Hargrove No. III - A Plain Cord

 

After far too many delays, I finally finished weaving a sample of Hargroves' No. III, A Plain Cord.

For those of you not familiar, John Hargrove had a book of weavers' pattern drafts published in Baltimore in 1792. Only two copies are known to survive, and fortunately you can see read one on the Internet Archive.  A reprint was published by The American Antiquarian Society in 1979. Unfortunately, like the original book, the reprint is incredibly scarce. If you can find a copy - perhaps through interlibrary loan - Rita Adrosko's Introduction is very informative.

I like rib weaves and I think they don't get as much attention from handweavers as they deserve. I'd not woven this particular Hargrove draft before and I decided to try it using a yarn I'd not used before.

This 20/4 unmercerized cotton was a mill end I bought in 1991 and tucked away in my stash. Rib weaves have a history of being used for work clothes and this cotton seemed like a good candidate for a fabric for a vest or trousers I could make up for gardening wear.

Nominally, this yarn is equivalent to a 10/2 at 4,200 yards per pound, which I typically weave at about 24 epi for tabby. To get a sturdy fabric in a rib weave, I sleyed a little closer, at 30 epi, which is conveniently five repeats of the draft per inch. I wove my sample 8" wide.

To maintain a walking tread, the Hargrove draft adds a fifth treadle. As I don't have a fifth treadle at my disposal at the moment, I had to fudge the tread a bit. I tied up the shafts in order (shaft 1 to treadle 1, etc.)

This meant that tabby is woven by alternately treading 1&2 and 3&4. After each shot of tabby, the two warp-wise floats are treadled on 2 and 3. Starting the weft on the left side, then starting the treadling on 1&2 meant that I always knew which tabby to treadle next.

The yarn behaved well, being just slightly tender at the selvedges - probably because I wasn't using a temple and the fabric drew in quite a bit. Here's a close-up under tension on the loom.

Here, I've used a pink mercerized 10/2 for the weft so that the weave structure is more apparent.

Here's the back of the fabric, also under tension.

After taking the fabric off the loom I sank it into a tub of boiling water to which I'd beat in a good handful of soap flakes. I let this sit overnight, then rinsed in warm water until the water ran clear. The 20/4 cotton bloomed quite nicely and while the hand is firm, it's not unduly stiff. It finished at 40 epi.

Probably

 

Over the years I've developed a fairly ruthless approach to starting perennials. In late autumn I sow seed in flats, cover the flats with 1/4" hardware cloth to keep squirrels and jays from digging in them, and leave them outside to experience their first Pacific Northwest winter. If they survive the wet, the chill, and the occasional ice storm, they germinate sometime in the spring. Unfortunately, so do any weed seeds that managed to drift in.

I know what a lot of perennial seedlings look like, and for things that are new to me I have some good books to help me out. But every once in a while I'm just completely stymied. So I think I've just pricked out seedlings for a dozen pots of Shooting Star, but I'm not entirely certain.

Time will certainly tell.

Dressing Sensibly

Right. So you've put away your dressy holiday clothes, except for the ones that need to go to the dry cleaner due to some course of action you can't quite recall but are pretty sure your friends will rib you about for years to come.

It's time to return to Dressing Sensibly for the Weather in the Northern Hemisphere.  It's time for a nice...LADIES' UNDER VEST.

In 1884 you could subscribe to The National Garment Cutter and use their graded rulers and curved ruler to draft up this practical garment.*

As somebody whose stay-at-home dressing during the winter months used to start with a base layer of Duofold long underwear, I appreciate this garment.

For winter wear, the vest would typically be made of white or natural colored wool flannel (about the weight used in lighter weight Pendleton flannel shirts.) Due to its bulk, sewing with flannel historically used some specific techniques, such as using a herringbone stitch to fix down the seam allowances.

Binding the raw edges would produce a tidier, but more time-consuming finish.

Then there are those 17 button holes.

If you've got a little time on your hands, you could embroider scallops around the neckline.

 And then finish it all off with a some pretty feather stitching.

All illustrations showing techniques are taken from this excellent source. Used copies are a little hard to find in the United States, but it's available on the Internet Archive.

* You can use this draft! It's based on a scaled units in which for a 32" bust, 1 unit = 1". For every bust measurement inch over 32, increase the unit by 1/16th of an inch.  That is, for a 36" bust, 1 unit on the draft = 1 1/4". So, for the 1 1/2 units down from the top, you'd measure down 1 7/8." You'll also want a french curve ruler so that you don't have to draw the curved lines freehand.

