We started our anniversary embroidery session today. This weekend last year was the first time embroiderers gathered together to work on the jacket. There’s been a lot of water under the bridge since then, not to mention a lot of orts.

Here’s a picture of Wendy showing JoAnn where the 3-D pea pod pieces will be sewn, eventually. I started working on one today, and am not thrilled with how it looks. Everyone else thinks I’m being extraordinarily fussy.

Here are Astrida (background) and Debbie (foreground) talking over some aspect of the embroidery with Wendy. Debbie is a new friend – I met her a few months ago when she came to work on the jacket the first time. Astrida is an old friend. Years and years ago when I was a new tailor with the Wardrobe department, Astrida used to drive down from the Portsmouth, NH area to volunteer on Saturdays. Way back then wardrobe was in our old office, extremely tiny and like a rabbit warren – several itty rooms connected like a maze. It was part of an old dairy barn. Anyway, no one else was in on Saturdays and the phone almost never rang, so we had lots of time to talk. Time passes and life moves on; I hadn’t seen Astrida in years before this morning. Another gift of the jacket – bringing old friends back around.

Today was Emily’s birthday. She is 19 whole years old. Penny made her a special a plate of special vegan Earl Grey cupcakes with yummy chocolate frosting. The candles say “Happy” instead of “Happy Birthday” because I and my tiny brain bought the wrong box of candles. I accidentally bought the “happy retirement” candle assortment. Ooops.

Here’s Emily’s first project this summer, a cassock for an interpreter portraying a sailor on Mayflower II.

When I sat back and looked at that sentence I realized I’ve opened the proverbial can of worms. What is a cassock? What makes this one particularly for a sailor? What is a non-sailor cassock? Where is Emily? Who is that behind the cassock?

Let me see what I can do. Cassock in the early 17th century seemed to refer to rather a lot of garments, including one that’s part of a priest’s vestments, something that soldiers wore, and any of a number of loose upper-body garments that were as long as the hip or thigh or even the knee. These last ones were worn by working men and maybe sometimes women. More questions than answers there.

This sailor’s cassock is based on one in a woodcut by the 16th-century Italian Cesare Vecellio labeled “the English sailor.” As you can imagine, a picture with a label is a precious commodity in historical dress research. We happily make these for our Mayflower II sailors. Not-sailor cassocks are also loose-fitting upper body garments, but the sleeve is a uniform width from armhole to wrist, not wide at the armhole and narrow at the wrist as here. The non-sailor cassock, also called by the wardrobe department “landsmen’s cassocks” (totally modern nomenclature) does not flare at the waist and often has buttons at the neck. These are based on images from memorial brasses as reproduced in one of the Cunningtons’ books of costume (they did a bunch, father-daughter team; I think the one I’m remembering is their 16th century costume one).

And I tried for a week to get Emily, the cassock, and the camera all in the room at the same time while simultaneously remembering to take a photo and finally gave up in disgust. The sailor needs his cassock, and he’ll get it tomorrow morning. The cassock-holder is one of our soon-to-be child volunteer interpreters, in for a fitting today.

Regarding the comments – I’m with you, Margaret, on the not-seeing-the-columbine thing. For a minute I sort of thought if you turned the stitched one upside down….but no. I think that’s why I’m so fascinated with the columbine motifs.

Thanks, Marjorie, for the compliment on the Needle Arts article. It was all Cheryl’s (the author) good work. I saw it but didn’t have a chance to read it. Penny showed me the copy Cheryl asked the EGA to send us – it’s full of excellent pictures and hopefully it’ll encourage a few more people to join us in the stitching.

Here, as promised, are our summer interns.

The first one is of Lacey signing away her photo rights. Actually, she’s giving me permission to post her photo on the blog. This fall she will be a junior at the University of Mary Washington in Fredricksburg, Virginia. The next picture shows Lacey working on her first project, hand sewing a coif. She’s stitching the casing for the drawstring.

Turns out Emily isn’t the girl she used to be. She added this awesome, and totally topic-appropriate, tattoo. She’s ironing some fabric for a lining for a sailor’s cassock she’s making. Emily will also be a junior this fall, at Bennington College, in Bennington, Vermont.

