I wanted to write about the two most recent classes I took (making and setting Elizabethan ruffs, and historical tailoring stitches and techniques) but I have learned entirely too much to create a coherent description of my experiences. Instead I’ll try to capture three important things I’ve learned by taking classes at the School of Historical Dress with Jenny Tiramani and four other highly skilled and knowledgeable teachers.
FIRST: Use the correct materials. You cannot achieve realistic-looking results without using the correct fabrics, and your process will be rather more difficult if you lack the necessary tools. If an item was made out of a crisp silk material, you probably won’t be able to get the same shape and drape if you substitute linen, wool, velvet, or a softer or thinner silk. If the original garment was slashed using a pinking tool, you cannot easily use modern pinking shears or an X-acto knife to get the same result. (Of course some substitutions, such as using cotton thread instead of linen, will have minimal effect on a project.)
SECOND: Think about who would have made the item. Use materials and techniques that they would have used. Seamstresses used certain stitches, tailors an overlapping but not identical set, and neither did the work of the embroiderers, lace makers, or laundresses. Don’t confuse the techniques of one profession for those of another.
Tailors worked with pattern books, measurements, and curved shapes to make form-fitting outer garments; seamstresses primarily cut and pieced rectilinear and triangular shapes to make linen undergarments and accessories such as ruffs. Seamstresses sewed ruffs but laundresses starched and set them, which required an entirely different skill set. If you try to use a tailor’s curved lines and body-fitting techniques to create a linen shirt, you will probably not produce a realistic historical garment. If you use a seamstress’s rectangular construction to recreate a doublet or gown, you will not achieve a period silhouette. Don’t look at the tiny stitches on a linen shirt and assume that professional tailors always sewed seams as tightly, but also don’t look at the large and sloppy stitches on some tailor-made garments and assume that your linens will hold up if assembled as quickly.
THIRD: Before making guesses about techniques, be sure that you know what the extant garments can tell you about the methods appropriate both to the time period and garment type. Jenny asks me this question again and again, reminding me that the techniques I have relied on most heavily (looking at artwork in books and reconstructing shaped garments by pattern draping on the body) will not show me how to construct historically accurate clothing. I try to describe to her how limiting it is to be an amateur researcher based in America nowhere near any museums with extant clothing from before 1600. However, with the ever-growing number of quality books published about historical clothing, she is right to point out that many resources are available, if we only look hard enough. Art alone will not give us accurate clothing designs. Archaeological textiles and grave goods often lack certain important details and provide an incomplete picture (for example, often the linen fibers have disintegrated, leaving only silk and wool). Whenever I wonder “how did they do this?” I need to always remember to look for information about surviving garments.
Working with Jenny and the other teachers at the School of Historical Dress has been one of the most fabulous unanticipated benefits of living in London. I have asked so many questions, questioned so many of my sewing habits, improved so many of my techniques, eagerly jotted the names of so many quirky suppliers, and added so many odd tools to my sewing wishlist. Pity my poor husband; Christmas shopping this year is not going to be simple.