History Dork Alert!

Yesterday I was digging through an old hope chest that I started sometime around the 7th grade and had filled to the brim by the end of High School.  Apparently I felt the need to save EVERYTHING, most of which I can't even decipher what it is or think of a single reason for having kept it.  This thing is basically a huge time capsule that will leave archaeologists centuries into the future scratching their heads as to why I felt the need to save a bottle of water I purchased on my 7th grade trip to Washington D.C.  Basically the thing is full of junk.

However, among the piles of old school-work and random bottles of water I did find a few things that gave me a chuckle and inspired me to share with you.  These items are some early historical documents that help validate my claim to being a "History Dork."

(Please excuse the blurry pictures, all these items were glossy and couldn't be photographed with a flash.)

Exhibit A:

My American Girls "Samantha" paper doll set.  I think I learned about American Girl sometime around age 13 which is about the age most girls give them up.  I however, reveled in my discovery and read the books from cover to cover.  And apparently, played with paper dolls.  Please note: on the back of the package it says for ages "7 and up".  They did not specify a cut-off age limit, so I feel validated in my having them into my early teens.

Exhibit B:

When I was young, I was a participant in a yearly "thing" called Young Authors.  Students wrote books, went to the local community college to all meet one another, and win prizes for their writing skills.  Again, when I was 13, I was playing the computer game "Oregon Trail" frequently.  I then had the bright idea to use it as the basis for that year's Young Authors book.  Essentially I played the game through, and wrote down key events as they happened.  I then used to events to shape a story about a woman traveling on the trail and wrote it all up as though it was her diary.  Above you see the cover of "A Journal by Melissa Trane", supposedly written in 1848.  It is made of "pleather" all stitched together in a crazy quilt fashion.  I even burned the edges of all the pages to reinforce that old-timey look.  But wait, here's the best part:

POLAROID pictures! For some reason I felt the need to illustrate my story with rapid-develop film whilst trying to represent an era where photography had only been in existence for less than a decade.  Go me.  Pictured above are one of my sisters and her two friends, all of whom I suckered into putting on dress up clothes and posing in our backyard as though they were out on the trail.  Please note the Teflon pan my sister is pretending to cook with over a non-existent fire.  Awesome.

Exhibit C: (Living historians with knowledge about 1860's clothing, brace yourself!)

Oh.  My.  God.  It's me in a "snood".  Lord help me, this should be burned.  Here I am 13, (apparently I hadn't begun to pluck my eyebrows yet) and this was done at a 4th of July festival by a caricature artist.  This was at the beginning of my reenacting career, and as you can see, it was a rocky start.  The big crochet collar. The bangs. The white rayon snood.  The dress which I know for a fact was still being closed with Velcro.  (I later made my mother take the Velcro off and turn the "for show" buttons into functional ones.)  Somehow I went from THIS, to being on the cover of a respected Civil War Civilian living history magazine.  It took a lot of research, willingness to learn and change what was wrong with my impression, and time.  But if I somehow managed, I guess there is hope for all those snood-wearing history dorks out there.

A Mess of Things

Someone please hit me over the head and put me out of my misery.  My thoughts are spinning 'round and 'round, swirling in a vortex filled with floor cloths, dress designs, domestic manuals, oil lamps, stone churches and chickens.  Yes, chickens.

Mr. Flattery and I are in the midst of planning out our new first person characters for this upcoming summer season at The Museum.  We will be working in the house I have called "my" house for the past year and a half, but this will be the first time we are officially together.  Heck, this will be the first time I have been officially placed with anyone, our staffing doesn't normally allow more than one person per site, but this year my house is getting re-vamped to better represent a working farm and thank God and all that is holy, someone in management actually realized that there is no way one person could manage all there is to do alone.

The museum has been portraying "The Years", meaning an 1861-1865 cycle.  I came in at the end of  '64, Mr. Flattery at the end of '65.  Now we have cycled back to '61 to coincide with the 150th anniversary of the Civil War and will get to experience things from the start.  A fresh start and a new farm project, I have a feeling we have our work cut out for us.

