out of that store several hundreds poorer every time I walk in. I find the perfect cloth every time. This visit was no exception. This time, I bought the end of a bolt of brown cassimere. Part of it went towards the simple cut of a work jacket, the rest I will save for a short Fall '50s swing coat for myself.

I based the cut and construction on the blue wool jacket in Henry Cooke's collection. He was generous enough to share enough photographs to the 18th Century Menswear group I belong to on facebook that I was able to create my own version for Pierre. As there are no extant pieces in the Fort Ticonderoga collection that solidifies what the written record speaks of, I was kind of on my own with my decisions. I picked the cassimere because of the hand of the cloth, and it was available for me to walk home with that day. The cloth is also nicely fulled, so seam finishing could be carried out in the same manner as the jacket in Cooke's collection.

I cut the jacket as closely as I possibly could so that the remaining fabric piece would give me more options for a second garment. As you can see, that meant some piecing of the front facing. This jacket was constructed using various historical stitches and was entirely hand stitched and finished.

I chose a late period square welt pocket technique taught to me by facebook user Batley Royston of K&P textiles. Simply put, you cut the long edge, with a short downward clip on either end, this forms the welt. Once the pocket bag is inserted and finished, the short ends of the rectangle are buttonhole stitched through all layers. I did a whipped felling stitch along the top edge, the same stitch used to apply the facings to the front edges of the jacket body.

A simple back vent finished along the top edge with two rows of a spaced backstitch. The buttons used are simple flat pewter buttons created for me by Dale Wyn Roberts in Nova Scotia. Unfortunately, I do not have a photo yet of Pierre wearing the finished jacket. Now that the weather has turned, I might get him into his wool clothes for a few photos. I also finished the final tweaks on his highlander suit this Spring, so that photo needs updating as well.

The second jacket I created this Spring was a regimental jacket in the style worn by Butler's Rangers and other men who worked closely with Indigenous populations in New England during the Revolution. I was sent a kit with all the supplies for completing the jacket by Tommy Tringale of Billerica. This process was an exercise in patience, as I was supposed to bring a fitting muslin with me to opening weekend at Ti, but with the border closing, we had to create new and flexible plans for completing the work.

I began by sending the fitting muslin through the mail, and doing a virtual fitting over a facebook call. Tommy then sent the muslin back to me with the kit of supplies. I got to work.

I had a few images of other gent's coats to reference so that the one I constructed was as close to uniform as I could possibly make it. There was also a bit of a checklist of points that I needed to cover during the construction process. The cutting was the tightest I have ever cut. When you create several garments from a piece of cloth, you can get creative and save fabric over the length of the piece you are cutting from. When you are creating one garment, you might need a bit more cloth...or do some creative piecing to achieve the same end result. I constructed this jacket by hand using historical construction methods with the exception of the edges of the pocket bags.

The bits of the kit, and my pattern pieces.

 

the edges of the pocket bag were the only machine work

Photos of the pocket inserted into the top edge of the half lining.

My label carefully hidden inside the welt of the pocket.

The lining was felled in place.

Many buttonholes were worked along the facing edges.

The finished jacket fronts.

I built the sleeves at this point, and then let the sit for a bit, as I was wondering a bit, what would/should the cuffs look like. I originally built them as full working cuffs, but the construction notes called for a non functioning cuff. I chatted with Dr. Matthew Keagle at Ticonderoga for his thoughts before I ended up rebuilding the cuffs to be non functional and a single layer of white wool over the green sleeve.

The sleeve with the functioning cuff...

The finished sleeve with the non functioning cuff.

The collar gave me a bit of a headache, or it may have been the fact that I had a pre-existing migraine that caused me to also have to rebuild the collar. Having no cloth left from cutting meant that I had to carefully unpick everything and apply generous amounts of steam to get version 2 into a better usable shape to reapply. I am very happy with how it turned out in the end. And far happier with the roll achieved.

Here is the full jacket, hanging on my smaller dress dolly. Hopefully I will get photos of Tommy in his new jacket and in full kit for my records, and to also fully trust him when he says it fits.

At this point, I switched gears and went through a similar fitting process for a pair of linen gaitered trousers for AR Watts in the DC beltway area. Some photos for you of those...

the front fall

Because this linen frays easily, I started with a simple machine buttonhole to hold things together before working a properly stitched buttonhole over top.

These were made using a combination of machine and hand stitching so that they would hold up in the wash. Machine on long seams, and for seam finishing, and hand everywhere else, because yes, it matters. I ran out of heavy linen buttonhole twist before the end and had to improvise, because shipping thread to Canada is cost heavy and something I'd rather not do unless there's other stuff coming with it. I pulled out a weaving thread, it slowed me down a bit, but the end result is perfectly fine. You do what ya gotta do sometimes.

Now, I am making regency inspired modern clothes for a friend, working on other actual regency clothes for a local client, and working on my dissertation project, Mrs. McQueen's wardrobe. I have also started a second stocking for Jay Howlett at Colonial Williamsburg.

And writing, lots of writing, and editing, because that needs doing too.

fighting feelings of perceived laziness

Why put off til tomorrow that you can do today, right now even, five minutes ago...even better. When Kelly gets stressed out, she doesn't procrastinate, she goes into overdrive, but it has to be productive.

it's the being productive part that I grapple with.

I am normally a productive person anyway. Most people would think me more along the lines of an energizer bunny than a slow turtle. I get shit done. When I am stressed though, I tend to take on big overwhelming projects. This current bout of stress is a bit different than others though. There is not enough productivity in my day to feel as if I have been productive enough.

In the last month I have been cleaning house. Room by room, cleaning house. Pierre's goal was to move (eventually) with 10% less stuff. I have been going through the house and tackling the 10% in every room. Yes, every room. Don't worry, most of it has gone to the trash or recycling, stuff that is not usable by anyone any more, like 40 year old pocket novels that were losing pages when I was in high school.
I have been working on my white board list too, it's just that right now, knitting doesn't feel like I am being productive enough...despite the fact that a pair of stockings takes a good three months of knitting, and I am already thinking about buying more yarn.

And those wondering, the dissertation is stalled. Not completely forgotten/abandoned, just stalled. It needs a rest, then I can turn it over and get it started again.

until then I knit...and clean.