I almost named this post "The Weekly Wedgie #1."

No, really.

But then, I realized that even if the world needed another soul-wrenching weekly round-up of Blogger angst, it most certainly shouldn't been named in honor of a violent act of vigilante skivvy-yanking.

Then, there is the burden of irony in committing myself to weekly blog posts after a 3-week hiatus.

So! What's new? Well, for starters, there's this:

It's a petticoat! For the Historical Sew Fortnightly "Peasants and Pioneers" challenge, a.k.a. "#5." This petticoat is made like every other 18th century petticoat I've cobbled together, with the exception of hemming it to the correct length BEFORE attaching it to the waistband. This worked out pretty well and will hopefully mitigate *some* of the pathetic scrambling to shorten petticoats prior to wear each time I need one. I don't know about you guys, but every single petticoat I made in my first two years of attempting such things is waaaay too long. The worst of the lot actually touches my shoes. Yes. 

The material (woven cotton flannel) is folded prior to pleating, and attached to the waistband with the interior edges left raw. The waistband is made of Dutch linen tape from Wm. Booth Draper, and cut a bit shorter than I usually do. I decided to go minimalist on both tape and yardage in the spirit of the challenge, so the petticoat is of humble width as well(basically 88 inches). 

And here is a picture of our heroine, wearing the petticoat:

What can I say? It's been a tiring few weeks.

Those of you following the Dreamstress's challenge may notice that this is about a week overdue. The worst of it is, I finished this petticoat over six weeks ago just to use up the last bit of this fabric! It's been done that long. Grr! I didn't intend to use it for any challenge, but life intervened, as it occasionally does. My original intention was to make a pair of leather stays for the Peasants and Pioneers challenge, based on this pair in the Nordiska Museet that I've discussed before. 

I have the leather, linen tape and even a scrap of antique Swedish linen to use for the lining. The big hold-up? Those damned "bars of iron" stuffing the front channels. I naively believed that I would be able to find a few little iron bars quickly and easily.

BWAAHAHAHAHAHAAA!!!!

I have contacted virtually every blacksmith I can by phone within a day's drive of my current location. I found a guy about 45 minutes away who said he could easily do it, no problem! After three weeks of wasting time going back and forth, he finally produced steel bars. Steel is made of iron (in part), but it's not what was used in the original stays. All of this went down about a month ago, leaving me pretty much where I started. So that project has been put on the back burner again. Boo.

In other news:

* I gave another presentation on the Jehossee Exhibit and will be moving the lot to another museum in June. Jehossee lives on! 

* Spring Break was last week. And not a moment too soon. I spent mine doing absolutely nothing except fighting a sinus infection and avoiding responsibility in all forms.

* I also made this:

Into this:

Internal Hamdialogue: At least it's not cupcakes.

The child on the right is "Hambone" (with a cousin), beloved offspring of my awesome friend "Boobs." He had a birthday, as children are inclined to do, allowing me to indulge in my yearly tradition of staying up all night making a malformed edible tumor that vaguely resembles whatever he actually wanted. He then pretends to be pleased and I pretend that I am awake for the duration of the party. 

I've got a pile of Regency stuff on the "to-do" list for most of the immediate upcoming HSF challenges, and with any luck, I'll actually finish some of it on time. Along with a blog post or two, if I can motivate myself. I've been in a bit of a funk, and I'm starting to get on my own nerves. Hopefully, that can act as its own motivation. In the meanwhile, here's the challenge break-down:

The Challenge: Peasants and Pioneers (#5)

Fabric: Woven striped cotton flannel from Fabric.c*m

Pattern: None. 

Year: It's intended to be worn as an under-petti, so I'm planning to wear it with wild anachronistic abandon. However, the cotton material, flat front panel and inverted pleats in back put it best at the late 3rd-early 4th quarter of the 18th century.

Notions: Linen tape.

How historically accurate is it? I don't know of any American woven cotton flannel petticoats from the 18th century, so it's not based purely upon an original. However, Florence Montgomery's "Textiles in America" includes swatches of many similar materials. Entirely hand sewn with accurate seam finishes, though the hem at the bottom is generous for a petticoat. Personal rating: 9 of 10.

