I really do love the 50s from the dresses to the bonnets. Here is a straw bonnet from this weekend. It is already off to its new home. (I will have another later this week.)
Learn more about straw bonnets – Read From Field to Fashion
Who Is Wearing Anna’s Millinery
I’ve always wanted my own fill-in map. Now, I have one.
Someone in each green state is wearing a piece of my millinery. The darker green states are those with the most people wearing my bonnets.
I’ll be honest. I didn’t think I would have this many states filled in. It is more than half of them. It made me smile.
1845 Eye Candy
1845 Sample Book: Échantillons
And some more…
1863 French Textiles Sample Book
1700 Pattern Book of Silks and Damasks
Make sure you have some extra time. Then click. You’ll be happy you did.
PS – There are several more late century and 1900 sample books to browse as well.
Volunteers Please
You know how you procrastinate something, then have a brilliant idea at just the wrong time of year?
Well, I just had one of those moments.
I offered to talk with our Women’s History class about women’s work, both domestic and outside of the home. I do not want to do the same old boring presentation.
I want to give them a strong visual with a story.
This means I need photos of women working in the 19th century. Do you have a photo of yourself you would like to share?
I would love to include:
- washing dishes
- cooking
- laundry
- sewing
- farm work – with animals, with crops, etc
- seamstress
- shop clerk
- and more
I want to develop a little story to go with each image. For out of the house work, I will consult Virginia Penny’s Employments of Women for wage information and any other sources I can get my hands on for additional information. If you happen to know interesting facts I should share during your story, please let me know.
Thank you in advance!
Monday’s Reading List
There are a few post out in Web-land I recommend reading. (Hmmm, maybe I’ll do posts like this more often.)
A local friend shared Challenging Visitor and Challenging Visitor Expectations, over the weekend. The post is a very worthwhile read for anyone who interprets history to the public. Even if you don’t do first person presentation, the author’s points are useful. The same author wrote an article on First Person Verses Third Person.
Caroline’s Pocket – A fiction author shares her thoughts on pockets as one of her new characters forgets her’s. She has a nice photo of a patchwork pocket from the Green Collection.
With the horrible local sadness this weekend, I find this post,Take Notice of Moments of Love, particularly well timed and touching.
The Red Swap
I originally thought red was a good swap for February because of Valentines Day. As it turned out, with our cross country freeze, receiving the warmth of red in the mailbox was much needed.
Our red swap certainly shows the variety of reds we have to choose from.
We received a fun assortment of motifs from tiny to Lincoln. What perfect timing for Lincoln. There are a couple stripe motifs that just scream “I want to be a sewing case!” There are a couple I would like a dress length of, for me or for Mae.
I had wanted to share a couple Turkey Reds since I love the depth of their color so much. It seems they have fallen out of favor locally.
Next, we have our blue swap. Hopefully, by then we will all have the promise of blue spring skies overhead.
The Green/Greene Swap
After much delay, I bring you the Green/Greene Swap fabrics. Life got more than a bit crazy in January. The February came with the deep freeze, insane snow and multiple record breakings. I fell way behind on, well everything. Once we got close to the red swap, I figured I should just post these back to back. I fear in the delay, I have lost track of which fabrics were which in terms of Green or Greene. Luckily, I had stuck some of the fabrics inside the book.
Here we are, our Green fabrics:
And, our Greene Fabrics:
If I Had My Own Blue Box: 