I have the tendency to go overboard in my planning for anything and everything, and creating a new character is no exception.  There is so much to think about, I've always said doing first person requires you to have a lifetime of memories to draw from that don't actually exist, and one must be able to do so at a moment's notice.  For us our personas will develop during the summer months and will culminate in the fall with the "Supper Season".

The museum hosts historical dinners set in different eras, one of which takes place in my (sorry Mr.Flattery, OUR) house.  They last about 3 hours during which you are in character constantly.  You had better have a lot to talk about or it's going to be a loooong night.  It's not a one-shot deal either, for each era there are around 6 different dates visitors can choose from to attend, so we can be doing this 3 hour-dinner upwards of 6 times.  Again, very important to have plenty of conversation material.

If you have seen the cheerleading movie "Bring it On" you may remember the head cheerleader Torrance (played by Kirsten Dunst) saying that for their squad, cheering at a football game is more like a practice.  What they are really preparing for is the big cheerleading championship they win every year.  That's how I feel about this year- the summer season is really a long drawn-out rehearsal for the Suppers.  We lost several of our experienced first-person staff recently and I'm feeling the pressure to be in the lead for the new people.  Is it hot in here?  I feel a slight panic attack coming on.

I do sincerely apologize if my this post is not very eloquent or even making any sense, but as I said my mind is a swirling vortex.  As I am writing I keep thinking about how I want to do more research on painted wood floors.  By the way,thank God for my iPhone.  Whenever one of these research attacks hits me and it feels like I want to know the answer RIGHT NOW I can always pull out my iPhone and Google it.  Ahhhh, Google. I have a feeling Mr. Flattery is going to have to sedate me on a regular basis to prevent first-person-persona-planning overload. I have even begun to have conversations in character in my head.  Is it possible for my new character to develop into a multiple-personality disorder?  Again, someone please knock me out!

Living History as Reality TV

For the past decade or so there has been  a new TV genre known as "historical reality television", where ordinary people are dressed up in period clothing and tossed into a historic setting to see if they can survive the "olden days".  As far as I am aware, it began with the BBC production of "1900 House" back in 1999.  It also aired on PBS here in the U.S. where I watched with rapt attention as the Bowler family tried to survive in middle-class 1900 London.  As soon as it became available on video in my local library I checked it out, and often.

Soon other eras were explored in historical reality television.  I haven't personally seen them all as some aren't available in the United States, and as they aren't all filmed by the same production company I may be totally unaware of their existence.  Regardless, here is my running list, I have seen most but will denote those I have not with a *.

1900 House: 1900, London. (1999)
1940's House: WWII, London. (2001)
Manor House (aka The Edwardian Country House): 1905-1914, Scotland. (2002)
Regency House Party: Regency era, England. (2004) (Half historical reality show, half actual dating reality show.)
Coal House: 1927, Wales. (2007) *
Coal House at War: 1944, Wales. (2008) *
Outback House: 1861, Australia. (2005)
The Colony: 1795-1815, Australia. (2005)*
Frontier House: 1883, Montana. (2002)
Colonial House: 1628, Plymouth Colony. (2004)
Texas Ranch House: 1867, Texas. (2006)

There are more, but I can't find much info on them as they are foreign.  Up to this point the shows all have something in common: the participants could not be reenactors nor professional living historians as not to have a "leg up" on any abilities required to live in the past.  (As both a Civil War reenactor and a professional living historian I must say that despite my background and skill set, I still don't know that I could survive [with my sanity] being cast in one of these shows, let alone living the real thing.)  Most of them have a filming duration of just a few months and it seems that for a lot of the participants, a few months was plenty.

After Texas Ranch House things seemed to be rather quiet on the historical reality television front.  Sure, I would rent and re-rent all the "House" DVDs from the library from time to time, but it frustrated me that no one was producing any new documentaries depicting more time periods.  What about a show set during the Civil War?  Separate the men and have them off living as soldiers would (minus the actual dying in battle/from disease etc. of course) and have the women back at home trying to run the farm and household, waiting to hear if their soldier-husband/father/son/etc. is even alive or not?  I realize I'm being very broad and cliched here, but hey, no one is paying me to actually produce this thing...  Or, set one in the later Colonial period, just prior to the Revolutionary War.  World War One, anyone?  "Biblical" times?  There is a plethora of opportunities for good TV here. Actually, one of the foreign versions (I believe it was from New Zealand) was set in the Stone Ages.  Now that would be pretty neat to see someone from 2011 try and survive.

