At Her Leisure

It's time to get caught up on things I finished this year but never posted. I made this bedgown the week of Martin Luther King day. I went to California on a business trip, but there was an issue with the visitor passes so I spent most of the afternoon/evening Monday and Tuesday morning sewing before they told us to come home.

It's a pink and orange shot linen, and it's completely handsewn. The pattern is from Fitting and Proper by Sharon Ann Burnston. I made no alterations except that my piecing is in different places. I made it out of scraps from a more fitted jacket I had made several years ago. I was able to cut everything in just two pieces with a seam down the center back.







I actually took the pictures in February, but I must have been having Flickr issues that day because I only managed to upload one of them. Then then it slipped from my mind, and now it's December.

So that's two down, and two to go...I think. I'll have to check my list, but I think there are two more finished items to post about.

I went to the living history day at the Presidio San Agustin de Tucson last month. I dressed in clothing that was appropriate to the time period if not the place. It was really windy that day. I got my husband to take a picture afterward.



There are apparently differences between what the English colonists wore and what the Spanish colonists wore so I will need to do some investigation into that. Looking at casta pictures was recommended to me, and with my coloring, I think I want to try to look at the espanola versions. If anyone can give me recommendations for resources, I would appreciate it.

I also got him to take a better picture of the stockings that I finished last summer and never got a good picture of.



I've decided I really should start another pair of plain white stockings with clocks for when I'm reading and the like, but I will need to get the wool. I'll make them the weight of the first pair of 18th century stockings I made, which are finer than these. I think these are right but coarser than really go with the silk gowns. I kind of felted my original white ones by accident. They still fit, but they're shorter through the foot than I would quite wish.

(I don't know how to do diacritical marks here so I've blithely ignored them for this post.)

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.

I finished a new 18th century linen jacket last night.



It's more or less modeled on this one but with shorter sleeves.


https://www.pinterest.com/pin/544865254909104161/

It went much faster than I expected.  I cut it out Friday night and finished sewing last night.  I hand-sewed the whole thing, but I haven't quite decided whether it was because I was being accurate or lazy.  It's a very hazy line right now.

We spent good chunks of four days at Colonial Williamsburg while we were on vacation. One of those days I was in costume, but I got absolutely no pictures. In lieu of current Williamsburg pictures, you get two-year-old pictures from the last time I went to Williamsburg.

First, a picture of the dress I wore this time. You'll just have to imagine it with the proper background, but this is the only picture I have of myself in the dress. I did not wear the hat and mitts this go round.



Now for old Williamsburg pictures.



( And more pictures )

I wore my new coral linen 18th century jacket and blue wool petticoat to hand out candy to trick-or-treaters last night. We didn't get very many so I mostly worked on my 1784 cross-stitched garters while waiting.

I'll write up the petticoat and jacket later, but for now here are pictures from last night.

After Thursday's backward progress, I got a couple of solid, uninterrupted hours to sew yesterday afternoon. That was enough to finish the body seams, including the lining, and turn in the front edges but not sew them down. Since I was wearing stays for the Smithfield Spirits of the Past hayride (fun but very chilly - 38 degrees is not a temperature I appreciate,) I tried on the jacket to make sure the front edges were good before starting to sew them down, especially after I had put the jacket on the dummy Wednesday night, and it looked screwy. It was perfect so I'll start sewing that as soon as my water boils for my tea.

I might actually have this finished by Hallowe'en after all. Hoping but not counting on it.

I actually tested the jacket muslin that I cut and basted Wednesday night, cut out the linen, and started sewing it together. It's going to be hand-sewn, but so far it's going reasonably quickly.

I'm very excited to be getting back to historical sewing. I still have a couple of weekends of work left on my husband's cross-stitched lady, but then my time is my own. Or I start making Christmas ornaments for the children. For now, I'm pretending that I'm free to sew whatever I want, and that will be my 1780's jacket.

My husband's cross-stitched lady is nearing completion. I've finished all of the 58,000+ cross stitches and half-cross stitches and have outlined her head and parasol. It should only take a few more days to finish the outlining, and I'll be onto my 1780's jacket. Our fitting afternoon today has been rescheduled to a fitting evening on Tuesday, but I'm hoping we have patterns ready to go by the end of the evening Tuesday night.

In the meantime, I'm going to spend all my free time trying to finish off that picture. So close!

Browsing Ravelry is dangerous. I wind up finding lots of stuff that I want to make...like this. Why don't we have wooly camisoles any more? I think they would be marvelous for the winter. There's also this one, which isn't quite as cute but still looks nice and has the bonus of being written for measurements very close to my own. Then there's one that's not on Ravelry that I found at Vintage Stitch-o-rama. For now they're just things to think about because my 18th century stockings are going to take ages to knit.

So for this week in review...
I finished my blue wool 1780's petticoat. I'm going to save the coral linen jacket to go with it until this fall, or at any rate, that's the current plan. I want to do the 1868 dress first because I want it for Hallowe'en, and I don't need the 1780's things until early December.

Then I started the 18th century stockings, which are about 1% done. It will be awhile on them. I also worked on my husband's lady and got in some good cross-stitching time this week.