Mourning Garb and Stitch length. (Two very different questions..)

[MissElizabethBrandt]

I would like to have several persona's once I start re enacting (I haven't finished the underpinnings yet so it is a ways off!) and one of those would be a young widow, married in a "war wedding" who has just lost her husband, quite soon after marriage. I am young (19) and think this would make for an interesting person.

Would it be appropriate to simply make a cotton dress, and dye it? I remember my grandpa telling me about the black stains on the floor from the giant tubs of dye from the households clothes after his father died. I guess they just threw every item the family owned into the tub and let it dye. Granted this happened quite a bit later (I would imagine 1911 or so..) but it seems like a good method, and one that would possibly have been used.

So, in short, what I am saying, is that instead of buying black fabric, I would just purchase a print, and throw it in there once the dress was made. Go the traditional method (if this is it)

What other things would a Young widow have, and what were the mourning customs. I think the war made widows of many young ladies, but I have yet to see one of them being re-enacted.

Also, were underpinnings also black? Or just dresses and bonnets. Where in the world can I get some hair jewlery? I hear that was worn by mourners.

How would the comunity have reacted and moved around her? What was she allowed to do? what wasn't she? Can anyone provide links or resources for this?

My second question: I would like to machine sew most of my clothes for the sake of time and energy, but would like an acurate stitch length. How many stitches per inches? I just finished my first set of underpinnings, using the smallest stitch available on my machine, and I would say that is a good twenty two per inch, which I think is too many. I am starting a second tonight, and would like it more accurate than the first (eg: my best possible effort)

Thank you,
Miss Elizabeth Brandt

[TennViv]

Re: Mourning Garb and Stitch length. (Two very different questions..)

Elizabeth,

I can't answer the question on mourning, but as to the sewing machine . . .
I stitch on about a 1 1/2 on my New Home machine. That comes out to around
16 to 18 stitches per inch which is comparable to period machines.

[Emmanuel Dabney]

Re: Mourning Garb and Stitch length. (Two very different questions..)

Dear Ms. Brandt,

There are numerous Southern women who complain about their inability to mourn properly for lost loved ones whether they be on the field of battle or at home. Karin Timour (I believe; she will correct me if I am incorrect), overdyed a dark dress black and the print still slightly shows through.

Nevertheless, cotton was not a mourning fabric. This topic at various times has been covered on different forums and maybe in the old forum that all posts were lost a few months ago. Nevertheless, black dyes were not as stable as they are in the 21st century. No undergarments were made in black fabric and I personally have yet to view any cotton clothing for mourning; not saying "NEVER" but it's not common. The common mourning fabrics were wools and flat (no shimmery/shiny) silks. Examples of these fabrics are bombazine, grenadine, and Henrietta being three popular fabrics. Crape was used for collars, cuffs, veils, subtle decoration on dress/bonnet. Overall, the period of mourning was nothing pretty and frilly. Jewelry could be worn and this included but is not limited to gold, hair, jet, rubber, and image(s) of the lost ones; or in the right form of jewelry several of these items may make up one piece.

The following is meant to no offense to you, however, the problem in recreating mourning is a lot of times people do it at events which many members of this forum do not attend. For example, why are there mourning women at the next Gettysburg reenactment watching the battle and chatting with friends? Doesn't make sense and follows no etiquette of the mid-19th century. Certianly, etiquette manuals were not the laws of the land; but a lot of what they place in there both the positive and negative are actually occuring on a large scale.

The best settings for mourning are historic homes where you can be in the moment instead of being in a tent for example. Several of us, including myself, recreated the Hull family of McDowell, Virginia at the McDowell 2003 event, which was a household of mourning in May 1862. The house was in the deepest of mourning to the best of our abilities. The G.W. Hull house needed restoration and is undergoing that now but we had to tune out some things (like shag carpet and wood panelled walls) but with the great work of Kathryn Coombs we were able to get a fair amount of period furniture in the house, including mirrors which we covered with black fabric. Abigail Walker, who portrayed Mrs. Sarah Hull, purchased some lightweight black wool broadcloth (it wasn't cheap) for her dress. Had a black bonnet made and found enough true crape to make into a veil, collar, cuffs, and gave me some for a hat band. Kathryn Coombs portrayed Mrs. Eliza Hull, Sarah Hull's sister. Both Felix (Eliza's husband) and George W. Hull (Sarah's husband) died about 6 months apart and the latter only a few days before Union troops occupied McDowell. Kathryn chose a black wool dress and a flat silk slat bonnet.

