HSM 2017 #4: A very wide apron

Maid plucking a bird
(Pehr Hilleström, circa 1776)

A while back, I found a piece of vintage linen with nice selvages at the local thrift shop, and thought it would make a good 1770s working apron. I wanted an apron that a kitchen maid or wife in a lower middle class household might wear while doing chores.  She would likely have sewn it herself, rather than paying a seamstress.

Unfortunately, 18th century Swedish body linens were rarely preserved for posterity. As far as I know, there are a few shirts and some royal baby clothes, but no women's shifts or linen aprons. One of the reasons for this is that the paper mills used linen rags as their raw material, and from 1738 and on, a law required each Stockholm household to deliver a certain quantity of linen rags to the paper mill—otherwise they would be fined. This may have improved the inflow of rags to paper mills in the 18th century, but it doesn't exactly benefit today's historical dressmakers. So we have to turn to other sources of inspiration instead.

Durán Textiles: new cotton prints in May

Durán Textiles are discontinuing their current line of screen-prints, to introduce a new line of block-prints. Here's what their site says:

New block prints in May
A small scale production of 10 block prints will be available from mid May. The fabric is a light weight 100% cotton quality, 120 cm width, in a varaity of floral designs. This quality is suitable for period dresses from late 18th century- to mid 19th century. The fabrics are also suitable for folk costume (bunad) aprons.

Several of their current fabrics are mid-18th century, but their new line focuses on later eras that are popular in mainstream historical costuming. I look forward to seeing their new fabrics!

Edit:
A couple of months have passed, and the new prints still haven't made it to their website. I hope any issues will be sorted out soon, so we'll get to see their new products.

The Peacock Scale

In thinking about how to grade historical accuracy, I realized that not all aspects of accuracy are equal. If the over-all impression of a garment is strikingly inaccurate, it doesn't really help if a closer examination shows that the details are correct (e.g., consider a hand-sewn 18th century shift made from shock pink linen).

So, IMHO some requirements are more basic than others, and need to be fulfilled before I can get "accuracy points" for other aspects—sort of like a parallel to Maslow's hierarchy of needs.

From there, I came up with this four-level scale as a guide to self-grading my historical garments:

Mid-18th century fabric samples

A new book showcasing a whole 1500 Swedish fabric samples from the mid-18th century has just been published. This is not a proper review, because I haven't seen the book in person yet (Christmas is over a month away!), so the only information I have is the publisher's presentation. But I'm so excited about it that I wanted to get the word out there straight away.

HSM 2015 #10: The 'Secret Date' Shift

Today, there are books, patterns, and blogs, that document the construction and sewing techniques of garments that have survived for centuries. There are reprints of period fabrics, dealers that specialize in historical fabrics and notions, and people who use traditional dyes to dye fabric.

As a result, period garments can be reproduced more accurately than ever before. But, some of the reproduction garments that are sewn today, might also survive for centuries. It's easy to tell them from extant garments today, when the copy is new and the original is old - but how will a collector or museum tell them apart in the year 2215, when reproductions and extants both have aged for centuries?

If a recreated garment is mistaken for a period garment, it will skew the knowledge of period garments. Will museums and collectors have to use carbon dating in the future, to ascertain which garments are truly from the period?