Fashion Historian & Historical Costume Maker
Cynthia freaked me out yesterday by casually mentioning that we had about a month of sewing before the Colonial Williamsburg symposium, which left me hyperventilating. So, with that, a renewed vigor to get these stays wearable so I can start sewing the riding habit that will go over them!
Almost done with putting the pieces together; I’ve got one seam left on the other side. Hoping to finish that, and do a try on, tonight!
Many of you have read about the Threads of Feeling exhibition, which is made up of 18th century textile tokens that were left with abandoned babies at the London Foundling Hospital. The Foundling Museum has just come out with a very nice online exhibition, with beautiful high resolution images of some of the textile scraps. Beautiful, and really heartbreaking!
You can read more about the exhibition. There’s also an exhibit catalog, although it’s listed as out of print on Amazon, and out of stock on Amazon.co.uk. Not sure if it came and went, or if it’s just not really available yet!
Colonial Williamsburg has launched a cool online exhibit, “Historic Threads: Three Centuries of Clothing.” Currently, they have formal garments and accessories up — coming soon: fashionable, informal, work, and lifecycle clothing. There’s a REALLY nice zoom feature. The images are from their new exhibition, which I’m going to get to see (yay!), “Fashion Accessories from Head to Toe: 1600 to 1840,” as well as the 2002 exhibition, “The Language of Clothing” (18th- and 19-century clothing).
Coming soon at the same link will be, “New Threads: Reproduction Clothing.” I’m guessing we’re going to get to see the work of Janea Whitacre (CW’s mantua maker), Mark Hutter (CW’s tailor), and more!
Thanks to Sewphisticate on LJ for the heads up!
I thought for sure I’d be able to whip together the stays pieces on Friday night — I mean, what’s six seams? Nothing! Well, I now have 3 of the 6 seams done, and obviously this is going to take me another week. It’s HARD to sew through that many layers — pliers help, I have found — and to make sure you actually catch ALL of the layers, you have to stick the needle in, then check each side underneath to make sure you can see a bit of needle, before you can finish that stitch. Le sigh! I’ve basically killed my leather thimble, and my wrist is still tired…
Here’s a fuzzy shot of the outside and inside of one of the seams — thank goodness for welting, which will cover those ugly stitches!
Who thought I’d ever get here? I certainly didn’t! Now I just have lacing holes to finish and a strap to cut out, and then I can finally sew the pieces together and actually get cracking on my Williamsburg riding habit…
