Friday we went to Colonial Williamsburg for the grand opening of the Coffeehouse, which I'll blog about later.  One of our favorite parts of the day involved some unexpected news involving my son's Lafayette hat!

     Now that I had the French American Alliance cockade made, my son wanted to return to the store where the hat shaper formed his Lafayette hat to his precise specifications a few weeks ago.   As soon as we walked into the shop, the lady who shaped his hat welcomed my son by name! I was impressed that she not only remembered my son but also remembered his name.  I explained that we needed her help tucking the cockade behind the lacing like the CW Lafayette wears his.  The problem was that the lacing was too tight. Also we thought the lacing should go over the top of the brim. Additionally, my son wanted a button at the base of the lacing, like Lafayette. We discussed the possible options to make it happen.

     She said that the other day Lafayette himself walked into the store and she asked him if she could look at his hat. (This is getting contagious. There is another CW employee who has been analyzing the Lafayette costume because of all of our questions!) She explained to Lafayette about my son's visit to the shop a few week's ago to have the hat shaped exactly like his. When she told us that Lafayette knew exactly who she was talking about, we laughed.  I can only imagine how that conversation went. (Wherever we go in America, people know my son!)  

      The lady said that Lafayette's cockade didn't look anything like the one I had made. Instead his was black and more of a T shape. Hmmmm, I told her that he must not have been dressed as Lafayette then.  My son explained if he's not Lafayette, he's Mann Page.  She seemed a bit confused. I told her that I modeled the cockade after a picture I took during Prelude to Victory when he stood a few feet from me. Even though I have the picture on the computer and I can enlarge it, I cannot see the black on black.  I was not able to figure out the precise shape of the black backgound of the cockade, nor was I able to tell precisely how the lacing went. However, I thought I got a fair representation of the white part of the cockade, which is more circular shaped instead of T shaped.  She was thinking of threading a new set of lacing into the same holes in the front of the brim. I told her I thought that the lacing actually goes over the brim and ties somehow in the back.  During all this discourse, my husband pulled up some Prelude to Victory pictures of Lafayette in his camera. After enlarging one, he handed me the camera and I handed it to her. In fact, my husband found several pictures this way and we showed them to her. Ah...she saw what I was talking about. There was white in the cockade and it was circular shaped. She had not seen that particular cockade.

     Finally, she had a recommendation and showed it to my son.  He talked her into setting the lacing over the brim of the hat and they had a plan. After the lacing was redone to accomodate the button and cockade, she put some special pins into the cockade to hold it securely in place. She also gave him extras, in case they would be needed in the future.  The entire fee for this was quite small,  which my son paid for. He tried to tip her but she wouldn't take it. She was definitely worth far more than the tiny fee he paid for this service.  All he really paid for was the lacing. We already had the button.  We were profoundly grateful for all of her patience and help. She was wonderful to work with, listening to my son and being certain of his exact specifications.  She told my son to come back for future visits. Also she told him that they are going to start carrying these Lafayette hats in the store, because of him! How exciting! Leave it to my son to start something!

    Now I am about to start my son's Lafayette coat. The one he has is falling apart and not accurate.  I've agonized for weeks over how I am going to do the buff facings.  This afternoon my son and I analyzed pictures together while he tried to explain how the facings work. Finally I got it!  It is all one piece of wool.  I'll use felt since it's cheaper and washable.  The outside is blue and the inside is buff. Those millions of buttons actually have a purpose. The general can keep his coat in a buttoned yet opened position in summer. In winter he can button the entire coat closed.  How clever!  Now my son can be even warmer this winter. 

     We are planning to go to the Grand Illumination. I'm afraid I am going to be too cold. Last year it was in the 30's during this CW outdoor Christmas event in the evening.  The Grand Illumination showcases special fireworks, music and entertainment.  Some people have told me it could be 82 degrees. Hmmmm, yes, but there is no guarantee.  It's the possible 32 degrees that worries me. My son really wants to wear this Lafayette costume and I want him to stay warm. Therefore I am going to try my hardest to crank this out while getting our unit celebration put together. Hmmmm, Thanksgiving is around the corner too.  And my husband will want to put up the Christmas decorations, not that I know where any will go in this new house. And I am getting a new stove and refrigerator today.  Talk about a new learning curve for roasting a turkey.  Then after the unit celebration there are the lesson plans and studying for lessons. I'd best get to work figuring out this coat!   

