Busy, busy, busy

I'm working on an insanely ambitious project. I don't want to give out too many details lest I jinx myself, but here is Part 1 (I've heard it called a neck stock, a roller, a cravat ... I just know it's about 5" 5 feet long and has a rolled hem all the way around.) and Part 4 - an 18th century riding habit shirt.

1/8" narrow hems? Check. Stroked gathers? Check. Flat felled seams? Check. Button links for the cuffs? Check. All hand-sewn except for the long seams under the arms and up the sides? Check. Skin missing from the middle of my needle-pushing finger? Check.

Parts 3 and 4 are in progress. Maybe I'll post pictures as I go along ...

Test fitting the patterns for Parts 5 and 6 have begun. Part 7 should be the easy one. (HAHAHAH.)

Oh, and it needs to be done by Columbus Day.

Sweet Daughter (ahem) cooks

At MTA Sweet Daughter watched our cook prepare this amazing salmagundi.

I know, I know. Navel oranges hadn't been developed yet.

Later that day, she decided to make her own "salad". She took the redware pan we'd make the venison pasty in (with bit of crust still attached) and asked for contributions. There was a heel of cabbage, and a leftover carrot and parsnip. I pulled some onion slices out of the fire (a.k.a. trash pit) and the cook donated the top of a leek. There are a few red potato slices as well.

For the finishing touch, she added grapes. She then wanted it placed over the fire. Our cook graciously indulged her, and added water.

Chock full o' vitamins!

After a while, it was taken from the fire and allowed to cool. I was then asked to sample it. Uh ... I thought this was all "pretend", hence the vegetables salvaged from the fire pit.

"Try it, Mama!"

I tried to distract and redirect, to deflect, to otherwise figure out a way I could weasel out with my honor intact. It was impossible to even try. What self-respecting mom could say "no" to this?? Not I. So knowing the history of the grapes (washed before being added to the melange), I chose to impale myself on that particular sword, figuring that the whole thing had been heated pretty thoroughly, and I wasn't likely to die from a few grapes. Well, I'm typing this so I can affirm that I did not die, or even get ill, but those were some interesting grapes. They were still hot and completely infused with the flavor of onion. With a hint of venison.

For the event at Petersburg next month, I'm planning ahead. There will be kid-friendly food to prepare and if I have anything to do with it, grapes and onions never the twain shall meet.

Brief update

Wool gown sewn for MTA?

Check.

Weather forecast for 80 degrees?

Check.

Resulting in frantic sewing on dimity gown?

Gown bodice from the back.

Check.

Dump the responsibility for the cooking competition to include documentation on our cook?

Check.

Mend the hole in the cook's shirt from where a stray spark took up residence between said shirt and skin?

Check.

Tie for first place in the cooking contest?

One of our entries in the cooking competition - Salmagundi. There are greens, chicken, ham, anchovies, egg whites, egg yolks, anchovies, orange slices, fried chicken skin, rose petals, and butter in the shape of a pine cone.

Check. (Previous best has been third place. Twice.)

Frantic sewing this week for a coworker who “Fights With Foam”? to include a both linen and woolen fighting tunics.

Underarm gusset

The sleeves were lined with a linen blend and hemmed with this nifty stitch that keeps the wool from fraying but doesn't add bulk.

Triangular gore added to the center front and back. Quality materials make this so much easier.

Check.

Need to start a gown for Sweet Daughter’s best friend (birthday party next Saturday).

Check.

Oh, and at some point, after spending a morning in the wind selling Girl Scout cookies in February, I decided our table needed to be upholstered. Sweet Daughter picked the font for the lettering. I am so not like other moms.

More when I come up for air.

Schimmel

I have an e-acquaintance from one of my 18th century lists who is looking for some information. Can anyone lend a hand?

Looking for help in tracking down the German word Schimmel.
I know schimmel as meaning "Grandpa's" old barn gun.
A barn gun was a very plain flintlock rifle - one which was sturdy enough to stay year in-year out in its designated place in the barn. It was NOT "a piece of junk" - it was a highly accurate and reliable vermin killer. It was not exactly a "frontier" gun because it was not kept in the house, but rather was always in the barn, handy for use on the spot.

We did find the definition below, but it does not seem to expand to cover a rifle.

Does any out there - perhaps Mohawk Valley Platts Deutsch or "Pennsylvania German -
recognize a schimmel as a "barn gun" of the era?

