Sorry about that bad link - I’ve fixed it in the last post and here’s the link Tricia suggested, straight to the book in the mail order shop.

I had an exciting day Friday. I turned on the office computer and it, well, it didn’t exactly swear, but it definitely thumbed its circuits at me. Dennis the IT guy didn’t have good news. “Hmmm,” he said. “That means it can’t find the hard drive.” “Can’t or WON’T?” was my response, not that it helped any.

The bottom line is that my documents are on the server (since last year, when the previous computer was gathered to its reward) but my email may not be. I may very well have lost my emails, including the address updates of Sharon G, Ann B, and two others whom, sadly, my feeble brain cannot recall. As well as anything anyone has asked me to do from before last Wednesday. BUT WAIT, don’t re-send me anything yet. Dennis promised to let me know by the end of next week what he could save, and THEN you can send me updates. And I promise to figure out a better computer filing system. Grrrr.

As this happened on a Friday morning, I took it as a sign to jettison all efforts at correspondence and Just Sew. Sometimes that’s a nice thing. I’m working hard to finish up a few things for the interpreters before they’re done for the season.

Here are a few pictures of what we’ve been up to sewing-wise. The first picture up at the top is Penny and the Stays From Hades. These are hand-sewn, but the real problem was that they were cut out for someone other than Elise, the person she finished them for. She thought they were close enough, and it would be good to finish them and get them in use, but she had to alteration after alteration so that by the end, she could have made three pairs of stays. She says she’ll never do that again. The good news is that, after all that, Elise is happy with them. They look great on her.

I finished Beth L’s sandy-pink gown a while ago and here are the pictures to prove it. In the closer picture you can see just a little gap; Beth and I decided to see if it relaxes in the wearing. If not I can put a hook & eye closure there. I finished the gown in the morning and brought it to her on her lunch break. She went right away and changed into it and I took these, so it hadn’t been worn more than a couple of minutes.

I think she likes it.

Now I’m working on a pink waistcoat for Whitney. Arianna’s already made her a brown petticoat to go with. The weekend after Thanksgiving there’ll be a wedding in the Village - not a real wedding, a pretend 1627 wedding. Whitney’s going to be the bride and I’ve promised her this outfit for early next week. Arianna’s making a canvas suit for Austin. Penny just finished a gold wool waistcoat for Kelley, which I need to photograph. At this point in the season she probably won’t start something else new, but move on to a little housecleaning to get us ready for the Big Piles of Dirty Stuff which will arrive the Monday after Thanksgiving.

I owe you all a mess of pictures from the show & tell portions of the last several embroidery sessions. I’m thinking to save them for the last half of December. It seems appropriate viewing for the season of celebrating treasures.

Update from the Day Job:

Penny’s been working on this pair of hand-sewn stays for the past many weeks. Working off and on, and having to do some alterations on the fit, but she’s really been plugging away at them for a lot longer than she wanted to be, you know?

And now they’re done! Hooray!

And here’s Arianna, our autumn intern, who is off to a fantastic start. Here she’s working on the last bits of a new lightweight waistcoat for one of our new interpreters, Vicki, who will start on Saturday.

Arianna had just had a very successful second fitting, and now only has to sew on the wings, finish the sleeves, and do the buttons and buttonholes and it’ll be done!

I’m also making a waistcoat for Vicki, a wool one,  but have a lot more than that to do. I’m also almost done with a smock for Vicki, and have done an initial fitting of a wool waistcoat for Jenna, another new interpreter. Jenna’s actually already started on site, but will need this as quick as I can pull it together.

Then we’ve got one more new interpreter, Molly, who will be working with the Education Department presenting programs in local schools. The stock of clothing was so totally picked over by Jenna, Vicki, and everyone who came before that Molly needs quite a lot of sewing…tomorrow Penny will be remaking the waists of two petticoats so they’ll fit Molly properly, as well as altering the neck/shoulders of a second smock for Vicki.

Linda H came all the way from Pennsylvania to work on the jacket this weekend. Here’s a picture of Linda pointing out one of the motifs she worked, a butterfly.

Linda brought some of her needlework for show and tell, which was today. Here’s a picture of some of her stitching, which will be part of a beautiful needlework accessories book.

Linda was inadvertently part of a very rude awakening I had today. Wendy was showing her some of the frames, and pointing out what remains to be done. I had thought that the plain worms were stitched in ceylon stitch, like this. Ceylon stitch period. Stop. Done.

So Wendy was saying, “and then the worms get this funny wrapping thing.” And I said, “The Fancy Worms.” And Wendy said, “No, the plain worms.” And she started telling Linda how the wrapping is done. And I said “The Fancy Worms. The plain worms are done.” And Wendy said, “NO. The Plain Worms.” “WHAT?” So apparently the plain worms are NOT DONE. They need wrapping, like this. And I am getting used to that idea.

A couple of updates - Robbin explained in the comments that Laura didn’t have a name tag yesterday so we gave her a spare. Her grandmother’s name is Irene so she picked that one.

I ran into the interpreter whose stays Lacey altered over the last couple of days, and she was all appreciation. Her stays fit so much better and she is much more comfortable. The only problem now is her waistcoat is too big! We can fix that - over her next weekend.

We’ve been calling the garment we’re making a “jacket.” But if you visit the 1627 English Village (and I hope you will) you’ll see women wearing garments of the same shape and calling them “waistcoats.”

Most of the time, we can’t be positive what name a person from the past would assign to which piece of clothing. Names could even be confusing to contemporaries. For example, see Anne Buck’s brief article (“The Baby under the Bush”, Costume, 1977) analyzing the records of a 17^th century inquiry into the parentage of a foundling baby. The woman who unwrapped the baby described the child’s clothes; the mother, who had dressed and abandoned the baby, described the same set of clothes. In more than one instance, the same garment was given different names by the two women. Even in our own time names of garments can be ambiguous. Consider the word “jacket” in 2007. Jacket can mean a tuxedo jacket, a suit jacket, a windbreaker, a baseball jacket – and the different items aren’t interchangeable.

The earliest of the Plymouth Colony wills and inventories date from the early 1630s. Most of those are records of men’s possessions. In the couple of instances when women’s possessions are listed, the word “jacket” does not appear. There are, though, more than a couple of references to “waistcoat”, and at least once to “waistcoat and petticoat.” We know from other sources (including pictorial sources) that garments shaped like the jacket we’re reproducing were worn with a petticoat almost universally by working class women. Sweeping up all the bits of information, we’ve decided to call these garments “waistcoats.”

Since modern people usually think of a vest (sleeveless upper-body garment) when they hear “waistcoat,” we’ve decided to call our reproduction garment a “jacket.” This name conjures an image closer to the item we’re making, and has the added advantage of following the example of costume historian Janet Arnold, hardly a bad thing.