     The trick will be two things. First I have to size down a man's small pattern for my son. Second I have to figure out the extensions for the button closure in front. The cuffs though are still confusing me.  I am going to do what the milliner and tailor have told me to do all along. I am going to use muslin (or scrap broadcloth from past costumes) to make a prototype, which I can cut down, pin and fit to my son's body, basically creating a custom pattern just for him.  Theoretically, at that point I can merely whip out the Lafayette coat on the sewing machine. I am excited now that my son helped me figure out some key elements! Stay tuned! 

     Oh, I also figured out the new flounce on my son's shirt is wrong. In the meantime it makes him happier since it works better than that cravat he was using to fill up the blank space due to the wrong kind of vest. Well I can only do one thing at a time.  I'd best get to work!

     In researching the Lafayette hat that my son would like to have, I stumbled upon the history of the French American Alliance Cockade, one of the distinctive features of the Lafayette hat. Traditionally the British had black cockades in their hats, which the American colonists wore too.  When America declared independence from England, they continued to wear the black cockade. The French on the other hand, wore a white cockade.  When Rochambeau arrived in America with his French army, he told them to take a bit of black fabric and sew it onto their white cockade to represent the alliance. When General Washington discovered this, he had his men take a bit of white fabric to sew onto their black cockades. (As far as I know, the web site linked above is historically accurate. However, I will ask about the veracity of this story when the opportunity presents itself.)

     The last time we were at Colonial Williamsburg, my son used his birthday money to purchase a Lafayette hat which is a differently shaped triangle from the traditional tricorn. In fact, the one store that had these hats were not perfectly shaped.  When he found out he could have one made, he took the hat shaper up on this opportunity. The lady was extremely nice and patient as my son told her exactly how he wanted it shaped. She started with a black wool hat with the brim flat.  She formed the sides exactly the way he wanted and strung the lacing exactly where she thought it would be best. He liked her recommendation on the lacing. Then she took it to the back to do something with it for about 30 minutes, at which time he was told to return to pick it up. 

     She also gave him further instructions on how to finish shaping it.  I had meant to take pictures of that process, which included spraying water on it and bending it some more in the appropriate places and situating it with weight to let it take shape. However, the day after he got the hat, I shopped for fabric for early 20th Century (Y4U1) Unit Celebration Costumes as well as fabric and patterns for his Lafayette costume upgrade (that will keep him warmer this winter). While I was gone he worked on the hat. By the time I got home, I found the hat on the stair railing with a little sign that said, "Ta da!"  It looked great!

     The next step was the French American Alliance cockade.  We looked through all the cockades for sale at CW, but none were for the alliance. We were trying to remember precisely what it looked like, so we looked on the front cover of our weekly schedule that had General Washington's picture.  Alas, it showed the side of his hat that does not have a cockade.  I decided to buy a black cockade to see how it was made and compare it to the pictures I had taken of Lafayette on previous visits to CW.

     When I was on my costume shopping trip, I bought black and white ribbon in three sizes. I wasn't sure exactly which combination I would need.  I bought a roll of each to have enough to experiment with.  The other night I settled down with the rolls of ribbon, needle and threads and analyzed pictures of the Lafayette hat. The one best photo I have clearly shows the white part of the cockade, but the black background blends into the black hat and can barely be seen.  Therefore I played with various combinations until I got the right look. 

     This afternoon I made the actual cockade. This was not as easy as it appeared.  (Nothing in this costume is as easy to make as it appears.)  The white part of the cockade is merely an accordian fold, which I quickly discovered is a bear to do with grosgrain ribbon which is a tad bit slippery. I made several today before finally settling on a final look.  

     In analyzing the photo of the CW Lafayette, we confirmed what we had thought. The cockade slips behind the lacing.  When I finished the cockade, I confidently grabbed my son's Lafayette hat to slip the French American Alliance Cockade behind the lacing, but it's impossible. It's too small a space and the lacing is too tight.  My son's plan is to take the button from the original cockade we had purchased and take it to the store where the hat was shaped. He would like to buy some more lacing and see if the hat shaping lady can sew new lacing onto the hat for the cockade to slip behind it. This is not easy to do because the hat has a solid brim.  She uses an awl to poke a hole for the lacing. In the meantime, we are using a corsage pin that came with the orignial cockade to secure the alliance cockade from behind through the lacing. Ta da!