I’m delighted to welcome Emily back, and to have Lacey with us for the summer. Stay tuned for their projects and progress.

It’s funny Sandy should ask (in yesterday’s comments) about how we make stays. I’ve been thinking about doing a “how we do what we do” post, or a series of them, since Carolyn H noticed the rack of serger threads in the background of a photo way back in December.

The Colonial Wardrobe & Textiles department consists of three full time staff – Shaina, Penny, and me – occasional interns, and loyal volunteers. We’re responsible for providing all the articles of colonial clothing (not Native Wampanoag) for the role-players in the 1627 Village, on board Mayflower II, the museum teachers who do outreach programs (in schools, etc) and any other program or exhibit the museum needs.

In each calendar year, we dress approximately 60 people. This includes role-players who work all of our open season (this year 22 March to the Sunday after Thanksgiving), or only part of it, full time or part time, those who work part time in period clothing and part time behind the scenes, child volunteers; basically anybody who gets even one set of period clothing counts in that tally. Most of the role-players, who are also known as historical interpreters, have at least two full sets of clothing, two pairs of shoes, and one each of cold weather accessories – one coat, one pair of knitted stockings, one pair of mittens or gloves, that sort of thing. Of course we don’t make everyone’s clothes new every season, but making new things either to replace those that are wearing out, to effect role changes, or for new hires, altering old things for new hires, and mending can keep us pretty busy.

We’re also jointly responsible for the textiles in the Village houses and on Mayflower II. We share the task of cleaning and keeping track of the blankets, sheets, bed hangings, etc, with Martha; we share the task of mending them and making new ones with the on-site interpreters. I’m partly responsible for research and training new interpreters in the use and care of their clothing and household textiles.

We compromise with the historical record for health & safety and economic reasons; we also make subtle adjustments to increase our ability to present historical information to the public. (You’d think that last one wouldn’t need a compromise, but sometimes it does. I’ll try to think of a good example for tomorrow.) The sewing machines definitely count as an economic compromise. We would never be able to afford the labor to do everything by hand. And where would you start? With hand spinning? Growing the flax/sheep? I’d love to – but our interpreters would be very scantily clad, and that’s a different program altogether. I try to document where we diverge from what we know of historical practice and keep both the CW&T staff and the interpreters informed of these decisions.

We use sewing machines, including a serger and an industrial straight-stitch machine, where it won’t show in the finished garment, with two notable exceptions (more on that later). That means internal seams, which saves us a great deal of time on some garments, like shirts and smocks which are French seamed, and not much time on some things, like slops breeches where so much of what has to be done must be done by hand that the machine only saves a few hours (still worth it). All the pleats, hems, buttonholes, eyelets, and any trim is all sewn by hand.

As far as the two notable exceptions, a few years ago we started sewing the hems of shirts and smocks on the sewing machine. This saved us an hour per garment. The shirts/smocks are the first layer, worn closest to the skin. The hems of the shirts are tucked into the men’s breeches and extremely unlikely ever to be seen by a visitor. The hems of the smocks are long, to the knee, and are under at least one petticoat, and while sometimes female interpreters will show visitors the hems of their layers of clothing it is also extremely unlikely that anyone will get close enough to see whether they are machine sewn or not.

The other exception is the channels on the stays. Up till a few years ago the vast majority of our stays were heavily machine sewn; not only all the bone channels but also all the binding was top stitched. They were designed to remain hidden under the waistcoat or jacket. I guess it’s about 5 or 6 years ago we started adding a pair or two of hand sewn stays every season. Now I’d say we’re up to almost half of the pairs of stays that have only hand sewing visible. We’re still using the machine for the internal seams, but all the bone channels and binding are done by hand. I counted one time, and it took me (conservatively) about 40 hours to hand sew a pair of stays. Small ones. Since the end of last season, we added two pairs of hand sewn stays. Penny made one pair and Emily made another.

