At Her Leisure

I've been looking at the portrait I'm trying to copy and trying to figure out what shape the kerchief/fichu is. Is it square? If not square, what is it?


You can zoom in quite a bit on the Met website here: http://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/436222

It looks like it's something very sheer with a lot of drape to it. My thought would be silk gauze (modern gauze,) but even that might be too heavy. It seems to have three stripes around the border, which I assume are silk ribbon, roughly 1/4" (6mm) wide and spaced only about 1/8" (3mm) apart. They could have been woven into it, but I'm never going to find that so I would think that applying china silk ribbons would be my best option.

It's long enough to come around from the back across the breast and tie in a bow at the back, but there doesn't seem to be all that much bunched up at the neck. There are definitely two layers at the neck. My experience with 45-45-90 triangular fichus is that there is always a lot of fabric bunched at the neck that needs to be pinned into submission. That's the same shape you get with a square folded on the diagonal so if it were square, it seems like there should be more material at the back of the neck than I see in the painting. On the other hand, the points hanging down from the neck look like right angles, and I can't see how to get two right angles opposite each other without being a square or being some wonky shape with a seam down the middle. I don't see a seam in the painting.

Any suggestions? Any thoughts? Anything I'm missing? Please help!

We went to Williamsburg for vacation this year, but we didn't take a long enough trip to make the driving worthwhile. Last year we were gone almost three weeks with Williamsburg and Louisville, but this year it was only a week and a half. It just wasn't long enough, and it didn't help that the drive up ended up taking four extra hours due to various traffic jams. We did come back through Louisville, but we were only there long enough to go to church and lunch. We were a month too early for the Jane Austen Festival.

We spent three days at the Colonial Williamsburg historic district, but it turns out that they have rearranged their schedules so that all the shops are open on the weekends. We didn't go on any weekend days so we were hunting for open shops quite a bit. It was still nice, but it was just less satisfying than previous trips.

On the other hand, there were certainly lots of good points. The weavers had a table loom set up for children to try out, and my girls loved it and kept asking to go back. We got to lunch and hang out with reine_de_coudre one afternoon, which was very nice, and we went to the Williamsburg Heritage Dancers' regular Tuesday night session for the first time. And I wore my new linen items.





I finished my stockings in time to wear them, and you can get a glimpse of them in the picture above. Unfortunately, I forgot to get a good picture of them while I had them on so I'll have to do that sooner or later.

The other outfit I wore was my c. 1780 wool gown.





The third day was 21st century wear.

I've heard so much about linen being the coolest to wear that I wanted to test it out. One day I had a wool gown with cotton-lined bodice and sleeves, a cotton shift, and wool stockings. The next day I had a linen jacket, linen petticoat, linen shift, and wool stockings. Both days I had the same cotton and wool stays, and the weather was about the same. My conclusion was that the linen wasn't actually cooler to wear, but that it did keep me from feeling that the sweat was running down me.

You would think that by now I'd have it down that "knit plain" means stockinette. Why did I start garter-stitching the collar of the slipover bodice yesterday? Grumble, rip out, start again. At least I didn't have to pick the stitches up again and could rip back to the first row knit. I had enough time to get past where I was when I realized I had messed up.

 I've done a bit of knitting the last few days.  My stockings are finished with time to spare. Interestingly, I had about two yards of yarn left at the end of the second stocking after running out on the first stocking. I don't know if the extra stitches I picked up after the heel on the first stocking pushed me over the edge on needing more yarn or the yardage was just slightly lower in the first two balls than the second two. In the end, I do have just one odd-colored toe. 

I started working on the 17th century garters I've talked about before. I gauged them and knit about an inch before I decided they weren't working. I posted about the attempt on LJ (http://atherleisure.livejournal.com/114983.html) because I didn't want to add the picture to Flickr.  Something more the texture of the silk embroidery floss I've used for pinballs would probably work better, but the floss itself wouldn't be suitable.

I also started working on the 1919 Slipover Bodice that Wearing History sells. I'm guessing that it comes from the 1919 edition of The Columbia Book of Yarns, but I can't find that one online so it's just a guess.  Since I don't know where it comes from, I don't want to add it to the Ravelry database.  (She put it in as a personal pattern when she did her project page.)  I am hoping this will use up the rest of the leftover yarn from the 1892 petticoat as well as a couple of sport-weight leftovers from other projects. I don't mind having a fabric stash, but I don't really want a yarn stash so I'm always extra happy to use up the leftovers.

Incidentally, there is an error in the slipover bodice pattern - it says to cast on 76 stitches for the back, but the pattern doesn't work out that way.  It needs to be 77 stitches. Then you have 61 left after narrowing for the armscyes and cast off 23 for the neck. I'm only just to the neck so I don't know if there will be any more issues. As often happens for me, I had to go down a needle size.  I find it interesting that the armscye is quite shallow on the back (and therefore presumably much deeper on the front) like the 1907 sweater and 1912 vest I've made so the shift to sweater seams directly under the arm like modern sweaters must post-date about 1919 but has occurred by about 1937 because my c. 1937 sweater does have the seams under the arms.  I may be the only one who finds that interesting, though.

I finished my new late 18th century shift. It's really boring, but it is linen and hand-sewn so I'm pleased with it. This time I'm sure I hand-sewed it from sheer laziness; getting out the sewing machine seemed like way too much trouble, especially knowing that I would have to put it away again immediately.

I used the same measurements as the last cotton one I made, though I did have to piece the sleeves a bit because I mistakenly thought the measurements were with seam allowances. No big deal.



I only have 130 rows left on my stockings - the next dozen or so reduce every other row, then there are about eighty plain rows before the toe shaping starts, and the reductions are rapid for those last forty rows.

Look!  Someone actually posted about examining the 17th century garters at the MFA!  attack-laurel.livejournal.com/73932.html She confirms that they appear to be knit in the round and at about the gauge I was expecting.  I might have ordered silk thread yesterday...

At the beginning of May we had a small Victorian tea at the Smiths' house. There were only five ladies in attendance (though a couple of uncostumed husbands were hanging around). I chose not to take the children along this time, though there would have been plenty for them to do on the Smith farm.

It seemed wildly appropriate that the two hostesses wore tea gowns and the two visitors wore walking dresses. The fifth was not in costume. I finally got a chance to wear my 1886 navy and silver dress for something better than trick-or-treating.



( More pictures under the cut... )

Petticoats aren't very interesting, but they don't take very long either. Here's another one.



Then I want to do a jacket, but I'm still figuring out exactly what I want. It would have been sensible to make the jacket first because I have another petticoat that would go with the yellow linen but don't have another jacket that would go with this petticoat, but since I still haven't quite figured out what I want, that isn't the way I did it.

(This isn't strictly 1780's, but I already had the tag and didn't want to make a new one.)

I seriously underestimated the amount of time this little ruffle under the hem would take. I only managed to gather about a quarter of it and stitch a sixteenth of it last night. At this rate, it's going to take me all week!

I've got the last strip of trim pinned on the skirt for my Harper's Bazar dress!



Then I'll just have a few days of work to deal with the hem. Another day or two will let me finish the belt, and I think I should be done by next weekend.