Schimmel : Old High German
- mold, mildew, to become moldy, a white horse, a grey horse

Thanks, all!

Why I love the internet

I've had this book “Tea drinking in 18th-century America: Its Etiquette and Equipage”on my Amazon wish list of years. It's out of print. There is one copy available on AbeBooks for $144. This afternoon, I applied my best Google-fu and I managed to find a course syllabus from 2005 that had this listed as one of the readings. Lo and behold, the email for the professor was included as well. I figured what did I have to lose? So I shot a brief note asking if she knew how I could acquire a copy and she got right back to me with the name of an anthology that includes it. It's now on the way for under $15, shipped.

Why now, all of a sudden? Well, Military Through the Ages is less than 2 1/2 months away, and it's time to build up to "full panic" mode. Our cook has some rather ambitious ideas for a menu, and we're trying to find some warm bodies to play wounded soldiers.

Another knit cap

The knitting deities have not been kind to me this past year. Regardless, upon flipping through my print-outs from The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, I found this cap: [original]

The description is courtesy of Google Translate. It's not really an ikat, but it gets the point across.

and decided I wanted to try to reproduce it. Why? I have no idea. Maybe because it’s so completely unlike anything I’ve seen. Maybe it’s because I’m a glutton for punishment. But on Christmas Day, I got started. Technically, I should have dyed some blue wool and then taken that and some white wool and spun them into a variegated yarn. Not happening, so I went with Plan B.

So first, I took a skein of blue wool yarn that very closely matched the original picture, and I tried to see if I could bleach the blue out of it. Nope. Using a few strands to experiment, I increased the ratio of bleach to water and found it started to dissolve the wool but it didn’t lighten the color. On to Plan C. Next I took a skein of natural merino wool, and wrapped it around and around the back of a dining room chair until I had a giant donut of yarn. Then I loosely tied it in a few places and pre-wet it. Then I folded it in half, and in half again, and put two of the resulting bends into a small crock-pot, with the other two bends sticking up.

Yes, that's Sweet Daughter's Hello Kitty toaster in the background.

I went down to my Rubbermaid tub marked “dyeing” and dug around hoping I had some acid dye in blue left over from a project over 15 years ago. Score! It was a rather bright blue, but it was all I had. I trotted back upstairs, read the directions for using it in a washing machine, and then extrapolated what I would need for the crock-pot. This highly scientific method meant I took an old rum bottle (it was all I had handy, really! *hic!*), and put some water in it. Then I added approximately ½ teaspoon of dye and shook it up until it was well dissolved.

This used to hold Cruzan Blackstrap Rum. You recycle your way, I'll recycle mine.

Then I carefully poured it into the center of the crock-pot, trying to keep it near the bottom. Then I added more water until the crock-pot was almost full. I turned it on (no “high” or “low” on this one) and went and played with Sweet Daughter for an hour or so.

I removed the yarn from the crock-pot and dumped it in a colander and let it cool a bit before rinsing it so it wouldn’t felt into a giant wad. (Agitation and/or rapid temperature change will felt wool.) I squeezed out as much water as I could by wrapping it in a towel and then hung it to dry.

One side.

The other side.

Then I rolled it into a ball.

I got out some size 8 needles and started knitting a swatch. Got my gauge. Started knitting the actual hat, and one of my big fears came to pass. See that original hat? See how the colors just sort of magically seemed to alternate with a minimum puddling of colors? Well, I got the blocks of color.  Sort of like this, but bigger.

I couldn’t have gotten the colors to line up like that if I tried. So I quit while I was ahead, and swore quietly under my breath and then it came to me … change the size of the needles, and that should shift everything one way or the other. I found a size 5 circular needle, knit a swatch, calculated my stitches, and started again.

Victory!

I knit for an inch and a half or so, did a row of purl stitches (so it would turn nicely) and then another inch and a half. I then picked up the bottom edge in the next round, knitting them together, and then just knit in a circle for a while. The next challenge was figuring out how tall to make it, so when I felted it it would come out looking right. One thing I’ve found over the past year is that when you double the bottom edge, it doesn’t shrink (much) when you try to felt. The diameter of the rest will shrink some, but proportionately the length shrinks much more. No, I didn’t remember how much more, so this time I decided to get all scientific and measure. But first I had to figure out the decrease at the top. I decreased 4 stitches every row until I had eight stitches left which I looped onto the end of the yarn, pulled to the inside and secured.

