Answers about Christmas Card

Mom says that the cards created more questions and needed elaborating. I will make an attempt at clarifying some of these. If you have other questions, feel free to email them to me, and I will do my best to answer. First of all, I did not make John, Zac, or Paker's coats, just their pants. I will be making a new red coat for John, when the wool arrives. 1812 falls right in they middle of the regency era. This is a time when king George was extremely ill, and his son Prince George was acting in his father's stead as the Regent. He took over the throne upon his father's death. Fashion was usually set by the French, and copied by the British (even though they were at war). During this time the trend for women was to go with much simpler lines, reminiscent of the ancient Greek statues.

Waist lines climbed to an extremely high level (higher than our modern empire waist line). During this time it was all about the natural shape of a woman, so the use of stays/corsets went out of fashion. It quickly became apparent that this only worked for small busted women. Those who were more endowed, continued to wear stays, but less restrictive. They were also shorter, as the goal was not to shape the waist, just lift things up.

A stay was worn over a shift, allowing you to have fewer stays. The shift was worn next to the skin, to absorb the excess moisture, and was much easier to wash than the stay.

In the camp Photos (state of undress), I must admit that the clothes that Kierstan and I are wearing, are not actually accurate. They are about 20 years out of date, but we did not know that at the time. We were told they were appropriate, but it is also a very relaxed group. Parker, on the other hand is correctly dressed. He is wearing the "undress" uniform of the Canadian Fencibles (including the hat). When they were not on the battle field, this is what they wore working around camp. A state of undress has nothing to do with being clothed, rather it is a reference to the type of clothes one is wearing. Their pants are called "fall-front pants". They pre-date the fly. The waist band over laps in the front, and then the flap is brought up aver top and buttoned. The hat that Brittany (Zac's Girlfriend) is wearing is called a mob/mop cap. It would be worn around the house as one was working to keep the dust, flour and all else out of her hair while working. John's Green coat is also out of date. It is the uniform of the King's Royal Regiment of New York, or the Yorkers. They fought in the revolutionary war back in 1776ish. We did not have all the patterns, or supplies, to get everyone appropriately dressed, so we made due. I sewed for Three weeks almost straight to get done what I did.


This Picture shows the results. There are 3 dresses, 3 shifts one pair of pants, one stay and 2 spencers (short jackets). I cut out 3 other dresses, one was for my friend Sue to sew up herself, I also made her a shift. The other two dresses are works in progress. They will be fancier gowns to be worn to the various balls that are held at many of our reenactment events. I am taking my time with the embellishments, but I will post them when they are finished. I hope this is helpful, and I will try harder this year to keep the blog going.