     Tonight, I used the flounce of a historic shirt pattern I had purchased on my costume shopping trip. I added the flounce to the shirt my son already has.  This is a temporary fix until I make a new shirt for him. He is outgrowing the one he wears now.  It is funny that he even wanted this flounce. When I orignally purchased the shirt with the ruffled sleeves that he wears now, it was for his French Musketeer costume.  At the time, he did not appreciate the ruffled sleeves, despite my telling him it was not only historic but French.  Since then, he has come to realize that. Now he wants more ruffles so that he will be more historically accurate!  I must admit, his costume has seemed severely lacking without a flounce around the neck. He begged me to make a quick ruffle to add on to the neck of his shirt right before our last visit to CW. I told him it's not as easy as he thinks and I needed a pattern, because it is curley-cue shaped. He wasn't aware of that. Now that I have a pattern for a historic shirt with a flounce, I worked on that when everyone went to bed tonight (the only time I seem to find to sew).  I have everything hanging on the hanger, ready for the next time he wears it. I had a bit of trouble with the hem of the bias edge. Also, it still isn't right, because the vest isn't right. Well, I think the vest needs to wait.  I need to finish the unit celebration costumes, then make the Lafayette coat out of a heavier fabric to keep my son warm this winter.  Last weekend I sewed my son's Y4U1 costume and now I am having doubts over my ability to make another Lafayette coat correctly.  We'll see.  At least I think he will be thrilled to see the flounce on his shirt in the morning. That's what counts...right?

      When we were at the Colonial Williamsburg Costume Design Center Open House last week, my son asked for help with his cravat and that opened the door to the vast variety of colonial neckware.  The first piece of neckware we got to see was the black stock. The black stock is the narrow black piece with the slight curve in the center, in front of the hats and behind the gorgets and epaulettes.

     The black stock was worn by various members of the military, whether American, French or British.  Lafayette wore one with his American Continental officer uniform...

...we've met American General Nelson wearing one...

...the mayor of Williamsburg, whom I think was part of the militia...

..the enlisted men of the American Continental Army...

....oooh, even Benedict Arnold...

...and the fife and drum corps. By the way, even though they are wearing red, they are not British. The fife and drum corps wore the reverse colors of their army, to distinguish them as non-combatants. Both sides of the war needed them to serve to relay messages via tunes not only for their own army but also for the opposing army. 

      My son has been anxious for me to make a new costume, since he's had an increasingly difficult time getting into his original colonial boy costume. He's grown several inches since I first made it. He would like to portray the son of a gentry plantation owner.  Therefore he'd like another type of stock, a white one, which we had learned about at the CDC.  Since it's going to take me a few months to figure out and sew a gentry costume as historically accurate as possible, I thought I'd gain his patience by telling him I'd make a black stock to make his neckware more authentic, while wearing his Lafayette costume.  He got excited about that! Surely I can reproduce that look in a couple of hours.

     Last Saturday I sewed the black stock for my son.  I had no pattern to go by. Therefore making the black stock proved to be a great challenge than I had initially thought. My son wanted to design a template for me, himself. First we measured around his neck to find the length to make the template. After the first stock I made, we figured out we needed to make it larger by an inch or two. Somehow in the cutting and sewing, the proper sized template resulted in a stock that wouldn't reach all the way around his neck.  The second longer stock I sewed was a better fit until he put it on over his shirt collar. Ugh, he was choking! Back to the drawing board! Hint: Add several inches to the circumference of the neck!  I'm currently in the process of sewing the third attempt,  between doctor appointments and multiple drives to the base pharmacy miles away for my daughter's allergies, preparing lessons, and sewing window treatments!  Hopefully the third time will be the charm! 

 With the template I cut a piece of black felt, left over from making his colonial cape.  (I'll blog about that when I actually take pictures of the interpreters at CW wearing capes. Apparently they come in a variety of sizes and colors, but it's not been cold enough for them to wear them while we're there yet.)

Then I traced the template onto two layers of leftover pieces of matte silk  from the lining of his cape, with a white chalk pencil. Then I cut the satin out a little larger to allow for seam allowance.