Then I put it in a lingerie bag and threw it in the wash with some other laundry, not noticing that the cycle was set on “delicate”. It came out of the wash the same size it went in. So back in it went, by itself, set on “regular”. I stood there and pulled it out every few minutes to measure the progress. After the length had shrunk 2”, I spun the water out and blocked (shaped) it over two mixing bowls to get the curve at the top and the slight flare at the bottom. The color also mellowed out a bit but is still well within the realm of possibility for indigo dye.

Sorry - picture's a little crooked.

Not a perfect match, but recognizable. And I'm not trying to recreate a couple-of-hundred-years-old cap. I'm trying to make it look like it did when it was new. I’ll call it a win.

A Pumpkin-colored Bedgown

Sweet Daughter was ready for a new warm-weather garment for reenacting. So I went down to the sewing room and dug out the two Rubbermaid tubs labeled “Wool, 18^th century” and started going through them, looking for something  she’d actually wear. I found a piece of pumpkin-colored wool that wasn’t long enough for a petticoat, and that she actually liked. I then dug out my copy of “Women's Dress during the American Revolution; An Interpretive Guide” and looked at the bedgown pattern. There were written directions for making your own custom fit garment … but they were scaled for an adult female, not a six-year-old. So, I made a few educated guesses regarding proportions, then I made a fitting muslin, and then I laid out the wool.

Did you know that you can get a perfectly straight line by tearing most woven fabrics? Snip, rip and you’re good to go.

With my fitting muslin tweaked, I folded my rectangle of wool over at the shoulders, and again down the center line and drew chalk lines where I needed to rip. Since this garment is all 90 degree angles, ripping instead of cutting made sure that my lines were straight and the finished garment would hang evenly.

The center of the garment is on the right, the sleeve is sticking out on the top left, and the part that sticks on on the bottom left will become a pleat over the hip. The small squares are the underarm gussets, the rectangle is the collar, and the reproduction print is to line the cuffs.

After cutting out the basic shape, I opened it back up and cut up the center line to the shoulder, and across the top fold, making a neck opening.

I inserted the underarm gussets, and sewed the sleeve and side seams. I sewed the pleat down the back, and tacked it down. I sewed the box pleats over each hip, and tacked down the top edges.

Gusset from the inside -- those are water marks from when I pressed it, not mold.

And from the outside. Not perfect, but I'm not obsessing about this one.

I attached the collar by sewing the rectangle across the back cut edge, and the attaching the shorter cut edges to the sides of the rectangle. When you’re done, you fold the rectangle in half, and the front edges of the bedgown fold in as well, making a facing.

Collar sewn to the back neck edge.

Collar with on side sewn.

Since SD does NOT like the feel of wool on her skin, I decided to line the cuffs and neck. I went down and dug through my scraps, and found just enough of a reproduction cotton print for the job. And the best part was that it had just a bit of that pumpkin color in it. I cheated, and attached the cuff lining with the sewing machine.

I went ahead and prick-stitched the edge of the cuffs, and blind-hemmed the lining. I hemmed the bottom and I added a lining to the collar and top part of the front edges.

The pleat to the left is the center back, the pleat on the right is on the side, over one hip.

Cuff

Preparations

His Majesty's Detached Hospital are turning their collective coats and are portraying Americans at Colonial Williamsburg's "Prelude to Victory" this weekend. I'm a bit behind the curve in preparations, but it will all come together at the last minute. I hope. Besides the Mittens From Hell, I made a wool bedgown for Sweet Daughter so she'd have something to use as a warm jacket. And this evening I made two dozen scones, finished a bed tick, and mended a pair of breeches that had worn through in the seat. I still have to finalize a menu, make another two dozen scones, do the grocery shopping and figure out what else I'm going to prepare ahead of time.

The weather is supposed to be beautiful.

18th century Pistols

 One of the neat things about the Detached Hospital is how much really cool material culture stuff our members have. Chuck brought these along to Under the Redcoat in Williamsburg last weekend.

 

Top: 1759 British light horse Cavalry Pistol. It was found in Maine. The hammer has been replaced, and most of the marks have been filed off.

Middle: French Model 1777 Cavalry Pistol from the St. Etienne Armory. These two cavalry pistols are about .60 caliber.

Bottom: Sharpe box lock, or muff, pistol. You unscrew the barrel to load it. This is about .32 caliber. It's small, but I wouldn't want to get shot with it.

He also had a marvelous sword cane that I neglected to photograph. Maybe if I see him in October...