October! Is there any prettier, more colorful month full of seasonal changes and excitement? I don't think so. Even while California will never boast the color of states much further east, we have a change that is clear and vibrant in its own way. Today as I sit writing this journal, brown leaves lift and dance about in the wind that's promised to bring snow to the Sierras and rain to the foothills. I took three afternoons to make homemade applesauce with my husband (he peels and cores), from the Golden Delicious apples that grow on two of our trees in our small orchard. The apples were perfect this year. Just the color of the turning persimmons add a bright spot where leafless trees will soon stand. October!
The next costume from the book Sporting Fashion, Outdoor Girls 1800 -1960, was destined to be Hunting 1840's. Just another in between fashion that isn't quite Victorian and not even close to Regency. I'd truly love to know where these costumes came from. In my imagination, I see this one having been pulled from a large wooden trunk discovered in an attic in an Eastern European
country. When women took to hunting dressed as this mannequin is, they were of the nobility with time on their hands to ride horses, walk in mazed gardens, attend social balls, and spend hours with needle work and small books. In the photo research I did for this piece, I primarily found your typical Annie Get Your Gun photos, as well as frontier women who would use a rifle to hunt to eat, or one to defend hearth and home. There were plenty of Edwardian photos of women with hunting rifles, and one I found that was purely Victorian and well staged in a studio. I do believe this was still a time of heavy portraiture in oils rather than photography, and while one might be painting with the lady in question astride a horse, hunting would not have been a choice of portraiture. And yet, the woman who wore this ensemble was well heeled and utterly feminine.
While looking through the many pages of this terribly heavy tome of fashion, I kept coming back to this one. I loved it. I loved the colors, the feel of autumn, the warmth and
function this dress provided for walking in the woods, rifle in hand. The hat was intriguing. But the game bag was the key feature to me. That wise and playful little fox enchanted me. I love little foxes. And let's stop here for a moment. These game bags often depicted the animal of the hunt, so why on earth would I want to create this for Lady Lacie? You cannot erase history. You learn from history. And maybe fox were plenty, perhaps too many and needed to be culled. I don't know. But for this rendition in doll fashion, Lacie does not shoot foxes. If she sees one, she aims at a tree and scares the fox away so no one will hurt it. It is possible that on these hunts, Lacie took a deer or two, but honorably and with the sole intent of the animal being used as food, warmth from the hide and tools made from the antlers.
I've imagined that the woman who made this game bag
did so beneath a large picture window well-lit by the day's sun, near the warmth of a fire and in a chair well suited for comfort as she carefully stitched and beaded this needle point scene. It may have taken her two years to stitch the art that made this gorgeous bag and handle. The leather work, the final creating of the bag would have been done by an artisan skilled in leather.
I also spent some time looking for antique game bags and was only able to find one. It's not something a photographer would take a photo of in 1840. While the first camera was invented in 1816, there were far more interesting subjects to capture. However, in the photos at the end of this journal posting, you can see examples, but they were made at least fifty years later. However, I did find a real one on Etsy. It was French and probably Victorian in age. Quite a different piece than our Sports Fashion one. Which once again brought to mind that the woman who hunted, made this herself and the bag as individual as she was.
Here is the one from France. The needle work embroidery appears to have been done on velvet. I found it interesting to see the macrame, or tatter and tassel fringe on the front of the bag. Macrame is nothing new. It dates back as far as ancient Assyria. With its revival in the 1970's, it's easy to see where we might think it contemporary. But it's not. The art of knotting has been around a very long time.
Note that the bag has two handles. This information will be important further along this blog.
Detail of the deer that was embroidered.
It was the bag that drew me into making this outfit. I spent many hours studying the photo of the bag under magnification. The fox scene appeared to be needle pointed and later embroidered with bead work. This again spoke to the station of the lady who made it.