Finally, this past December a Facebook friend of mine posted a link to a YouTube video that caught my eye.  It was titled "Victorian Farm", and lo-and-behold it was a new (January of 2009) "House" documentary!  This one is set in rural England circa 1870's/1880's (I believe).  I began watching it on my iPhone in between scenes during The Museum's Christmas program.  I made it up to about part 6 and loved it.  There were some really great tidbits in there about laundry, cooking and farming that I really wish I could go back and take notes on, but alas, it seems it has been taken down due to copyright infringement.  I'm pretty sure it's not available in the U.S., which is rather disappointing considering I never got to at least finish watching it on YouTube. 

A key difference I noticed with Victorian Farm was that instead of having your "Average Joe" family donning historical costumes (and as with many of the other "House" documentaries, promptly stripping most of them right back off again, citing discomfort), is that the participants in Victorian Farm actually are historic professionals in one way or another.  The woman, (Ruth) is a domestic historian, and the two men (Alex and Peter) are both archaeologists.  Although one could say they have that previously mentioned "leg up" on things, they still have to put in the work and learn as they go.  Another interesting change was that instead of having the project span only a few months, this time they stayed an entire year.  I liked this concept, since at the end they would actually get to see their farming results instead of speculating if they would have survived or not as done in other shows such as Frontier House.

While looking up information on Victorian Farm just now, I found that there are even more historical reality shows I was unaware of!  One being Victorian Pharmacy, again set in what they describe as mid-19th Century England. They start off portraying  1837 and progress forward to the end of the Victorian era. Ruth, from Victorian Farm, also appears in this version.  And- it's on YouTube!  I'm embedding the first part below, watch it while you can! 

The other documentaries are called Edwardian Farm (guess what that's about?), Tales From the Green Valley (1620's Wales), The Victorian Kitchen Garden, The Victorian Flower Garden, The Victorian Kitchen, and the Wartime Kitchen Garden.  Whew! Again, these are only available in the UK unless you get lucky and find them online.  It seems like I will have to put in some serious YouTube time!

If there are any more of this type of historical reality show that you are aware of but I haven't mentioned, please tell me!  I've been dying for something new since 2006 and am excited to see what else is out there!

Sewing Project: Tucked Petticoat- Part 2

To begin working on my tucked petticoat, I consulted Elizabeth Stewart Clark's article on how to make a basic petticoat.  Basic, as in, no tucks.  I knew I would have to figure that part out on my own by searching the Sewing Academy forum and good ol' trial and error.  There are apparently detailed instructions on tucked petticoats in ESC's book "The Dressmaker's Guide, Second Edition", but alas I work as a historical interpreter earning minimum compensation and cannot afford it.  This makes me sad. I also knew that if I wanted to recreate the original tucked petti from the MET I would have to carefully amend a few things in ESC's instructions. 

I started by studying the original and trying to gauge the ratios used to form the design.  

When I looked at the tucked area up close, it appeared to me that there are 2 sections of 5- .5 inch tucks, with a .5 inch space in between each tuck.  If the tucks are .5 inch, that would make each section including spaces in between 5 inches long.  This was important because it also appeared the hem line was just over an equal length, meaning I would have to make the hem deeper that ESC's recommendation of 2.5 inches if I wished for it to appear balanced. 

In between the two sections of tucks is a section left untucked but decorated extensively with embroidery.  Upon taking my sewing gauge and laying it upon my computer monitor, it was equal in length to each section of tucking, so 5 inches.  Just above and below the embroidery is a small span of "blank" space equal in length to one tuck, .5 inch each, making the embroidery section add up to 6 inches total.  As I would not be doing the embroidery, I decided to take that middle section and the hemline down to 5 inches to match the tucked sections.  It would go 5" hem, 5" of tucks, 5" blank, 5" tucks. I work well with balance. 