I sewed the two pieces together, carefully sewing on the seam line around three adjacent sides. leaving the long side with the curve that dips down unsewn.

After I trimmed the seams and clipped the curves, I turned it right side out.  Uh oh.  The curve was barely there and the sides were not symmetrical.  I cut out two new pieces of silk.  Then I centered the precut felt on top of the satin and pinned it. I used flat pins to allow it to lie flat. Regular curved pins distorted the fabric. Then I slowly sewed around the edges.

Then I took the pins out. I trimmed the seams and clipped the curves.  Then I carefully turned it inside out, leaving the felt inside to replicate the stability and padding that we got to touch at the CDC. I carefully pressed the stock with a cool iron.  I turned the edges under on the remaining side, pinned it together, then handstitched tiny hidden stitches, though a couple peaked out anyway. It's a bit difficult to produce a smooth curve, since I am using silk. Although my son would have liked actual historic hardware, none is to be found. I made this stock a bit larger than his neck, to give him room to grow. I stuck black velcro on the ends.  

    I'm not sure how my son is going to set the stock against his shirt collar.  The shirt is wrong, because there is no ruffle in front. We will shop for a proper colonial shirt pattern in a few days.   Jo Ann will have a pattern sale and looks like I will need to buy two different patterns to combine elements for the proper look.

   By the end of the afternoon, my son tried on his Lafayette coat and realized the collar doesn't turn up like it does for the rest of the officers.  He asked if he could have a new Lafayette costume for the winter (which would have a felt coat) , then a gentry plantation son costume for the summer (which would not need a coat).  That is the new plan.  The Lafayette costume with a general's coat made of felt (to represent wool), would keep him much warmer than a gentry coat that would be made from a cotton blend.  Also the Lafayette costume uses the "boots" that my son made, which adds another layer of warmth for his legs.  Additionally, this would give me practice before I tackle the gentry coat I will eventually make for my husband. (Of all the costumes I've made for all of the historical eras, the colonial costume is the only one he has asked me to make for him. He wants an extremely nice costume like Alexander Purdie wears, so he is all for my figuring this out.) We found a colonial coat pattern that I can purchase at the pattern sale at Jo Ann later this week.  The colonial coat pattern looks to have facings, which will be a huge help in recreating the Lafayette coat.  (However now I realize I could have created my own facings by reusing the original pattern. Oh well.)

     Yesterday I got to wondering what my son will want for the epaulettes.  Last year when I made the Lafayette costume, he did not want epaulettes like Lafayette. Now I forget what I had patterned them after.  When I asked him, he sheepishly admitted he'd like a pair like Lafayette's this time.  What?!  I couldn't believe that.  The children started laughing at the expression on my face.  They asked if I was worried about what I'd tell Lafayette if he asks. I said I'll wait to see what he says and just try to follow his lead.  My son and I each took close ups of the epaulettes and I got to hold them, carefully inspecting them.  I forget a lot now. However I do remember a few key elements and think perhaps I can perhaps get a fair representation made.  It won't be perfect, so that in itself will be good, so people won't think he's Lafayette.  Of course his age makes some of the interpreters call him Lafayette, which he quickly assures them he is supporting the troops. He has great respect for Lafayette and will only portray him for school projects at home.  

In the meantime, I decided I'd like to try to make a shift for my daughter, which would help to make her dress look more realistic.  She was excited to hear that.  I only recently figured out where the ruffled look on the dresses came from. However I still haven't completely figured out how the shift works.  I've been referencing a  terrific book, Costume Close-Up: Clothing Construction and Pattern 1750-1790.  According to the write-up, this book is for the advanced seamstress to reproduce period garments with authenticity.  It was recommended to me by the CW milliner and tailor. Although this book is indeed excellent, and it does show a period shift, shirt and a white stock, there isn't enough information for me.  The shift and shirt in the book do not have ruffles and there was no sequence of sewing for the white stock. It's a challenge to figure all of this out. Obviously I do not have advanced sewing skills.  Nevertheless I am up to the challenge.  It's sort of like a puzzle. I enjoy deep thinking and puzzling things out. I'm determined to take this quest one project at a time.  Perhaps I'll pay a visit to the milliner but she seems to think I am perfectly capable of all this. Hmmmm, I'll be deeply thinking of the best way to phrase my queries.