From: Gretchen Miller Date: Mon, 6 Mar 1995 19:04:39 -0500 (EST) Subject: H-Costume Digest, Volume 248, 3/6/95 The Historic Costume List Digest, Volume 248, March 6, 1995 Send items for the list to h-costume@andrew.cmu.edu (or reply to this message). Send subscription/deletion requests and inquiries to h-costume-request@andrew.cmu.edu Enjoy! --------------------------------------------------------------- Topics: History of the clothes hanger Dyeing fabric shades of white Fulling/felting wool Question and answers: Info on changes in dress in the post WWI era Anyone use "Lifeforms" by macromedia? Favorite Folkwear patterns Nature of silk in the middle ages/renaissance ISO: Info on Medieval Dress and Textile Society History of the bra ----------------------- From: DENISE@HARV-EHS.mhs.harvard.edu Date: Thu, 02 Mar 1995 11:28:50 -0500 (EST) Subject: Re: Earliest Clothes Hanger I'm not sure this is the earliest, but I've found pictorial evidence that wooden clothes hangers (essentially identical to those used today) were used in Germany in the 1560's. There's an illo (in a book of woodcuts by Amman illustrating various trades) showing a woman's gown that's been lined with fur hanging from a wall on a wooden hanger. It seems to be in the process of having the pleats in the skirt set. If anyone's interested, I can give the exact citation after I look it up again at home. Just my $.02 worth... Denise Zaccagnino known as Lady Deonora Ridenow in the SCA ----------------------- From: Mrs C S Yeldham Date: 02 Mar 95 16:48:00 GMT Subject: Dyeing It's just a thought, and I do not claim to be an expert dyer but .. If you want to evenly dye that amount of material, what about a cold water dye in the bath? I have done this successfully when I only wanted a small colour change - which you want here. Apart from a commercial dye, you could take the whiteness down to cream with tea - again in the bath. You have to make sure the dye/tea is thoroughly mixed in before you put the fabric in the bath. Caroline ----------------------- Date: Thu, 2 Mar 1995 12:14:54 -0500 (EST) From: Christine <3cdr@qlink.queensu.ca> Subject: Re: dyeing white to ivory A word of caution about tea (well, two) : Try out different teas, they give different colours. (I prefer orange pekoe to Earl Grey; one is more orange-y, one more yellow-grey) Secondly, I didn't want to rinse what I had dyed because I thought it would take out all the stain, so I left it to dry after trying to get rid of excess water. It worked pretty well, but did leave some lines. So I would recommend rinsing if you can't live with any variation. Christine ----------------------- Date: Thu, 2 Mar 95 09:36:11 PST From: susanf@EERC.Berkeley.Edu (Susan Fatemi) Subject: Re: H-Costume Digest, Volume 242, 3/1/95 Re: fulling and fuzzy wool Just in case anyone's interested... A friend gave me some wool remnants that probably date back to the seventies. One was an off-white wool twill bonded to nylon tricot. My cat got it dirty, so I washed it with stain remover (Z'out actually) and regular detergent iin *tepid* water, on gentle. Then tossed it in the dryer for 20 mins. It came out better than it had been! The surface of the wool is now slightly fuzzy or nappy, and the tricot appears to have "pulled-up" ever so slightly, so there's just the slightest texture to it now. It will make a great long vest! It almost looks like a knit now. I always pre-wash washable materials because I want to know what's going to happen before I invest time and effort in a garment. But I wouldn't have thought of this fabric as washable. Word of encouragement--almost anything's worth a try! Susan Fatemi susanf@eerc.berkeley.edu p.s. Diane or Gretchen--could you forward this to the Wearable -list?? it might be of some interest and I don'tknow how to do it (we have a priimitive, cranky system) Thanks. ----------------------- From: Chethur@aol.com Date: Thu, 2 Mar 1995 12:28:40 -0500 Subject: Dress change PreWWI to 20s I have seen some discussions and allusions here on the clothing transitions from the early part of the century to the 1920s. From the "New Woman" to the "Flapper." I am a historian, I would appreciate hearing thoughts on what was occuring and why. Amongst historians we argue over whether the transition to a new outlook toward life had occurred earlier or was it the 1920s, and how modern or contemporary to our own time is the 1920s. I would like reflection on the dress changes from the perspective of those who have paid attention to clothing. While I am primarily concerned with changes in female dress, I would also appreciate comments on male. References to articles are also appreciated and I can share some general articles I have found useful. Cheryl Thurber Union University chethur@aol.com ----------------------- From: AWILSON.ABRSCBR@anca.erin.gov.au (Wilson, Annette) Subject: Re: Help-help! Need Dyeing Advi Date: Thu, 02 Mar 95 12:27 Donna recently a friend and I overdyed about (10 metres) 11 yards of (150 cm) 60 inch wide