Posting again after a year ...

Image from http.clipart.edigg.com

I haven't entirely forgotten this blog ... really ....

So many things have changed since I last posted -- on December 31st of 2018!  Most important among the changes is another new place to live.  I moved in about 6 weeks ago, but I'm still unpacking things; I have almost all of my possessions out of my storage unit, however, and I need to get another bookcase or cabinet to hold my antique books and the dishes and silver that I inherited from my grandparents.

I am still working in the library at the school, and I'm also in charge of running the Rancho Day event for 4th grade, and assisting with the Tea Party section of the Colonial Day event for 5th grade, for both of which I wear historical dress, of course!  Rancho Day for 2020 will be at the end of next month, and Colonial Day will be a few weeks later, in early to mid February.  I need to get my costume in order for both events!

I walked in the Rose, White & Blue Parade in San Jose again, with

Photo: Deborah Borlase.

the Greater Bay Area Costumers' Guild, and our theme was Prohibiton: Pro and Con.  I made a ca. 1918 skirt out of blue linen (not quite finished, but it was wearable) and wore it with my vintage embroidered blouse and my "Votes for Women" sash, to illustrate that the people opposing prohibition were also opposing women's voting and other legal rights.  The two issues (prohibition and women's suffrage) were so intertwined that most of the women's organizations campaigned for both issues simultaneously; the amount of control that "Big Alcohol" had over the national, state, and local governments was one of the biggest obstacles, if not the biggest one, to women getting the right to vote, which is a fact that people have largely forgotten and which, even the historians in my costume group wanted to dismiss, as "clouding the issue."

Historical Sew Monthly -- Procrastination (how appropriate!): A pre-Gold Rush California day dress

Version 1.0 of the California day dress ca. 1838.

The Challenge: Procrastination (January 2016), Out of Your Comfort Zone (June 2015), and Stashbusting (March 2015).  I didn't realize it until last month, but I neglected to publish the blog post in 2015 for the Out Of My Comfort Zone and Stashbusting Challenges, which were part of the original reason for this dress being made!  7 months is quite a procrastination, although I still don't consider this dress finished ...

California history, especially domestic history, has been a major passion and research topic for me for the past 15 years or so.  Part of my research has involved re-creating typical daily outfits for California women, from the early Spanish settlement period in the late 18^th century, to the early 19^th century Rancho period on the eve of the Gold Rush.  Unfortunately, comparatively little of the European, English, and North American fashion information from that time is widely applicable to California during the same period, due to the distance – both physical and cultural – between the people of California and those in the rest of the Western world before the Gold Rush. 

_Mexicains_ by Emile Louis Vernier, ca. 1850.
 New York Public Library Digital Collection.

Beginning in the 1760s, Spain established frontier settlements in California, but all contact with Spain ceased between 1810 and 1824 during the Mexican War for Independence; when the fighting ended, California's settlers benefited from the free trade that resulted.  Trade with England and the United States enabled the people, now calling themselves Californios, to enjoy many of the products and luxuries that had long been available to more settled parts of the former Spanish empire, with closer ties to Europe.  Even now, however, shipments did not usually include fashion magazines or any ready-made articles of women's attire, unless specifically mail-ordered.  Almost no non-Hispanic women arrived in California to influence the local fashions during this time.

Changes, good and bad

Image by Joy Coffman.
Wikimedia Commons.

Well, I haven't fallen entirely off the face of the planet, but it feels like it.  Some dramatic changes have occurred, including the changing of my career (for the present), and moving to another house.  I have left the history museum where I worked for 14 years, and I'm currently working at an elementary school while I plan for graduate school, which is what I had planned to do before beginning work at the museum.  I'm working more hours than I used to work, which is both a good thing and a bad thing: I'm glad for the extra wages, but I am so exhausted that I have very little energy, even on weekends, and none during the week, for sewing and cooking like I used to.  I hear that my energy level will change as I get used to it, but we'll see.  I am so behind on my writing, sewing, and historic cooking!  The new living situation doesn't allow for much, if any, cooking, unfortunately.

Clothing the Californio, part 3 -- the Mexican period.

Working-class man and women in California.
Monterey State Historic Park.  Photo: Elizabeth Urbach.

After 1824, under Mexican law, the central government basically ignored California, but the Californios were given free trade and loosened domestic business regulations; when the Missions were secularized, some people received large grants of good Mission land from the government, and were able to become self-sufficient and even begin to accumulate wealth.  They used their wealth (in hides and tallow) to purchase manufactured goods that were brought to California on international trade ships every few weeks or so, on average, but most ranch owners didn't live in aristocratic style until much later.  Many of the Native people who had been part of the Mission system stayed on the land and became the servants of the wealthier ranch owners, but by the 1830s, this state of society was still really new and changing.  Americans, English, and other non-Hispanic immigrants began to arrive in small numbers at this time, and generally adopted Californio fashions, taking Spanish names and joining the Catholic Church, as well as becoming Mexican citizens, purchasing rancho land, or marrying into land-owning families and inheriting it.

