Hi everyone, I haven’t dropped off the face of the earth. Husband Away turned into Husband Home but with Appendicitis. He no longer has appendicitis, no longer has an appendix even, but I’ve been a little preoccupied. Distracted. Frazzled, as a co-worker so eloquently put it this morning. And then last night we had the Thunderstorms. Thou shalt not fire up the computer during a violent thunderstorm.

Anyway, Jill H (the lace making Jill H, as opposed to me, the non-lace making Jill H) asked about finding 1359-1900. The key is to search the V&A collections. You can’t use the search function in the upper right hand corner of their website. That searches for things like exhibits and lectures and new books. You have to click the ‘collections’ option (other options on that page are exhibits, things to do, your visit, support us, contact us, etc.). Once in the collections section, you have choices of which collection to look at. There is also a ’search the collections’ box. It’s the top left section. Click on that and you get a screen with a search box on the left. Continue to ignore the search box in the upper right. It does not love you.

The search box you want says ‘all fields’ above it, and below there are two buttons: clear field and search. Put ‘1359-1900′ in this search box and click search. This will get you the embroidery-pattern jacket. If you instead put in ‘Laton jacket’ you will get the garment-and-lace-pattern jacket. Have fun!

Emily and Lacey have been exceedingly busy while I’ve been frazzling. Lacey has made three pairs of canvas breeches and is working on her fourth. She’s also knitting mittens. Emily is making a gown for a small child who soon will be volunteering in the English Village. She’s also making a green canvas suit for one of the interpretive artisans. Emily left me a note saying that yesterday’s late-afternoon fitting with him went “swimmingly. He says the fabric is the same color as his truck. I’m assuming this is a good thing.” Hope so. Penny is taking a well-deserved looong weekend. When she comes back Monday she and Emily and Lacey will be preparing for a two-day dye fest. On Tuesday and Wednesday of next week they’ll be dyeing wool yarn with natural dyes outside the Crafts Center. I’m so excited about this, I can’t wait. If you’re in the neighborhood, come see.

Emily is guest-posting today. Send her comments. We love comments. JMH

My mother and I shared several squeals and a victory dance this New Year’s Eve Day. This was the day I first opened the door of Plimoth Plantation’s intern house, standing under the colonnade in the freezing cold of the December afternoon. I was immediately overtaken by the strong urge to let fly with a loud, self-congratulatory expletive, but my mother came up to me, my bags in hand, and beat me to the punch with a grin on her face. Cursing thus achieved and dispersed of, we moved all of my stuff up the stairs and into the two-bedroom apartment, wondering at what were going to be my proverbial “digs” for the next six or so weeks. I appreciated the house entirely, but to be very honest, all I wanted to do was get to work. I had a few days to wait, so I hunkered down with a book and some coffee to wait out my anxiety, to wait for the day that my internship with the Wardrobe Department began.

To appreciate the abject form of costuming geekery that dwells within the tiny body of one Ms. Emily Woods Hogue, or yours truly, there really is only one thing to understand.

Sarah Morton’s Day was my favorite book kindergarten-second grade.

For those of you unfamiliar with the book that planted the seed for what would become a history/ costuming double major, it was published in 1989, and it features a young girl going about her quotidian activities on Plimoth Plantation in 1627. Pages 6-7 feature Sarah getting dressed, putting on petticoat after petticoat, along with everything else that made up a young girl’s garb in the seventeenth century. I was the kind of little girl who wore overalls like it was her job, so this fascinated me. I had one “twirly skirt”, but as a general rule I wore what was best for kicking around the back woods of my New Hampshire home, i.e. pants. This era in which women wore more than one skirt and men wore pants that often did a darn good impression of a skirt befuddled me, and I vowed to learn more.

So I learned more. And more. And more.

As my majors might tell you, I have made it my business to continue learning more about not only the social history of dress, but also construction of clothing through the ages. Hence, the amount of time that I have spent in the Plimoth Plantation Wardrobe Department makes a great deal of sense. I am incredibly glad to be back this summer… so glad, in fact, that when Jill asked me to return, I danced an impassioned victory dance and cursed an ecstatic blue streak, just like I did upon my initial arrival.

If you have any questions about what it is like to be an intern at Plimoth, in the wardrobe department, living in the intern house, or really anything else, just ask. I will be more than happy to receive your queries.

Come stitch on the jacket

Friday August 8 - Monday August 11

Friday September 12 - Monday September 15

Friday September 26 - Monday September 29

Wendy left a note in the comments. I was too distracted by the news that done does not mean done to listen to the explanation of what exactly the funny wrapping is. Debbie explained this morning that it is an under-over-wrap-around the horizontal lines of the ceylon stitch. Debbie compared it to a straight-line spider rose type thing; Penny said that maneuver is a stitch used in tapestry weaving. Speaking of Penny, she’s answered the Earl Grey tea cupcake question for us:

Hi there! The Earl Grey cupcake has the tea as an ingredient. Originally, the recipe called for green tea powder, but Emily is a big fan of the Earl of Grey tea combined with chocolate, thus the cupcakes. The recipe comes from the bookVEGAN CUPCAKES TAKE OVER THE WORLD by Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero.

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.