Please notice that all my math depended on my assumption that the length of each tuck was .5 inch though out this whole planning process.  This will come back to haunt me later...

Following ESC's instructions, I determined my panel length to be 58 inches.  This included my adjustments for a much deeper hemline and adding 10 inches for all the tucks.  (A .5 inch tuck actually uses 1 inch of fabric.  As I don't have the Dressmaker's Guide, I had to do a small tuck on some scrap fabric to figure that out.  Oh how I wish I had a mathematical brain.) 

I also decided per her chart that I wanted to make a 4 panel petti, which with my fabric being 44" wide, would bring me to just under 176" in circumference factoring seam allowances.  This is on the fuller end of the spectrum when it comes to petticoat circumferences, but I tend to be a tad lofty with my dreams when doing projects like this.

I had already pre-washed, dried and ironed my fabric (to minimize shrinkage in the finished garment) so I set to cutting my panels using ESC's ripping method. I then seamed my panels together, leaving about 10" unsewn on the last seam to serve as a placket. I then put in my 5" hem "on the round", meaning as I measured, ironed and pinned my hem line the fabric was being pulled around my ironing board as opposed to being laid straight across had the end panels not been sewn together.  I started hemming this way a few months back during a wool petticoat project, but didn't realize there was a term for it.  I was so glad to see it mentioned on the Sewing Academy Forum and that it is a recommended way of doing things like hems and tucks.

Working "On The Round".

After the hem is put in, ESC moves on to balancing and gathering the waist in her basic petticoat instructions, but as I had 10 tucks to do, I was kinda on my own.  I wasn't (and am still not) sure if there is any correct way to do a tuck, but I finally figured out a way that seems to work for me.  I laid my petti on the ironing board (still working in the round) with the wrong side facing me.  I then fold over the hemmed edge whatever distance I need to get the correct measurement for the tuck.  In this case, I am going 1.5 inches past the previous stitch line to accommodate for 1 inch total of fabric for the .5 inch tuck, and the other .5 inch is for the gap in between tucks.  (I am so sick of typing "tucks" right now!)

Direction to fold fabric for tucks (my way).

Measuring out next tuck length.

I use a sewing gauge to get the initial length right, measuring from the last seam to the fold.  I only use the gauge once to accurately measure what number it brings my hem to on the yard stick I've laid in between the fabric.

In this case, by adding my 1.5 inches from the last seam line, my hem line now falls to 14.5 inches on my yard stick.  This is how I gauge for the rest of the ironing process.

To more advanced sewists than I, it probably seems as though I have taken something very simple and made it very complicated.  However, I am very much a "show me" type person, and unless I can be shown hands on or have a detailed pictorial, I have no clue what is going on.

I began my tucks, ironing at the 1.5 inch line then running a 1/2 inch seam on the machine to actually create the tuck.

I wasn't actually doing a tuck when I took these, so I apologize for not being exact on my fold and things being a little wonky.

Things progressed fairly smoothly for me as I continued making tucks up the petticoat, and after doing a couple I started timing myself.  To measure, iron, pin, sew, unfold and iron flat each tuck, it takes me about 50 minutes.  I don't know if that's good or bad, but I'm pretty consistent with that speed.

I was pretty pleased with my progress, but by the time I finished my first section of 5 I realized something was off.  If I were to continue, my top section of 5 tucks would end up somewhere around the middle of the petticoat, instead of stopping much closer to the bottom as in the original:

Then it hit me: I had based all my measurements on the assumption the tucks were .5 inch.  Only, based on how I was doing, they were really twice as deep as they should have been, making the original petti's tucks more likely around 1/4 inch.  I felt sick.  I had been so careful, and now my beautiful petti was all messed up. 

I don't know why I had assumed .5 inch from the beginning, but looking at the original on the MET's site the only measurement given was the center back length of 44.5".  That number alone along with the fact the tucks stopped so low to the bottom should have told me they were smaller than I was assuming, but my brain doesn't work like that.  Ugh!

