Author: kendra

I am totally on target for getting everything done in reasonable time for Williamsburg, which, yay! I have finished most of the big stuff, and am now down to fiddly bits. I think I’m even going to have a day or half-day to pack, which is SUPER exciting.

I have been motoring on the riding habit, and I have to say I’m kind of rediscovering the joy of sewing machines — in that I am SUPER excited about this outfit, and if I hadn’t decided to machine sew it, it never would have happened in time. So, sewing machines ARE good when you need them!

I finished putting the jacket together, attaching the collar and the skirts. I did screw up slightly in the jacket skirt pleats, in that I decided to round down the bottom of the back hemline, and just added from the pleats to the CB — but didn’t change the pleat hemline… so the pleats don’t line up with the jacket hemline. I started trying to futz with them to make them line up with the hemline, but it totally threw off the width of the pleats, and meant that the skirts no longer matched up width-wise with the jacket. So I decided it was okay less than perfect, and just went ahead as patterned.

The sleeves were SLEEVIL. EVIL EVIL EVIL. I looked at the riding habit pattern in Janet Arnold and thought, “Okay, wrist-length two-piece sleeve, that’s doable.” I looked through my pattern stash to find something to start with, and realized that I had made a similar style pattern for my chemise gown. So I started futzing with it, and futzing with it, and futzing with it, and FOUR HOURS LATER (okay, I might be exaggerating) I had a pattern that I was close to happy with. Then, I looked at the riding habit pattern in Norah Waugh, where it finally dawned on me that the sleeve top and bottom pattern are supposed to be exactly the same. DUH. Somehow I hadn’t read that in the Arnold layout. So I took my sleeve top pattern, which looked closer to the period cuts, traced off two, and fit those making sure to make even changes b/t top and bottom. Took me less than an hour. Le sigh!

The skirt was relatively quick, except I was lazy and didn’t measure my stash ON my body for my waist measurement — so the skirt is a good 3″ too small in the waistband. It fits, due to 18th c. waist finishing techniques, but if I can find the time, I will unpick it and repleat it a bit wider — otherwise you can see some of my red quilted petticoat showing through!

Warning: these are TERRIBLE pictures, I know, but you can see where I was at a few days ago. Winston really wanted to participate in the picture taking, hence my blurry arm:

After three days of pretty much straight sew sew sew, I’ve got the habit jacket draped, patterned, cut out, and half-way assembled.

It was difficult to decide exactly how the back of the jacket should look, as I can’t find any extant examples of this cutaway style.  I initially decided the back should be cut straight across, as most habits I’ve seen do this… but then when I looked at the pictures, it just looked strange!  So I added a gentle curve towards the CB.

Here’s the mockup, along with the start of the jacket — fronts & backs together, collar started and just draped on to see how its working.  I wasn’t sure if I should stiffen the collar and lapels at all, but I decided to go for it as the stiffening could only help, so there’s a layer of linen/cotton fustian in there.

Figuring out the side pleats was CRAZY HARD.  Thank god for the detailed diagrams in the men’s coat pattern in Costume Close-Up.  Even so, it took multiple attempts, talking out loud, and a call to Francis to get it figured out.  It’s SUPER cool, but super crazy.

My iPhone seems to have decided that my wool is blue, but it really is green!

I’ve mentioned it a million times, but I really truly AM making a riding habit for Colonial Williamsburg.  It’s going to be March, which could very well mean cold; plus, I’d really like to have a very-appropriate-to-Williamsburg outfit; plus, riding habitses are fabulous!

I’ve been mulling about it for a while now, and despite looking at tons of different inspiration images, I kept coming back to this habit from 1779-81:

I LOVE the waistcoat, with the gold braid and buttons, and I think that’s what sold me.  Of course, I need to do it in my colors, so I hunted down some forest green wool from Mood Fabrics (which, shockingly, has decent prices on some fabrics, including wool!).  Olive is modeling the fabric for you; the bit in the bottom left of the pic is the best capture of the color (it’s not blue, as it looks in the pic):

I’ve been doing tons of research, although there’s limited information out there about habits.  And, of course, I’ve been madly working on my 1780s stays, as I want to wear them under this.  So since I FINALLY got the stays wearable, I was finally able to start on the habit… with only a few weeks left to go before my trip!  So, sadly, all my plans for a totally authentic hand sewn habit went out the window, and I am machine sewing everything I possibly can that won’t show (and, even, bag lining so that I can machine and not have it sew).  I’m laughing as I’m working, because I am using really authentic materials… but modern/theatrical techniques!

Unfortunately, there are only a few options out there for pattern resources for habits:  Janet Arnold and Norah Waugh both include patterns, but both are 1750s, which is stylistically somewhat different from late 1770s.  So while I’ve used both as references for draping, I’ve had to make some educated guesses; most especially, knowing that habits followed men’s fashions, I used the 1760-90s coat in Costume Close-Up for ideas on how to handle the cutaway front and back pleats.

Here’s the waistcoat in progress, with trim, and with buttons; I did handsew the bust dart, and will be hand sewing the buttonholes:

You can see that I changed the waistcoat back; when I first made it, I did a triangular cut-out with the quick & dirty, but still period, linen tape ties (instead of spiral lacing) — but, of course, the bias totally stretched.  Then I remembered that when Janea Whitacre showed us this option (in the Brunswick workshop), she did the square cutout — right, on the straight of grain!  So I redid that.