Bear in mind that the vest would have been worn over a chemise and then a corset that molded the body to the fashionable shape for the period, so the proportions may need to be adjusted for the modern female body.

Personally I'd be tempted to mix and match time periods and make this up in a grunge-era plaid flannel with embroidery in an eye-watering magenta or neon lime green.

A little distraction was needed

 

When I was a kid I was fascinated by antique dolls. Theirs was the first display case I'd gravitate to in any museum or historical society.

I would trace my enduring interest in old clothes to the clothes worn by the dolls, from professionally produced trousseaux to the best efforts of little girls learning to sew.

One year for my birthday I was given a kit for a 14" tall reproduction china doll and her clothes. 

This is a few years earlier than Mark Farmer the kit I was given

These dolls have china heads, lower arms, and lower legs attached to cloth bodies. As I recall, the doll itself went together easily. I also recall that I made her a dress in a blue and yellow cotton-poly floral print with an edging of polyester machine pleated lace. I think I knew even then that it was dreadfully ugly.

At some point in the multiple moves my family and I made through the years, the doll got separated from her clothes and the clothes disappeared, so she's spent the last couple of decades wrapped in blanket in the dolls' carriage, wearing only a pair of drawers.  The teddies and the other dolls were very polite about it.

This month I needed a project to distract me from the world, so I decided to take my doll in hand and give her some new clothes.

For sewing the longer seams, my treadle machine is the best tool for the job. It does a 1/8" seam better than any electric machine I've ever owned.

This Singer 201K treadle machine was manufactured in 1945. I made the cat-deterring cover from a cardboard box and some fabric scraps

But mostly it was hand-sewing, which I find restful as long as I can get enough light, so I typically worked only during the day. Some days I needed to use a magnifier, some days I didn't.

A very plain chemise

Hand sewn hem

The doll's china shoulders add a lot of bulk, giving the clothes rather odd proportions. Imagine designing clothing for somebody who would wear it over a football player's shoulder pads.

A petticoat

Part of the fun of a project like this is to use only materials that one has on hand. The fabric for the dress is from scraps I saved from the early1980s. When I bought this fabric, small cities still had locally owned department stores, and these department stores had sewing departments, though these would disappear just a few years later.

I adored this fabric. I used it to make the Folkwear Prairie Dress and wore it to shreds.

The fabric was made by Cranston Print Works, an old, old New England firm that produced high quality cotton prints for over 150 years before closing in 2009. I still miss them.

Note how similar the Cranston print (on the right) is to the Three Cats fabric (on the left) produced several decades later and based on 19th century printing plates.

It being the chilly season, I thought the doll might like a little extra warmth. Sweaters were impractical for ladies during the nineteenth century when their clothes frequently had very large sleeves. This led to the development of close-fitting knitted garments, not quite shawls, not quite waistcoats, and with names such as hug-me-tight, bosom friend, and sontag.

I finished sewing on the last bit of ribbon the afternoon of Thanksgiving Day. The doll (who has never had a name) is now back in the dolls' carriage, where the teddies are getting just a little bit tired of hearing her brag that she has new clothes and they don't. 

Placemats in the Style of Venetian Carpet

 

Venetian Carpet was a type of warp-faced flat-woven carpet popular in the early nineteenth century into the early twentieth century.

Textile names are always tricky. Sometimes they truly do identify where the textile originated from - or where a canny merchant wanted his customers to believe they came from. Names change over time; spelling, translation, or pronunciation errors creep in. Florence Montgomery's book Textiles in America is the best resource if you're interested in American textiles between 1650 and 1750 and have a burning desire to know the difference between say, ducape and duroy.

Venetian carpeting most certainly did not come from Venice. We know it was woven in the United States because we have instructions for it in the pattern book of Silas Burton (1775 - 1827) a weaver who lived and worked in Connecticut. The earliest draft (pattern, or recipe for weaving) in his book is dated 1793. 

Burton refers to his carpets variously as "striped carpeting," "rainbow carpeting," and "shaded striped carpeting," but in at least one instance he does refer to a carpet as "of the Venetian figure."