All of the stays, hand sewn or not, have 1/4″ white steel bones in the channels. As Sandy pointed out, whalebone isn’t really an option nowadays. Years ago we used plastic boning cut to the right length, but we found the plastic tended to mold to the curves of the wearer, rather than the other way around. We have experimented with using reeds in the channels, as described in Janet Arnold’s Patterns of Fashion: the cut and construction of clothes for men and women c.1560-1620. This wasn’t an unqualified failure, but it wasn’t a resounding success either. Being a modern museum, and seeing as we have modern people only pretending to be 1620s colonists, we like to wash our clothing now and again. The reeds really didn’t hold up to washing. Taking the binding off, removing the reeds and replacing them wasn’t an option either – the reeds disintegrated in the channels after several months’ wear, making it nearly impossible to get the pieces out.

In the last few years we’ve been using wooden busks in the front of the stays. Peter Follansbee, joiner in Plimoth’s Crafts Center, makes them for us. Most women prefer them to the stays without a busk. The busks take some of the work off the steel bones, keeping the front of the stays stiff and straight, and help the stays to last longer overall.

Emily’s gone back to Bennington, and we miss her. But, by working very hard and very fast, she finished the pair of stays for Norah before she had to go. I missed the very end of her stay, including the final fitting, due to yet more germs. It’s been the worst winter for illness around my house; I hope yours has been much healthier. Thanks to Penny and Shaina for taking these pictures and helping Emily with the last bits of finishing.

Notice Norah’s jeans in the first picture; they add to the outfit, don’t you think? The second shows more how they’ll be worn, with a petticoat over. Nearly all the time she’ll also wear a jacket or waistcoat over top; only within the house she may sometimes work in either just the smock-sleeves and stays, or with a loose house-jacket over that.

Plimoth Plantation’s living history exhibits re-open to the public four weeks from Saturday. We’ve got a lot to do.

Lace sample arrived today from Robbin.

Today Emily embroidered on the jacket. The first thing she did was a pink bud, shown here next to someone else’s leaf. The top corner shows a little of Wendy’s pansy. This bud is on the lower left corner of the back of the jacket.

Next she did a whole leaf on the coif. Here’s a picture of Emily pointing to the leaf. The photo on the left is Emily’s leaf. Hers is the dark green single leaf on the left, above the pink bud.

Here’s Emily working on the leaf.

This is her last week working with us, then she has to go back to school. We’ll miss her.

*Now we’re all teasing Emily.

Lace sample arrived from Jill H.

We’ve got a lot to accomplish this winter, but fortunately we’ve also got help. Joining Shaina and Penny in the Colonial Wardrobe workroom are Kelley, Alex and Emily.

Kelley is a Colonial Interpreter who during our open season works in both the 1627 English Village and aboard Mayflower II. This winter she’s been doing yeoman work mending the piles of period clothing and textiles that came to us in December. Kelley’s also working on handsewing a pair of stays (corset in modern parlance) for herself. Stays aren’t a large piece of clothing, but stitching all the channels for the “bones” takes a long time.

Alex is a student at Massachusetts College of Art and has been interning with us one or two days a week for the whole school year. Here’s a picture of Alex with one of the two smocks she’s made. Alex has also made a woman’s jacket (out of plain pink wool, but the same shape as the embroidered one) and is now working on a man’s doublet (upper body garment) made of sturdy canvas. Alex is also working on the embroidery stitches under Wendy’s direction. Hopefully we’ll be able to have her work on the jacket some before the end of her time with us. Here’s a photo of Alex with her latest smock.

Emily is a sophomore at Bennington College and is doing her Field Work Term with us (FWT is Jan 2 – Feb 15, and the students have to work in their field basically full time for those 6 weeks). So far Emily’s made a smock, a shirt, and done a pile of mending. She’s also been practicing the detached buttonhole stitch in hopes of being able to work on the jacket. Emily is currently working on a pair of hand sewn stays for Norah. Here are photos of the stays with the bone channels partially stitched, and one of Emily doing a second (or third?) fitting with Norah. They looked very good on, and now it’s just a race to see if she can finish all the work before she has to go back to school.

*”lackey” is for Emily’s mom. I don’t really think she’s a lackey.