I think before you continue with this impression you may wish to do some more research on where you will be from:

North or South, East Coast, West, or the Pacific Coast? Affected by the blockade or not? Who are you mourning? How long is it recommended you mourn for? Remarrying and widowhood? Rich, middle class, or poor? Mourning to the degree as recommended by etiquette books wasn't cheap and it's less cheap now with the amount of fabrics being more limited now than then.

A really good book on this subject: Women in Mourning which was a catalog of the Museum of the Confederacy. Essay by Patricia R. Loughridge and Edward D.C. Campbell, Jr. Only 31 pages but has good information for an overview of the subject.

[MissElizabethBrandt]

Re: Mourning Garb and Stitch length. (Two very different questions..)

Thank you for your lengthy response! That really helped me out a great deal.

Of course I will be researching before I go ahead and put myself into mourning. (I have yet to put together an entire outfit, as I am just starting out, but I want to get it right from the start..)

I think an event may come up, sometime in my life, that would allow me to dress in morning, and keep the decorum and practices of such, and it would be interesting.

I will be looking in my library for books.

[KarinTimour]

Re: Mourning Garb and Stitch length. (Two very different questions..)

Dear Emmanel and Elizabeth:

Em, what a memory for textiles you have! Robin Stokes made me a mourning dress, and because my impression is lower class, lower middle at best, we made it from silk that we dyed before sewing. Many period accounts talked about the original pattern showing through even after lots of dyeing attempts and that was certainly true in this case. The silk was originally a deep turquoise with a swirl in the pattern printed on the dress. After mucho dyeing with black, the swirl was now a sort of purple/brown, and the dress was a rusty black, though certainly with some patches that were lighter (you could see more of the pattern). The dress itself is clearly black and clearly silk. Even lower middle class women might have a "best" dress that was black silk, though it might not have been purchased new or made for you -- perhaps it was a secondhand dress when you bought it, but by virtue of being silk it was "your best dress."

I'd like to also echo Emmanuel's points about behavior if you're portraying a widow. Someone doing an upper class morning impression of deep mourning (with veil, non-shiny black wool or bombazine dress, no jewelry, etc.) would have been "retired from society" -- in other words, staying inside, not really receiving guests, only going out for church on Sunday morning or to visit the grave of the Dearly Departed, not talking to anyone, certainly not smiling. This would be more fun to portray if you have at least a parlor in a historic home to sit in, rather than going to an event and spending the whole weekend sitting closed in your tent except for Sunday church service. One of my pet peeves is the "Merry Widows" one sees from time to time -- veil, dark dress, often beautifully detailed outfit and correct mourning jewelry or jet earrings. But they are out and about, chatting, talking, laughing, flirting. I know this is one of my personal "stumps" but if someone is going to go to all the trouble to put together this impression, show the respect due these women and portray the behavior as well as the clothing.

Lower class women, without the servants and the money to keep things running, couldn't "retire from society" in the same way -- meals need to get on the table, livestock has to be fed, work has to get done. Again, if you're lower class, you won't have the money for a veil, mourning jewelry, new dress, etc. You might well have a second-hand black dress or a second hand silk you could dye. Again, you got it used, but because it is silk, it's "your best dress." Again, you're probably wearing that dress to the funeral itself, church and perhaps to go visit the grave in the evening. For the normal day to day work, you're probably throwing on your normal clothes, though you might be more likely to have one or two black accessories (shawl, slatt bonnet) that substitute for your colored things.

I've never seen or heard of any documentation for underwear being black -- underwear is white so that you can boil it and easily clean it. IF you have a black dress, you could also have a black collar, BUT I've never, ever seen any documentation of a black collar worn with a dress of any color besides black.

Handkerchiefs, personal stationary and personal calling cards could all have black borders. The more recent the death, the wider the black border on all three of these. Even a lower middle class woman would likely have a black bordered handkerchief. Gloves for an upper class woman would be black until she was in at least half-mourning. Does anyone know if middle and lower class women would also have had black gloves? Depending on how lower class you are, you might not have the money for gloves, period. Stockings could be black or white, no matter what class you were, again, if you had the money to wear stockings.

Hope that's helpful,
Karin Timour
Period Knitting -- Socks, Camp Hats, Balaclavas
Atlantic Guard Soldiers' Aid Society
Email: Ktimour@aol.com





I agree with Emmanuel, anyone attempting a mourning impression should think about a few things -- what is your class? Upper class women were more likely to withdraw utterly from society. They had the servants and money to keep the household running. Lower class women didn't have this luxury, so they are still going to have to go out, do chores, etc. If you are upper class, in deepest mourning (veil, crepe, etc.) you would spend most of the event at home, sitting in the parlor, withdrawn from society. As Em points out, this would be more fun to portray if you have a house to sit in the parlor, as opposed to going to the event to sit closed inside your tent for most of a weekend. If you are not as high an impression, would you have the money and the opportunity to have a dress for mou

[Drygoods]

Re: Mourning Garb and Stitch length. (Two very different questions..)

