If I Had My Own Blue Box:

Today, I offer a bonnet with a brim edged in hand shaped VVVVs, finished with antique straw threads. The bonnet is a classically fashionable early Civil War era shape. The deep VVVVs were inspired by an original bonnet in the MET collection.

Look for this bonnet in my Etsy shop.

For I don’t really know how long I’ve been playing with the idea of making my own decorative straw. As you’ve seen, I started shaping straw plait into decorative designs for the edges of bonnets and hats.

A few weeks back, I ordered straw splitters, straw and straw threads. They arrived but I didn’t let myself play with them, trying to focus on a few millinery pieces. Tonight, I finally made my very first leaves:

While they are not perfect, I am pretty happy with them. I think they are rather cute. (I also tried to make a flower with the antique threads. That didn’t go so well. I will need to learn a lot more about flowers.)

What will I do with these? Put them on hats and bonnets of course. (I may also try some ornaments for Christmas. But, those will go up on my other blog.)

***Incomplete Thoughts Post – See Here***

Years ago I became fascinated with the notes Vicki Betts assembled on Red, White and Red. This was very early in my learning research. I was so excited to see so much information in one place, and have it be easy to read. Years later, I still find her research just as wonderful. (If you haven’t spent days and days looking at it, your really should.)

This year, being the year a great many Civil War era reenactors interpret the year 1861 coinciding with me doing as much millinery as I have been is going to give me the opportunity to do a millinery piece (or two) reflecting northern or southern patriotism.

In reading original literature, periodicals, journals, etc., there are two clusters of patriotic apparel and accessories – Those surrounding elections and those surrounding the beginning of the Civil War.

Ah, the elections. I do wish we would interpret the 1840s and 1850s more, as they are filled with so many fascinating events. I also think it would be nice to interpret one of the elections. In the years of presidential elections, the ladies magazines are filled with patriotic themed projects decked out in red, white and blue – slippers, quilts, pillows, etc. Period accounts are filled with descriptive scenes of villages draped in the national colors and women’s bonnets adorned with ribbons of the same. This account of a country election is a short example.

As the Civil War dawned, or possibly pre-dawn, northern millinery reflected patriotic sentiments. Several publications, including Appleton’s Annual Cyclopaedia and Register of Important Events, recount women wearing ribbons of red, white and blue on their bonnets in New York City following the events at Fort Sumter.“On all coats were pinned the red, white and blue cockade, and in every lady’s bonnet ribbons of the same colors were tastefully displayed”

For an understanding of southern patriotism and secession bonnets, please see Vicki Bett’s research (two transcriptions below) and Kathy Kelly Hunt’s article (may require a FB account.)

CHARLESTON MERCURY, March 20, 1862, 1, c. 3
The ladies of Baltimore, notwithstanding Lincoln’s proclamation, appear daily on the streets, in secession colors, to wit “red, white and red.” Bonnets are so constantly trimmed with a red, a white, and again, a red rose, that even the manufacturers have been prohibited from making these rebellious flowers, in order “to support the Government.” Yet, the ladies, who are equal to every emergency, were not to be out-done in this matter. The insulting Yankee soldiers, on several occasions, spoke to the traitorous demoiselles, and even went so far as to tear the trimmings from their bonnets.

According to the

“the streets of Charleston were filled with excited people hazzaing for a Southern Confederacy, and several women made a public display of their so-called patriotism, by appearing on the crowded side-walks with “succession bonnets,” the invention of a Northern milliner in Charleston. Small Palmetto flags, with a lone star on each, fluttered with white handkerchiefs out of many a window…” ( Pictorial History of the Civil War in the United States of America Lossing, 1866)

Here is a short passage on Palmetto Cockades to give you an idea of how these were used to trim Southern bonnets showing their patriotism.

***Incomplete Thoughts Post – See Here***

Why? why? why? …. Do I have to love a topic that has oodles and oodles of research and articles written about the happenings in England, but is all but swept aside in the United States.

Yes, please, read this as a full on pout.