Hours to complete: About 4. 

First worn: This morning, over my head in the yard.

Total cost: Fabric was $4 a yard, tape was about $2 per yard... so about $16 total.  (The length of the striped material was about 3 yards, and I used all but 18 inches of it.)

Will the REAL Crinoline please stand up?

Because if it were a real crinoline, it probably could. (Stand up, that is.)

The Jehossee project has been a learning experience at EVERY possible turn. Not just because it's opened my mind in new and unexpected ways, but because I am apparently waaay more ignorant that I originally suspected.

Blame it on a childhood spent in front of an ancient wood-paneled Zenith watching a crackling VHS tape of "Gone With The Wind," but I associate virtually the entirety of the 19th century with a hoopskirt. It's instinctive! They're iconic! It was sort of shocking to discover that hoopskirts (as they are generally thought of in association with the American Civil War and the fore-mentioned GWTW,) were only in fashion for about 10 years. Ten years?? Mind blowing. 

The romantic era that they are attached to, at least for Southerners in America, transcends the fashion itself. The "look" is tied to an emotional history that has far more traction in the public consciousness than the reality of Victorian aesthetics. This brings me to Harriet Aiken.

 Harriet Aiken, c. 1858. Probably wearing a crinoline, not a hoopskirt here as well.

When I embarked upon the Jehossee project and initially began researching costume in 1850, I simply assumed that I'd be making a hoopskirt to achieve the bell-shaped skirts associated with the fashions of that year. Harriet was a wealthy woman and a society leader, though she wasn't in her first bloom of youth. She and her husband, William, were fond of continental travel. She spent much of 1848 in Europe with William, primarily to collect art for their in-home gallery in Charleston. (Their home, the Aiken-Rhett house as it is now called, still stands. http://www.historiccharleston.org/experience/arh/ ) But wealthy, fashionable women were NOT wearing hoopskirts in 1850. As I discovered, they were still trotting around in an ever-expanding series of petticoats.

The ace in the petticoat deck for a fashionable woman in the years prior to the hoop was the horsehair crinoline, or "crin." The word itself is derived from the French word for horse hair and the material from which it was made was generally a mix of linen and horsehair with a bit of binding agent to make it nice and rigid. Not a helluva lot of early crinolines survive, though a surprising number hale from the latter half of the 19th century. (Machine stitching: Sorry, ebay-seller-who-shall-remain-unidentified, but nobody was sewing on a machine in the 1840's in America.)

Great! So all I needed to do was acquire a few yards of horsehair woven with linen!

**crickets**

Yeah, so that didn't happen. Apparently horsehair is available in two forms these days: the whole bushy tail, or glue. (And high-end upholstery fabric in England. Go figure.)

This brought me to the lovely Fairchild's Dictionary of Textiles and a quiet entry for "Crin Vegetal," or literally, "vegetable crinoline" material. Just as the "crin" word remained in place as a synonym for "hoopskirt" in later years, it was used for the alternative "Vegetal" material as well. To replace the stiffening effects of the horsehair, additional binding glue or adhesive was used along with the linen and occasionally, cotton. This sounded a whole lot like buckram, which is readily available (except when it isn't) from my local Hanc*ck's. 

My theory was further supported by a passage from Cunnington's "History of Underclothes" in which he describes the wearing of "a petticoat of book-muslin" in the 1840's for evening wear skirt support. Fairchild's credits "book-muslin" as being just another word for... yup, buckram.

Pictures of the crinoline are coming another day. It's still in the works at the moment, but it will closely resemble the construction of this image from the Met:

This dates from the 1840's (if my notes are correct...) And demonstrates a pretty ingenious bit of engineering. The drawstring waist is looped through a thinner layer of material (likely linen) which allows the string to pass through easily. That linen band is attached to the top layer of crinoline material and the inconsistency in the join between the two allows the crin to "billow" out more than it could if it were the only textile used. The second layer of crin, gathered like a ruffle from the middle of the petticoat would have added additional loft and support to the petticoats and skirts above.