brown and white cotton brocade in a domestic twin tub washing machine (small!!) We wanted to get a golden yellow and brown brocade because the white was a bit boring. We bought enough dye for the quantiy of fabric, seven pots as I recall, and mixed it all together into a measured amount of liquid (we made one litre of mixture). Then we cut the fabric into three measured lengths and dyed each piece separately using the a measured amount of dye. Since we were making a voluminous skirt of many panels we cut the fabric pieces so that we would get three skirt lengths each from two of the pieces and the third piece was two drops and the bodice and sleeves. It worked out at two X three metre pieces and one X four metre piece and the dye was measured out in two X 300 ml and one X 400 ml. Of course we timed the immersion of each piece in the liquid and drained out the spent dye solution before dying the next piece. The colour came out very evenly, but I must repeat that this was brocade, not a plain weave and not a single colour. It worked for us. Hope this helps (random thought - is "hope this helps" the costume net equivalent of "yours sincerely"?) Annette Wilson ----------------------- From: ejp@watson.ibm.com Subject: Re: Dress change PreWWI to 20s Date: Thu, 02 Mar 95 13:06:37 -0500 Well, most definitely read _Sex and Suits_, by Anne Hollander, published last year. In fact, read everything she's written on clothing history -- she's fascinating, AND she's a good writer. cheers, ejp -------- Elizabeth Poole Yorktown Heights, NY ejp@watson.ibm.com ----------------------- Date: Thu, 2 Mar 1995 10:59:07 -0600 (CST) From: Robin Findlay Subject: Re: computer costuming On Fri, 9 Dec 1994, Robin Findlay wrote: > > Does anyone know of a software package that will let me do the figure > drawings on the computer? I want one that will let me manipulate the body > to different positions and make the body tall and thin and short and stocky. > this would simplify doing hundreds of plates for say....shakespear or > those musicals that call for hundreds of dances and characters. > > Email me if you know of such an animal > > Robin > still looking has anyone used "lifeforms" by macromedia? ----------------------- From: KATHLEEN@ANSTEC.COM Date: Thu, 02 Mar 95 14:00:53 EST Subject: Re[2]: dyeing white to ivory Christine cautions about different types of tea giving different tones. I use mostly leaf Chinese tea (didn't like it to drink, so I had to do something with it). It gives a nice, non-yellowy off-white antiquey-looking color that has lasted for years. Any plain, orange pekoe/pekoe tea like Lipton, Red Rose, McCormack (East COast teas) or generic store tea should work. Don't use any fancy stuff. Earl Grey contains oil of bergamot and who knows what that would do to fabric. The suggestion to dye in a bathtub seems like it would work. Kathleen kathleen@anstec.com ----------------------- Date: Thu, 2 Mar 1995 11:33:55 +0800 From: Linda.McAllister@Eng.Sun.COM (Linda McAllister) Subject: Re: Folkwear patterns > From: Tracey Miller > > Sorry to go off the subject, but where is CostumeCon this year? > > My fave Folkwear pattern is the Afgani Nomad's Dress. I think that's the > name, anyway. I'm at work, so I can't check. LOTS of opportunity for > embrodery and embelishment. > > Tracy > > I'll second that! For the second, how about something non-obvious - no large rectangular areas. Maybe one of the 40's dresses (are they back in print?) Or the Cossack ensemble from the Met collection? Those would be a real challenge! ----------------------- Date: Thu, 02 Mar 95 11:47:21 PST From: "cynthia" Subject: Re[2]: dyeing white to ivory >use any fancy stuff. Earl Grey contains oil of bergamot and who knows what that >would do to fabric. The suggestion to dye in a bathtub seems like it would work. I did the bathtub tea dye thing (for 5 yd of heavy cotton drill) that became a man's duster. TEA WILL STAIN THE TUB. The rental house I had was an enameled one and all the scratches became very distinct. Plastic tubs would probably stain worse. 2nd comment, it takes an awful lot of tea to fill a bathtub. Use the soup pot, if you can. As for tea colors: Earl Grey dyes a rather bluish brn (the bergamot is just perfume), Lipton an ugly orange. My favorite is Assam, a warm mahogany. Make yourself several cups of tea, and dye swatches in the cups. --cin ----------------------- Date: Thu, 2 Mar 95 08:30:37 PST From: Kat@grendal.rain.com (June Russell) Subject: Re: the nature of silk Drea wrote: :It's a widely known fact that silk was popular in the late middle ages :and renaissance. But what, exactly, were dresses made of period silk like? :Was it like the raw silk we wear nowadays, or the thin china silk stuff, :or something slightly thicker like the silk used for some kimonos? I :know that transparent silk gauze was used for veils, but I don't know :what the thicker silks were like. Silks during the middle ages came in many weights. They were definitely *not* like our raw