I used a piece of buckram from the roll I purchased long ago to make hats from and printed the image onto it through my rugged little printer. There was
no way I was going to spend two years trying to micro needle point, and the texture of the buckram would lend itself to the look and feel of the original. I painted it. Using the light print on the canvas, I carefully painted the scene with watercolor pencils and a OO brush. When I read that the bag had been beaded, I was eager to try that. I wanted authenticity. I'm laughing as I write this because that meant finding micro beads to work with and a needle that would go through them. I met an Etsy seller, who was more than generous and wonderful to work with.
After discovering that your normal seed bead was just too big, I found vintage Italian micro beads (by the ounce) from 1940, by this seller. She guided me that John James indeed make a proper needle for this in size 15. She sold me 00 (double aught) beading thread to work with as well. To top it off, she threaded one of the needles for me. Bless her heart. But I still had to bead the bag. In the photo above, you can see the size difference of seed bead to micro bead and the needles used. Those micro beads are the size of the tiny white candies, nonpareil. The worst of this was that even with the John James 15, some of the beads wouldn't thread. That meant trying 10-15 beads sometimes just to get a bead that would work.
Where did the lady in question do the beading? Around the leaves. I had a lot of time to think about this. Was she beading for the look of frost on the flora? Had some beads gone missing over time? Or did she bead randomly at her
will? I stuck to what I saw or could determine were beads. I will NEVER do this again. This was pure artistic torture. But I stayed with it, and did it because I wanted this bag to be as exact a miniature of the original as I could get. Barbara DeVilbiss's words always come back to me. "Maybe this isn't for you?" Yes, it is. I want to do this. Just when I thought I was done, I remembered the strap! My stomach sinks just thinking about it. But I made the strap to match. Who knows? Maybe it took this woman THREE years to make this bag.
As I was constructing the bag (I hadn't even started the dress yet and two weeks had gone by...two and a half?), I realized that there was something quite different about this shoulder bag. A normal shoulder bag would have two straps or one with rings attached to the gusset. A cross body would be the same with one strap. But the strap on this bag was attached to the bag on the front, both ends. So, what was going on in the back of the bag?
It took me a few days and a conversation with my friend, Betsy, to figure this out. The back would be loose. Hanging open. Can't have that. I finally decided that there'd be leather ties that would extend from the front inside to four little holes in back of the bag to cinch it shut. Makes sense. How I wish I could see the original! But this is what's called artistic license. Sometimes you have to make things up. At least this made sense to me.
The bag's gusset and back are made from distressed cloth to give it a happily used look. And of course, leather. The rings were another agony as I looked for just the right size. Remember the jump rings I used for bracelets? These are much smaller, but sturdier than a normal jump ring.
I haven't mentioned this yet, but the first thing I bought for this ensemble was the rifle. It is still a bit short for what was used in the photograph, but close enough. Lady Lacie is on a stand and that shortens the look a bit as well.
Time to tackle the dress. The gown would have been made from wool, but no thickness of wool, or thinness, would have made this work on a doll Lacie's size. I tried. Instead, I found a flannel that was gorgeous, soft and tightly woven, suitable for the look. It was still thick though and there was only so much fullness/width I could give the skirt since when you gather it, it has to fit into a bodice waist that's only 3" plus a bit more on each side of the center.
Further study of the photograph and dress revealed that the bodice had drop shoulders that end in both a short cap sleeve with a lantern sleeve below it. That's three thicknesses of fabric with a gathered sleeve top as well to sew together to make this sleeve. So, selecting a thin woven fabric was essential not only for the waist but sleeves.
There are four long darts, front and back. Darts scare me. I know they shouldn't, but they do when you have to design a bodice from scratch. I call it sculpting. The darts help sculpt the bodice to a feminine frame. It took several whacks and a the same amount of
seam ripping to get it right. Once I did, I gained a tremendous understanding of what I was doing, along with where to measure the darts from centers and sides. These are basic darts and no more than 1/8" wide at the bottom. This also played into the selection of material. In the center of the bodice is a one-sided pleat. Here's my take on it. If the woman sewing the dress did not have a pattern to refer to, she shaped it to her body the same way I shaped it to the doll. The center pleat could easily have been a way to tighten the bodice instead of cutting fabric again.