Back to costuming: the mid-Victorian sheer dress.

Original sheer muslin dress, 1840s.
Old Sacramento Living History Museum.

Mid-Victorian daytime fashions were not all about heavy, opaque fabrics; warm weather allowed for light dresses of semi-transparent fabrics like muslin and barege, trimmed with embroidery, ribbons and lace for a cool, floating visual effect.  These gowns, called sheer dresses, or "clear muslin dresses", were especially popular at seaside and tourist resorts, during the 1840s through the 1870s.  They were worn for morning, afternoon and evening, changing the bodice style, and were popular in England and North America, as well as when visiting warmer climates like Italy.  These followed the lines of mainstream fashion, but included characteristic features such as shorter sleeves, lower necklines, partial bodice linings, and depending on the transparency of the fashion fabric, separate colored under-dresses.  This article, first published in the Greater Bay Area Costumer's Guild's newsletter, Finery, will focus on day or afternoon styles for these dresses. 

Catching up -- school days begin again!

My mom's empty classroom.  Photo: Elizabeth Urbach.

Hello everyone,

I haven't fallen off the face of the blogosphere, but wow!  It has been a long time since I've posted.  Several things have been going on in the meantime. My mom retired from her kindergarten teaching career and I helped her move out of her classroom; 20+ years in the same classroom = a surprising amount of stuff!  Weeks and countless hours of sorting, packing, throwing away, giving away, and hauling papers, books, DVDs and videos, pictures, posters, activities and worksheets that she used to supplement the curriculum, and all the toys, puzzles, and manipulatives that belong in a kindergarten classroom.

I also spent 6 weeks as a teacher's aide in the same school's summer school program, teaching Medieval
history to a class of mostly 3rd, 4th and 5th graders.  It was a lot of fun!

Historical Sew Fortnightly challenge #1 for 2014

Production photo of female
Hobbit for inspiration.

Challenge #1: Make Do And Mend.  So, I thought I would actually finish one of the challenges within a reasonable time period from its due date ... Besides the replacing of the waist drawstring on my hoop petticoat (detailed in the last post), I also spent some time arranging some items to make my 1580s Elizabethan working-woman costume into something Hobbity for the GBACG fashion show on Saturday.  I put my hair in curlers and asked my friend to lend me her pointy ears and everything!  And then (while at the fashion show venue) ... I read the fashion show script that the narrator would be reading, and had to "make do" to change it back to (relative) historical accuracy!  

New(ish) costumes: mending and adjusting one costume to work as a different one.

vintage 1940s poster.

I've been watching the Historical Sew Fortnightly costume activity for a while; although I've never had the time to finish anything on schedule, it's fun to see what everyone else does.  The current (well, the due date just passed, but you still get full credit even if you finish late) project is a "Make Do and Mend" theme.  I have such a pile of mending, both costume and mundane clothing, so I've gotten out a few projects to work on for this challenge.

The first one was fixing my hooped petticoat.  It's one of the cotton petticoats-with-tucks-filled-with-hoop-wire numbers that have been around for years, and it's served me pretty well for over 12 years.  I had removed the top hoop wire (it's a 5-hoop petticoat) because the petticoat was too long for me, and threaded the drawstring through the now-empty space where the wire had been, shortening the petticoat by about 6 inches.  No hemming -- all was good.  Unfortunately the drawstring was not all that strong, and it broke on my friend, who had borrowed it to wear to the Dickens Fair.  While she was wearing it.  Thankfully, it had been slipping down all afternoon, and she was in a dressing room when the breakage occurred, but we panicked for a while!  She ended up buying a new hoop petticoat at the Dickens Fair, and I brought my old one home, and shoved it in the closet.  Until now, when I looked through my stash and found a length of corset lacing that I had bought years ago, that ended up not being nearly long enough, but was a good length for a waist drawstring.  I promptly took it out, found my bodkin (I love those!), and threaded it in the empty drawstring space.  My hoop is usable again!

Rose, White & Blue Parade -- another fun way to spend the 4th of July!

The tea guild and GBACG members before the parade.  Photo: Laura Jimenez.

The South Bay Ladies' Tea Guild and the Greater Bay Area Costumers' Guild got together again to dress up and walk in San Jose's only 4th of July parade, the Rose, White & Blue Parade that travels through the historic Rose Garden neighborhood.  As with last year's parade, there was a lot of standing around and waiting -- even though we arrived at the staging area only 30 minutes before the parade was supposed to start (instead of 1 1/2 hours early as they suggested!).  We did have the opportunity to chat with some of the other parade participants, and had several people come up to us and ask to take pictures of and with us.  We were also approached by campaign workers to ask if we would be photographed holding various politicians' campaign posters, which we politely declined to do ...

the tea guild at GBACG members in the parade.  Photo: Laura Jimenez.