In all cases, as his drafts make clear, these carpets are composed of stripes. In many cases the stripes include shaded hues, often of red or green. Many of them also featured a "picket fence" effect, achieved by alternating single warp threads in two colors - black and yellow being a very common combination.

In 1804, Andrew S. Norwood was selling Venetian carpeting in his New York City store in full yard widths ("4-4") as well as a 27" width ("3-4" or three quarters of yard) that was suitable for stairs. Stair carpeting seems to have been a common use of Venetian carpet. Lengths could also be sewn together to provide a room-sized rug.

The Evening Post, New York, New York, December 17, 1804, p. 2

During the dreary grey days of late winter I decided that I was getting tired of my placemats, some of which are easily 15 years old, and that it would be cheering to weave some replacements, and also that it would be fun to weave these in the style of Venetian carpets.

However, what with one thing and another, it was the end of May before I was finally ready to dress the loom.

The 13 1/2" wide warp, carefully controlled by the cross and the lease sticks, ready for drawing in.

Each of the 812 ends (threads) is drawn through the correct heddle eye using a special hook.

All drawn in!

The ribbed effect is achieved by using a main weft (crosswise threads) that is eight times thicker than the warp. To reduce bulk at the hems, the ends of each placemat are woven with yarn that's the same thickness as the warp.

I use a loom that probably dates to the early 19th century. Missing parts - the lighter colored wood - were replaced with oak that was originally intended for a wooden boat keel.

Because these early looms are so massive, their weight does the hard work of beating in the weft so the weaver doesn't have to work as hard.

The end is near!

I finished weaving last week and started hemming placemats this week. I used two different colors for the main warp - green, or white. At first I thought I preferred the green warp, but I like the way the white warp forms a sort of picot effect along the sides.

At any rate, I can confirm that having one's boiled egg, toast, and tea in the morning is much cheerier now.

Finally, I have a theory about the "Venetian" moniker. Stripes of bright colors is a pretty good description of venetian glass, particularly of the canes that are cut to make beads.

Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia Pennsylvania, May 31, 1823, p. 2

Venetian glass beads from bead paradise web site

Slow Gardening

 

I am pleased to report that the flowering red currant bush I grew from seed has bloomed for the first time.

I've always grown most of my plants from seed. This isn't such a big deal with vegetables and most flowers, but shrubs, vines, and trees are a different kettle of fish. Some seeds need at least one cycle of freezing and warming weather, and the instructions I've read for some seeds advise that stragglers may take ten years to emerge.

From the plant's perspective, this is sort of a brilliant wait-and-see strategy. A long-lived plant has to assure it will take root in an environment that will allow it to reach maturity and reproduce. Having the seed test out the environment is an energy-efficient way for the plant to determine if it will thrive.

Once the seed has found that moisture and temperature will meet the plants needs, it germinates and the young plant typically grows like crazy, putting out enough growth to keep it from being easily washed away in a heavy rain or eaten.

My flowering red currant bush, which is native to this part of the world, took five years to bloom. I may have lost a year due a couple of unexpected transplantings, but on the whole, I'm very pleased.

And now that I have a seed-producing engine, I can let the bush and Nature set about to create more plants for me.

Count to Ten, Count to Five

 

Spring housecleaning this year kicks off with dealing with the jars of coins that have been gathering dust on a shelf in my office. While the science fiction trope of "the before times" became a reality with the start of the pandemic, it wasn't necessarily the bright line we think we remember.

Sure, starting with the national lockdown we all stopped going to stores and leaving or taking pennies from the jar beside the cash register. But only a few weeks into the pandemic my local bank branch closed permanently, a decision I suspect had been made much earlier, as more and more people moved to electronic payments and online banking.

In truth, there hadn't been many deposits to the Blue Door Bank of Hard Money (not FDIC insured) in some years. I maintained four jars, for pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters. For some reason my recollection was that the marvelous CoinStar machines didn't take pennies, so last week I spent some time one evening after dinner counting and wrapping pennies, an evocative activity for me. I recall helping my father wrap pennies. It was an absorbing task for a young child who had just learned to count. Count ten pennies and place them in a neat stack. Count five stacks of pennies. Very satisfying.

When I noticed them, I pulled out the Canadian pennies. I'll toss those into streams that look like they might have spirits in them who could use an offering.  Maybe I'll toss one into the Pacific Ocean.* Dream big.

*I used to pour a little wine into the ocean, but wine now gives me headaches, so a penny now and again will have to do.