There are so many nifty and info packed articles chewing on the cottage industries, straw plaiting included in England…. …. The Female Labour  Market in English Agriculture During the Industrial Revolution: Expansion or Contradiction…. Proto-Industrialization? Cottage Industry, Social Change, and Industrial Revolution….. and, who can’t love a title like: How Saucy did it Make the Poor? The StrawPlait and Hat Trades, Illegitimate Fertility and the Family in Nineteenth-Century Hertfordshire

***Incomplete Thoughts Post – See Here***

If you catch my comments on various FB group threads, you will know I have a bit of an obsession with a series of letters in Moore’s Rural New Yorker discussing women’s in-house working attire and related rural articles or columns. Even though the focus of my impressions currently are that of a women business owner, this has captivated my attention. I may be able to use it in my reworking of a straw sewing impression, I also may not. Let’s face it, domestic cleaning work is not my strong point in any century.

We know that (some) mill workers kept shorter skirts.

We know (some) fisher women kept shorter skirts.

We know (some) washer women kept shorter skirts.

Women employed as maids and house keepers, who were photographed in the occupation, show shorter skirts. Here is a house keeper from 1864. Not only is her skirt shorter, those may actually be pants underneath.

What about women working in their own homes? Why do we interpret these activities with full length or just above the foot length skirts? What skirt lengths did the women of the latter 1850s and early 1860s actually wear when they laboured about the house? What skirt supports did they use? What techniques did they use for safety?

The letters/discussion in the Rural NYer make me think it wasn’t cut and dry, that there was quite a bit of variation in what women did and why.

How many times a day do we go up stairs and down cellar, each time carrying half of what we otherwise could if we had not to carry our dress in one hand; and even then one will step on the dress sometimes, and then the ugly rent must be mended. It may do for those who have nothing else to do to have the care and carry their swaddling clothes or hire others to do it, but for us, – the working bees of this world – away with it; it is nothing but slavery to fashion as ancient as the Heather Mythology, of more ancient still for what I know. (Moore’s Rural New Yorker, April 30, 1864.)

Now, just take some of those long dresses that have become faded at the bottom and in front, take out the front breadths, leaving about five, tear off the bottom leaving the skirt long enough to come half way from the knees to ankle joints, use the parts taken out for pants, prepare skirts to suit the length of the dress, running “shurs” in one for three or four hoops from the discarded skeleton, and with good thick-soled shoes or bootees you are well, becomingly dressed for any and all kinds of work that may fall to your lot. (Moore’s Rural New Yorker, April 23, 1864.)

I do not advocate short dresses anywhere but at home, at work. At church and on the street, I think long dresses much more becoming, and wear them myself. Short ones are only for work; have you any objections to them there? If you have, I would suggest that you put on long skirts, and wear them for one week, wash, mop, milk, work in the garden, and if necessary help plant corn. If you don’t lay them aside at the end of the week and say ladies, wear short dresses to work in by all means, you have more patience than falls tot helot of most mortals. Stellie. Prarie Home, Mich,. 1864. (Moore’s Rural New Yorker, August 6, 1864.)

Here in William Hemsley’s Baking Day, we see sacque bodice combined with a likely wool skirt. The skirt appears to be higher than the top of her foot as she does bend forward to work the bread. Her sleeves are rolled up.

This card image shows the skirt pulled up and back. The petticoat, not white, is likely mid-calf. Again, this woman is bending forward. Her sleeves are turned up.

I am making my lists of what to bring for my millinery impression at the GCV Civil War event weekend this year. Is there anything you wish I would bring? Any questions you would like me to cover?

**Remember: I will be in a different building this year. Find me on the Village Square, next to Ward Hovey in the Law Office.**

I am planning what materials I will take for my straw millinery demonstration at the GCV War of 1812/Jane Austen event. I want to bring a few different straw shapes for visitors to see. Are there any “you really should have” or “oh, I wish I could find” straw shapes that come to mind?

Tonight I offer two fancy plait straw bonnets and a youth size fashionable straw hat.

Loopy Straw Plait Bonnet

Wavy Plait Open Brim Bonnet

Youth Fashionable Straw Hat