For just about everything you want to know about mourning......
Mourning Art and Jewelry, published April 2004 by Shiffer Books, author is Maureen Delorme, and the cost is about $60. It has over 500 images of authentic items and hundreds of pages of text. It tells about every aspect of daily life and rituals related to mourning, complete with chapters about clothing and home decor. Books II and III will probably be coming out in 2006.

Mfr,
Judith Peebles

[ElizabethClark]

You might look at getting the Mourning Jewelry book above through Inter-Library Loan--great way to research without spending for the book!

One thing I'd encourage you to do is to investigate everyday life for your area as a base "persona." If you have a wide knowledge base of the mid-century and your "formative years" in the past, you can learn specific things for specific events, and be a very adaptable living history participant.

It's rare to be able to make one or two or even three "set" personas work in every situation, but if you have a good base of information on life for a few different sorts of people, it becomes easier to do event-specific research as needed, and adapt those bases into numerous "personas."

If you stick with good basics in your wardrobe to start, you'll find you can add accessories or the occaisional dress, and be very adaptable to different scenarios.

Underpinnings were not made black for mourning; white continues to be the most prevalent color for all undergarments.

Machine sewing is perfectly valid--set it to 10-16 stitches per inch, and it works well. (This setting is different on different machines, of course). 22/inch may be a bit of overkill--and will damage the fabric should you need to alter or remake a garment.

Read, read, read--check out the biography and history sections of the library, and make friends with the local reference librarian. :)

[Spinster]

Re: Mourning Garb and Stitch length. (Two very different questions..)

Would it be appropriate to simply make a cotton dress, and dye it? I remember my grandpa telling me about the black stains on the floor from the giant tubs of dye from the households clothes after his father died. I guess they just threw every item the family owned into the tub and let it dye. Granted this happened quite a bit later (I would imagine 1911 or so..) but it seems like a good method, and one that would possibly have been used.

In addition to echoing the various research by the writers above, concerning proper mourning and the various inadequate/overrepresented impressions of it , I'd like to add a bit about dyes and cotton. Utilizing the newspaper accounts compiled by Vicki Betts on wartime substitute dyes, we've done a good bit of experimentation, especially with black dyes.

Cotton is much more difficult to dye than silk or wool, and is rivaled only by linen in the preparation and amount of dyestuffs required to get appropriate color. While the modern dyes available by 1911 may have produced satisfactory results, chemical dyes were just becoming available at the begining of the war and did not always produce good results.

Early in the war, imported black dyes such as logwood were in short supply in many areas. Wartime substitutes such as walnut (which required massive amounts of dyestuff and mordent to produce black) produce poor color results on cotton.

It would not be a savings in money or time for a poor woman to overdye a cotton dress--two or three silk or wool items could be dyed with the same amount of mordent and dyestuff, with a lot less preparation time.

[mtvernon]

Re: Mourning Garb and Stitch length. (Two very different questions..)

...found enough true crape to make into a veil, collar, cuffs, and gave me some for a hat band. .

In anticipation of the Lincoln Funeral event in Springfield, I've been looking high and low to see about purchasing material to make my own mourning band after those worn by Grant and Sherman. Looking at the calendar and at the dead ends that lie behind me, I avail myself to you.

The term I keep running into as far as material is Crape Anglais, which as far as I know is unavailable these days. What's the consensus on a suitable replacement material and source? In the photos, Grant's is less apparent, but with Sherman the material almost looks like black gauze.

[crabby]

Re: Mourning Garb and Stitch length. (Two very different questions..)

Mr. Marti,
True crape is very hard to find these days. As a substitute, fine gauze could be dyed black. But I am thinking
a very fine gauze, not the loosely woven kind that looks more like cheesecloth. Another option for a mourning
armband is a dull black silk or even a lightweight wool.

Sincerely,

[mtvernon]

Re: Mourning Garb and Stitch length. (Two very different questions..)

Mr. Marti,
True crape is very hard to find these days.

Thank you Mrs. Crabb - after much searching I tend to agree. I did find something last week, black silk crinkle crepe, and ordered a yard. It seems like this is as close as I can get and it looks pretty similar (as far as that goes) to the same gauzy material in Sherman's photo.

Many thanks for your reply.

Respectfully,