I literally mulled over what to do for an entire day.  I toyed with the idea of taking all the tucks out and starting over, but that wouldn't be kind to the fabric and would take forever.  I pondered continuing as is and having the top of the tucks end in the middle of the petticoat, but I really didn't want them up that high.  Or, I could continue as is but leave out the gap in between the two sections and just have a series of tucks going up, which design-wise seemed rather boring compared to that of the original.  In the end, I decided to let go of my hopes of recreating the original and going with the third option.  I put in the rest of the tucks going straight up the petti all in a row.

That's where I have stopped so far, but will begin balancing the waist, gathering the waist and putting on the waist band hopefully sometime this week.  At least I don't have to think about tucks or the word "tuck" anymore.

This One's For You Nell!

I'm just popping in for a moment to post this video I came across years ago for you all to enjoy.  Many of you may have already seen it, it became rather popular among those within the living history/reenacting community.  If you haven't seen it, watch it, it's hilarious.  If you have already seen it, watch it again, you know you want to.  It's that good.

LNwCOB - 1864 Baseball
Uploaded by ccob. - Check out other Film & TV videos.

Personally, I am always distracted by the ladies' costuming and the reaction of the girl in the pink dress trying to do first person despite Conan's derailing, but I can watch this over and over.

Sewing Project: Tucked Petticoat- Part 1

Oh what, dear friends, have I gotten myself into?  I have been in what I will call a "winter funk"  for some time now, compounded by the fact that this is the off-season at the museum so I have not been working since Christmas.  Last week I decided it was time to pull myself up by my shoelaces and force myself back into some activities which normally I enjoy, but have been too depressed to participate in as of late.  To alleviate my melancholy I set myself to working on a sewing project that will not only keep my hands and mind busy, but also provide me with a beautiful yet functional garment to wear once I return to work.

Having purchased 7 yards of beautiful white 200-thread count Robert Kaufman 100% cotton Kona fabric last month with a coupon from Jo-Ann's, I went to work making an over-the-hoop petticoat.  I started my project by visiting Elizabeth Stewart Clark's website "The Sewing Academy.com" to print out her instructions on how to make petticoats.  I found the guide to making a basic petticoat under the section called "The Compendium", where you can also find several other how-to guides for historical sewing projects.  All the instructions are in PDF format, and while I was there I printed out all the other guides to set into a binder for future use.

Next I perused Mrs. Clark's historical sewing forum to see what other hobbyists had to say on the subject and to pick up any tips and tricks before I made my first snip.  Here, among all the wonderful conversations of a truly knowledgeable group of people, I came across this picture of an original petticoat now displayed on the Metropolitan Museum of Art's collection database:

Oh.  My.  Word.  Here is a closeup view of the tucking and embroidery at the bottom:

Lovely is the only way to describe it.  Even though I hadn't planned on making a tucked petticoat, after seeing this I knew I had to. I wanted to try and recreate the tucking on the original, minus the embroidery in between. Tucks weren't something I had ever done before, so I knew it would be good practice.  Unfortunately I must leave you at that.  I need to get back to work before I head off to bed, so the rest of this petticoat adventure will have to be continued another time!

I Believe Introductions Are In Order- or- What's in a Name?

~Please allow me to introduce myself. I am Mrs. Thomas Flattery. Welcome to my first post.~

No, that's not really my name, but one that I have adopted for the purposes of this blog.  It was originally created for one of the characters I portrayed during a late-Victorian era supper at the living history museum where "Mr. Flattery", my co-author and I work.

You see, I am a history dork.  Always have been, always will be.  When I was very young my mother made the mistake of reading aloud to me from "Little House in the Big Woods" by Laura Ingalls Wilder.  It has all been downhill from there.  That book led to my sisters and I dressing as Mary, Laura and baby Carrie that Halloween, thus providing me with my first "historical" costume. (I use the word historical very loosely here, as it consisted of a prairie bonnet, white turtle neck shirt and a calico skirt with an elastic waistband.)  Regardless, I wore that costume proudly and often, making up stories and scenarios with my sisters as we played "Old-Fashioned" until those costumes fell apart.  Literally.  My skirt shredded at the seams I wore it so much.  These antics continued for years in the privacy of our home.  My father's tube socks were commandeered as stockings, the un-leveled grassless yard at our newly built home became the rough open terrain for our wagon train to cross.  You know, back when kids had imaginations...