In general, crinoline petticoats of horsehair or buckram would have had much the same effect as a corded petticoat. They would have kept the lower limbs free from restrictive extra layers of thinner petticoats and they would have enabled the wearers to get more volume with fewer layers in an age before the almighty hoopskirt came into general use.

The Great Petticoat Question

 Perhaps our shoes are in that tree?

In the course of researching my 18th century clothing project, again and again I came across some variety of the adage "Patterned jackets or short gowns can be worn with matching petticoats or solid-color petticoats, but solid colored jackets and short gowns were NEVER worn with patterned petticoats!" The emphasis is sort of my own... people do feel pretty strong about these things. I encountered language just short of profanity on the matter.
The source of angst can be traced to two fears, namely that one mustn't "farb" if one can help it, and Historical Accuracy, or "HA" as I call it when I am in a snarky mood. (I am always in a snarky mood.) Historical Accuracy is what we all aspire to. Even the most unapologetically farby of us has some sort of personal standard to which we hold ourselves. The "HA" comes into play when one determines that one has something entirely figured out.
I do not pretend, in the slightest to be anything short of "ignorant amateur" in the world of historical clothing reproduction. And yet, I learn wherever I can. Obviously, when one is new to a field, one must obey the sacred cows of that discipline, whatever they are. I respect the work of everyone who has come before me, regardless of the context of that work. And yet...
And yet.


The images scattered through this post pertain to the rant in progress. Each image depicts either a woman wearing a solid colored "top" with a patterned skirt, or a mix-matched combination of patterns for top and bottom.  Each image is contemporary to the mid-to-late 18th century. There are more as well, out there, somewhere, waiting to be added to the collection.
These images prove nothing; allegorical costume has been depicted in stone, paint and print nearly as long as people have dabbled in those mediums. I must say though, that these depictions do not have the feel of a morality tale or a fable. Most of them are very common people, depicted doing very common things.
It seems very logical to me, as a 20-21st century woman, that fashionable people would have set, and recorded a standard of dress that may have included a prohibition against the wearing of patterned petticoats with solid-colored jackets. It also makes sense that people who flew "below the radar" fashionably speaking, (the working poor, lower-middlin' class people, etc.) would have worn, literally, whatever they could get their hands on, whether it followed the strict dictates of fashionable society or not. This is a very slippery slope; it is easy to rationalize nearly any clothing choice within that context. I refer to it as "Harry Potter syndrome."**

**One day, when I've had enough to drink, I'll elaborate on that particular concept.

The point is, it's tempting to look at 18th century clothing options from a particular era and say, "well if it existed, it can be worn together." And the reality is, that's not necessarily true. We rely upon historical written descriptions, paintings, sculpture, print advertisements and surviving clothing items to piece together a more complete puzzle of a world that is just barely out of reach. I personally find it highly unlikely that women of all strata of society didn't mix and match their wardrobes to the fullest, but my perspective is indelibly skewed by the epoch in which I live.



 That is why I have included the pictures in this post. As I stated before, they prove nothing. It is entirely possible that there is a hidden language to these images that is expressed through the clothing that I can't possibly grasp. I fully accept that possibility. However, they DO exist, and they should add something of a wrench in the works to at least one of the fore-mentioned sacred cows of historical costuming. Several, though not all of the images are by David Allan, an 18th century painter and illustrator who focused the body of his work on rural Scottish life. Perhaps his images reflect a regional anomaly, though not all of the pictures are his. (And as for anomalies... they should be represented too.)
None of the images specifically, clearly depict a floral-print chintz patterned petticoat, and the image that looks "checked" may be a diamond-quilted petticoat (though usually the diamond-quilted petticoats look like, well diamonds. Not so much squares). That's why the stripes are so important to the argument, particularly in the paintings. Those are obviously, clearly, patterned petticoats. The stripes may be woven into the material, added as trim, printed on, painted on, or embroidered. Regardless of which, if any of these treatments is the case, the argument still stands:
The tops don't match, and furthermore, appear to be solid in color.
HA indeed.