The parade route was lengthened this year, from 1.5 miles to 1.7 miles, and I don't know if we really noticed the difference because, just like last year, we all had sore feet by the end of the parade anyway!  The parade audience was great, though, and it is always fun to chat with them as we walk and wave.  We kept getting asked "How are your feet doing in those heels?" and "One lump or two?" (I was carrying our tea guild's banner).  The streets are so small that people can call out to you and you can hear and call back.  I wish we could have taken advantage of the glasses of cold beverages that were (somewhat jokingly) offered to us along the parade route, though!  On the way to a friend's house in the neighborhood (where we were invited to stop for some ice water and air conditioning) we started talking about next year's parade and how we should plan costumes that call for flat shoes!  So far, we've settled on Victorian and Edwardian bathing costumes (with ballet flats tied on with ribbons) and 1920s/1930s poolside and beach play suits and coverups (with espadrilles and sandals).  We'll see what we end up wearing when next year's parade rolls around!  

July!

"What dreadful hot weather we have!

It keeps me in a continual state of inelegance."
- Jane Austen 

July has arrived, and brought unusually high temperatures with it!  Parts of the garden are doing well -- the pumpkins and zucchini are sprawling all over their space -- but the tomatoes in the clay pots keep wilting if I don't water them every day.  Only one of my heads of lettuce is doing well, but I've already cut from it twice and it looks like it's about to go to seed.  It looks good for the cherry tomatoes and the other tomatoes in the ground, though and it looks like I'll get a good amount of basil, too.  Hopefully this next week of really high temperatures won't kill everything!

The tea guild is getting ready to walk in the Rose, White & Blue Parade through downtown San Jose on the 4th, so that should be fun.  It's the third year we've walked in the parade and we're glad to have been invited back!  We had a lot of fun waving to the crowd and being in the parade.  Here is one of the photos from last year:          

The parade starts at 10 a.m. and runs through the Rose Garden neighborhood in San Jose, so come out and see it!  We can always use some fans in the audience ...

Back from a summer afternoon in the 1850s

Here is my picnic spot, with a view of the Fallon House.
Photo by Kim.

Well, the ca. 1850 sheer dress I've been working on is finally finished enough to be wearable, although there are some things I'm going to have to tweak ...  But such is life!  Our Greater Bay Area Costumers' Guild Victorian Picnic was a success, with perfect weather (August in San Jose can be scorching hot, but we had a cool breeze all afternoon), plenty of shade, and everyone in wonderful mid-Victorian summer day dress.

New costume plan: a sheer dress from the 1840s!

Image from Wikipedia.

Well, I've settled on the 1840s as one of my favorite fashion eras, and now that I've made a nice wool gown from 1848-ish, I need a sheer gown for summer, right?  Of course.  My costume guild's upcoming Victorian Picnic in the garden of the Fallon House in San Jose gives me the perfect excuse reason to make what the Victorians called a "clear muslin gown".

Tutorial: Steampunk-friendly millinery flowers

Japanese hana kanzashi flowers turned into
Steampunk-friendly millinery flowers!

I've taken a bit of a detour from my Victorian and 1912 day dresses and started to flesh out an idea I had for a Steampunk hat trim.  I usually don't make my own hat trims -- heck, I have trouble using pre-made trim and silk flowers on my hats -- because I just don't have the right kind of imagination to come up with something that looks good.  A few years ago I was at Costume Academy -- a one-day costume conference put on by the Greater Bay Area Costumer's Guild -- and ended up taking a class on hana kanzashi, or the delicate, elaborate flower-bedecked hairpins and headdresses that Japanese geishas wear. Making them involves doing origami with tweezers and 1/2 inch squares of hand-painted China silk ribbon to make the individual flower petals, and is very time-consuming and fiddly.  I didn't really know how I would ever use the information, but because I was getting ready to help with the costumes for a production of Gilbert & Sullivan's Mikado, I thought it might come in handy for making headdresses for the women in the cast.  While I didn't end up making any headdresses at that time, I did start thinking about how to alter the design and production for theater costume purposes.  I ended up with cool Steampunk propeller-flowers for my hat (which I don't have yet, but that's another story)!

We have been to the Dickens Fair!

We went to the Great Christmas Dickens Fair in San Francisco/Daly City last weekend.  We saw lots of pretty costumes. 

Back from the parade!

Here we are, waiting ...

No, we didn't just get back today, it's taken me this long to get the photos up!  We had a great time walking in the parade and are planning to do it again next year.  Lots of people asked about the South Bay Ladies' Tea Guild and the Greater Bay Area Costumers' Guild as we walked through town, so hopefully we'll get a few more people to look us up and join in the fun!