silk or duppione. They had veil weight silks finer than our silks can be made. They had heavy weight silks with beautiful brocaded designs which were more like our upholstery brocades. Plus they had everything in between (depending, of course, on what time period you're speaking of. There were times and places where silk was extremely rare to non-existant during the middle ages. I'm speaking of Europe from about 12th century on.) One way to think about it is: what fabrics replaced it. Nylon was one of the things invented to replace silk for things like silk stockings. Rayon (the more expensive type, not the sleasy stuff) started out as a silk replacement. Bridal satins (not the really shiny stuffs, but the heavy ones with lots of lustre as opposed to shine), taffetas, failles and the like are probably better approximations of MA and Renaissance silks than the China silks, raw silks and kimono stuffs. For some good ideas of the types of brocades, Agnes Geijer's _Textile Arts_ and Adele Weibel's _Two Thousand Years of Textiles_ are good places to start. Kat Kateryne of Hindscroft ( June Russell ) pacifier.rain.com!grendal!kat kat@grendal.rain.com Heu! Tintinnuntius meus Sonat! ----------------------- Date: Thu, 2 Mar 95 08:37:50 PST From: Kat@grendal.rain.com (June Russell) Subject: Re: Silk Jennifer wrote: :I've never heard of silk being unravelled & rewoven, I have heard of :Byzantium producing silks in large quantities in the early medieval :period. The time period when they were imported as thin Chinese silk and unravelled and rewoven was before sericulture was started in Byzantium. This was prior to Constantine's reign, as he imported (supposedly secretely) silkworms. For more information, you might want to find John Feltwell's _The Story of Silk_. It's probably even still in print. :The Norse Varangian gaurd employed as an elite force of bodygaurds :by the Byzantine emporer were partly paid in silks, they were entitled :to silk tunics as part of their pay. These silks were then taken back to :their Northern Homelands. An interesting part of this is that in some time periods you might have been paid in silk but it was illegal for that silk to leave the country when you did. It was only for use while you were still in the area. If you were found with silk as you left, it could be confiscated. If you were caught with it after you left, you could be executed. They were trying to maintain a very tight monopoly (which seems kind of silly to me). Kat Kateryne of Hindscroft ( June Russell ) pacifier.rain.com!grendal!kat kat@grendal.rain.com Heu! Tintinnuntius meus Sonat! ----------------------- From: gst6710@msu.oscs.montana.edu Date: Thu, 02 Mar 1995 13:34:37 MST Subject: re: silk Greetings! On 2 March, Jennifer (jennyb@pdd.3com.com) wrote: >I've never heard of silk being unravelled & rewoven, I have heard of >Byzantium producing silks in large quantities in the early medieval >period. How early? Specifically, 600 - 700? (snip) >I attended a Medieval dress & Textile Society meeting last autumn which >included a talk on the Byzantine silk trade. I should still have my notes >somewhere I shall try to dig them up. Could you tell a bit more about this Society, please? It souunds quite interesting, at least from the name. Morgan ----------------------- Date: Thu, 2 Mar 1995 15:10:44 -0500 (EST) From: Elizabeth McMahon Subject: Re: Dress change PreWWI to 20s On Thu, 2 Mar 1995 ejp@watson.ibm.com wrote: > Well, most definitely read _Sex and Suits_, by Anne Hollander, > published last year. In fact, read everything she's written on clothing > history -- she's fascinating, AND she's a good writer. She also wrote the very interesting _Seeing Through Clothes_. She is occaisionally in the New York area to lecture on these sorts of things: She gave a presentation to the Institute of Fine Arts (a graduate division of NYU that awards the conservation certificates, among other things) last week, and she also was a speaker at the Region II (Northeastern seaboard) conference that was at FIT last fall. She _looked_ like she ought to live in the east 80's in Manhattan, or at least in Greenwhich, but that doesn't mean she lives here ;*) -*-*- Beth McMahon, saving my pennies to join the Costume Society of America... ----------------------- Date: Thu, 2 Mar 1995 15:00:11 -0600 (CST) From: Cynthia Lucille Rosser Subject: Re: H-Costume Digest, Volume 241, 2/28/95 On Wed, 1 Mar 1995 marie@caesar.quotron.com wrote: > I recall several months ago, on the Writer's Almanac, one > morning, Garrison Keilor mentioned the anniversary of the > first bra and who made it. Evidently, it was originally > made out of two handkerchiefs. However, I do not remember > any more details. I suppose one could contact Minnesota > Public Radio for details. > The fore-runner of the bra was in use during the Empire period (early 1800s) in France and England. It was called variously a bust-improver and a brassiere. ----------------------- End of Volume 248 -----------------------