The back is usually simpler in design, and still was even with the four darts sewn into it.
Three snaps and one hook and thread loop at the waist close the gown in the back. Of course, the dress is fully lined which is why you don't see a sewn hem.
One view of the ensemble.
Next, we come to the hat. Such an unusual style, but most intriguing to me. When designing the pattern, I first imagined "chef's hat meets news boy cap". But I was wrong. Closer inspection showed that there is a flat round sewn into a wide band that gathers and meets the second band that the visor is sewn to at the base.
Once again, I had the wrong wool, but the right color. I didn't back down from this, even though the wool was definitely too thick. I worked on this hat for a solid week, all by hand, stitching and ripping out until I got it right.
When I was just about to give up, it occurred to me that I was focusing on the top look more than how it sat on the head. The top was actually great, but the band around the head was too small.
I did try a different wool, but the look of a chef's hat even with the most minimal of gathers was still present.
I saved the top and visor and recut a wider band to fit around the head and stitched the hat once more.
I like this hat. It's so different than anything I've tried before for a doll to wear. Like the beading, it will never get made again, so the effort is really all on the design.
I kept looking for images of men's hats from this time period. I don't recognize the shape as anything but
purely European in design. Just yesterday I found this photo of two 19th century men wearing what is called a winter hat. The style is exactly the same, minus the fur on the man standing. The hat on the seated man isn't a high. In the book's description, the hat was a "cotton outdoorsman's hat borrowed from the male wardrobe". So, the woman was wearing a man's hat. I find this all very interesting. It's never just an outfit, an ensemble to me, but a rich lesson in historical dressing which then speaks of the history and times the person wearing it would have lived.
Lastly, there were the gloves. I've made gloves before. Leather fingered gloves but never on a subject so small. Those fingers are the size of toothpicks! Which of course, meant very tiny blanket stitches around the very edges of the leather. I use old, vintage ladies' gloves to make gloves like this. The leather is soft and paper thin. I love the artistry of these antique gloves and often have trouble cutting them up because of their beauty.
Truth be told, they cannot be worn by hands of today unless they are very small hands with very skinny fingers.
On making the gloves, I wasn't sure I really wanted to struggle with them, but after those micro beads, I had to ask myself what my problem was. I won't quit until it's what I envisioned, and only the best replica in miniature of the original was going to pass with me. So, I made the gloves. I was lucky. The first pattern I drew worked. But I did test the thumb and first finger on the hand first before proceeding. If those tugged on and fit, I'd continue. The gloves were made in a day.
The scarf was eluding me. Cutting down a silk scarf from today wasn't going to give me the look I was after. The silk is difficult to work with and its puffy when folded around a doll's neck. I shrugged. Made one of cotton. It was too big, too thick. So I made one of fine silk dupioni. The book's description said that she'd worn a red scarf to identify her to other hunters. So pure red it became. At some point you have to say "done", and I did.
Every element of this ensemble plays off the next. In order to complete the look, each piece had to be made and even though I struggled through much of it, I persisted and completed. It's just me, but I need a sense of accomplishment now and then. To really stretch myself and see if I can pull something off.
I'm happy to be done. This is perfect timing as well, even though the project took me two weeks longer than planned. Its October and nearing mid-month. Autumn is fully engaged with nature and Lady Lacy is eager to walk the woods, enjoy the earthy scents brought on by rain and sun, feel the cold snap on her cheeks while she's cozily warm in a proper hunting gown, and save little foxes on the run.
I hope you enjoyed this journey as much as I have in sharing it. Below are some photos I found on Pinterest of women hunting. The first one shows the woman with a game bag. The fourth, the Edwardian one, I love for the dog. The final one is probably the oldest, and I included it because of the hat. I've also included a scan of the text from the book.
The sky has darkened and it's begun to rain. It is now the end of the day, and I'm ready to simply relax with a cup of hot tea. Until next time. Next stop, Halloween!
