Fisher
women of Yorkshire - a less gothic version of Whitby.
Stephen Friend has loaned a costume to me, made for the "Women's Voices"
project by York St John University. It was based on
Frank Sutcliffe's photographs of the 'fisher folk' on the east coast
around the 1890s. It is a jacket and skirt, worn over a bright red
petticoat, with heavy boots and large shawl. It is a practical outfit of drab striped fabric, rather like a
soft cotton ticking. The jacket style is conservative, fitted with two darts each side and
boned. It has centre front opening with 12 self covered buttons, high neck with
a small simple folded stand collar and tapers to a v at the front and centre back
hems. The shoulder seams are set a little back from the top of the shoulder and the back has curving seams from the armhole to the hem. The sleeves are long, gathered onto unstiffened, buttoned cuffs. The
bodice is lined, except the sleeves, the boning inside the lining
under the lower buttons and darts, and mounted on top of the under
arm seam and lower centre back line. These have a narrow cotton
casing. The skirt is quite full, gathered onto a waistband with a
flat centre front section. It is made in three parts, with a centre back seam, open at the top and closed with a mother of pearl button on the waistband, and a side seam under the bust dart.
There are several images showing woman wearing similar skirts, some with
rows of pleating or deep frills around the hem, most with large
aprons, often large shawls, and in various states of repair. The
skirts seem to be relatively short, well clear of the ground showing
the stout leather boots, a far cry from the delicate Regency styles
I've been making recently (can't image these ladies being held up as
aspirational fashionistas in a ladies' periodical). From the look of
some in the photographs clothes were worn until worn out, remade and
worn again.(take a look at the photo of Polly/Fanny (ref 24-29 in the Sutcliffe gallery) and see the repaired and tattered state of her under layers)
I'm
using this as a practice exercise for working from an extant garment.
A page of notes, diagrams and images was first, looking for seams,
pattern shapes and construction details. These should have been done
to scale but ... but at least I did pay attention to proportion and
placement, spent longest on colour matching! I saw this as a 'getting
to know you' phase. The seam lines and darts were transferred onto
long suffering Gwendoline and then pattern pieces made to fit. Trying
to find a suitable fabric was not a happy morning, could
have made it in plenty of Halloween spiders or Christmas holly
sprigs but a simple stripe? Ticking seems to be endangered species,
so much is quilting or crafting cotton and I object to insanely
cavorting teddy bears in waistcoats. I did find one that was
suitable-ish, but it was a delightful lightweight wool herringbone at
£36 per yard – oops.
I
have used a compromise fabric from the stash – a blue cotton
pinstripe, a roll end of shirting, not beautiful, a lighter weight
and not as dense, but at least I'll be happy re-cutting pieces
if/when I go wrong.
The
pieces are cut and ready to assemble, and there it stopped –
streaming head cold has claimed another victim. I tried to continue
making but having put the dart seam allowance to the outside three
times in a row- quite a feat in itself – I am giving up until the
head clears and the eyeballs fit their sockets again.
I
hate colds.
I
really hate colds.
I
have tried to paint from Sutcliffe's photographs inbetween sneezes but with little
success. I like the concentration on the seated figure but the standing figure is one that I guess was used as inspiration for the costume, so I've altered some details to match the made skirt. A lot of the images show the women knitting, she is meant to be holding a skein of wool for the other to wind or work. Unfortunately in my version she seems to be having an out of body experience! I haven't found a late Victorian portrait genre that I
find inspirationally different from the earlier styles. That is this
afternoon's job, BBCpaintings and Wikipaintings be warned, as long as
I can stay awake.
Hopefully
by next week the self pity will have passed, the cold will be
vanquished. Doing 1890s clothing means that machine sewing is the way
to go, so this garment should be quicker than the previous ones apart from the fact that I'm trying to match inside and out. The
jacket should be in the process of finishing and the skirt blocked
out ready to work by the time I post again.
Many
happy sneezes of the day.....
No comments:
Post a Comment