This continued on until I was 12 years old.  That fateful summer, I attended the annual 4th of July fair in my hometown.  As I was perusing the craft booths and food carts I came across a group of people dressed in wool uniforms and long hoop skirts.  Curiosity piqued, I began asking questions and discovered they were involved in a hobby called "Civil War Reenacting".  I had never heard of such a thing.  These were adults who dressed up in old-fashioned clothing and pretended it was the 1860's?  In public?!  Sign me up!

I am very thankful to that group of hobbyists for giving me my "in" into the living history world.  However, for me, that was just a jumping-off point.  Looking back they weren't the most authentic-minded bunch, more of the "put on a skirt, white blouse and snood"  variety.  Not much better than my prairie skirt and bonnet.  Very nice people, but after a few years with them and other similar groups, I felt there had to be more to this hobby.

By my senior year in high school things finally began to change.  I networked before I knew what networking really was. I researched.  I began to learn what it was that I was doing right, but more often than not, I learned what I had been doing wrong.  I was lucky to meet and become acquainted with some of the more prominent and knowledgeable people in the living history/reenacting world.  I put a lot of energy into improving my impression, and began practicing speaking in first-person, etc.

After high school I took a job with a living history museum about an hour from where I lived.  For me, it was a dream come true- getting paid to do what I enjoyed as a hobby!  After about a year there I moved out of state with the intention of going to college, which- long story short- didn't happen.  Fast forward to 2009 and I found myself back right where I started- at the museum, wearing 19th Century clothes and portraying a young Civil War era dairy farmer's wife / widow / prominent lawyer's wife/ widow.  (That is just the rundown for my main character.  I have several.)  This brings us to August 2010 when I met Mr. Flattery.

He was the new guy at the end of the summer season.  He started off working in the craft section, mainly demonstrating candle making.  One day there was a sudden change in staffing needs, and as a spur-of-the-moment deciding he was selected to be the new "butter guy", replacing me in the dairy farm house when I was to be moved over to another site.  This led to our becoming better acquainted as I trained him to churn butter, during which time I decided to give him his first first-person persona.

I had been doing some research  on the original owners of the historic home in which we worked, and while perusing original census records on Ancestry.com I came across the record of a young Irish farmhand who had lived with and worked for them in the mid-19th Century named Thomas Flattery.  Or at least, that's what I thought his name was. It wasn't until after he had been portraying my farmhand for awhile and borrowing the name "Mr.Flattery" that I went back to look at the record again.  There, to my dismay, I realized I had misread/mis-remembered the hard to read handwriting from the old census.  It turns out the original farm hand's name was Thomas Haggerty.  Oops.  Doing some quick Googling around, I found that Flattery was at least an actual Irish surname, being derived from the  native Gaelic O'Flaitre Sept that was located in County Offaly.  We decided to just keep using the name Flattery, as he was not attempting to portray the actual person in the first place.

Late in the fall we both participated in putting on a supper set in the 1890's.  For this we had to develop new characters and decided that Mr. Flattery would portray his own son of the same name.  We wrote it out as though the first Mr.Flattery (1860's) ended up marrying his employer Mrs. Richards (me) after she completed her 2 years of mourning for her second dead husband. (Quite the unlucky and scandalous one, aren't I?)  They produced a son, also Thomas Flattery (1890's.)  For this supper I portrayed the wife of the 1890's Mr.Flattery, Lilly.  So, if you are following along, I was playing my own daughter-in-law. Or, to put a weirder spin on it, I was married to my own son. Ew.  Trust me, with so little staff and several different programs/time periods to portray at the museum, our characters are all inter-related in similar fashion by now.

So, that's me, Mrs. Flattery. I tend to write about history from a less-than-formal point of view.  Like I mentioned, I didn't go to school for this, so I attend what I call the "School of Google" and do my own research when a topic comes up and interests me.  I also prefer social history as opposed to military.  I like learning how people really lived and am less than interested in memorizing names and dates.  I hope you come back to visit often, It has been a pleasure having you with us.