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 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.

Tonight Tricia continues the story of how we chose which jacket to recreate. What have I been doing while she’s blogging? Well, taking pictures of Laura, for one. Here’s Laura in her first completed reproduction garment – a man’s shirt, which was basically underwear in the period. She did a great job and is now more than halfway through a cassock (outer garment) to go with. Laura is this year’s summer intern with the Colonial Wardrobe & Textiles Department (which right now consists of just the two of us and some dedicated volunteers). Talk about being thrown in at the deep end! Besides making new clothes, she’s spending a fair amount of time helping Kathy process kit orders, and as of today, keeping track of returned samples! Drumroll….we now have TWO completed samples in hand! I won’t mention last names here, but Wendy & Robbin, your samples safely arrived and are just beautiful.

Here’s Tricia:
A great off-shoot of making all the calculations from the last blog entry was the realization that each stitch type has its own materials cost and labor cost. So if you were a professional workshop of the past, the stitches chosen for a motif can dramatically change the cost to produce the jacket. Therefore, knowing these numbers could give us a ‘yard stick’ to use to evaluate historic pieces for their possible relative expense to one another. As an example spiral trellis takes a lot more silk than detached buttonhole or trellis stitch to work.

This came home to me when we were evaluating which jacket we would adapt. We were visiting a piece at the MET and it was beautiful Jill was struck by the gold thread stitch used for the vine, something I will call here “ladder stitch with zigzag interlacing”. It was dramatic and she was convinced that we should abandon the dreaded plaited braid in favor of this beautiful stitch. Having just taught this stitch on a piece the week before - I was horrified. The stitch consumed an enormous amount of thread, was worked in two passes, and took forever to work an inch. It made plaited braid look like a cake walk. So I convinced her to abandon this idea. (Yes, I gave up the idea, but in my defense, is that not a GORGEOUS stitch? JMH)But then the light bulb went off, why did the professionals use this stitch for this particular jacket? It must have been very expensive to work as it used more thread and more time. So who was the jacket made for? Did everyone who looked at the jacket when worn realize that it was more expensive and so it became a status symbol? When we have the chance some day to show pictures of the jacket, we can discuss why we think the piece may have been made for a child or very young girl. If so, why go to the expense? Who was she?

Another factor to consider was that jackets of this type were made over a 30 year time frame. Was this jacket early or late compared to others? And what was inflation like at that time? The materials and labor costs could be quite different along that spectrum of time, making something less or more expensive to produce depending on when it was made.

This was exciting. I plan to work a sample with rectangle samples and lengths of stitches of the period to measure the relative times and materials costs in the near future to give a more accurate set of data to use for these types of material culture investigations. Part of the purpose of the project has been to examine the past through the eyes of those that ‘did’. I think we are uncovering a lot of insights as we do so!

Tricia