Tag: MERL

Pirate Shirt

Simplicity 4923

Today, rather than sewing something I actually need, like a dress for work or a winter coat, I decided to make a pirate shirt. As you do. (If you’re me.)

The pattern is Simplicity 4923, view C. I made a size Medium.
The fabric is just a plain black polycotton, and the cuffs are trimmed with flat broderie anglais lace – all from my stash. The collar size and length are just right, but the sleeves are absolutely ridiculous – even by 18th century standards. I could easily shorten them by four or five inches and they’d still be enormous!

Next time I think I’d like to make one in a nice soft white linen. I’ve found the perfect linen buttons too – just like the ones on the smocks at MERL. In fact, I might employ a technique I saw on a number of the MERL smocks, and make some horizontal tucks in the sleeves to shorten them.

I also want to have a look at The Cut of Men’s Clothes by Norah Waugh, and see what I want to do about the front fastening. I don’t really want to add eyelets and ribbon, so I might go for thread loops and little buttons. I should have done that on the sleeves, but for the sake of convenience (and maybe a touch of laziness) I went for snap fasteners instead.

There’s another goth night in a couple of weeks, so I plan to wear this with Paul’s old leather trousers. If I have time, I might make a waistcoat to go over the top. I’ve still got a piece of black and silver brocade that should be just about big enough.

Smocking workshop this weekend

Just a quick reminder that this weekend is my smocking workshop at the Museum of English Rural Life.

Today is the very last day that you can sign up – in fact you’ve got about an hour and a half left if you want to secure a place!

The course runs from 2:15-4:15 on both Saturday and Sunday, and you need to be able to attend both sessions. It costs £35, and you’ll be provided with all of the materials you need to make a smocked bag.

All abilities are welcome! Even if you’ve never sewn a stitch in your life, this is a simple project that you should be able to manage over the weekend. If you’re an experienced needleworker, then you can used more advanced techniques to produce an intricate design.

To book your place you can call 0118 378 8660, send an email to merlevents@reading.ac.uk, or fill in the online booking form.

Smocking, Traditional and Modern.

Smocking, traditional and modern

This is a sneaky peek at what you’ll be making if you come along to my Smocking Workshop at the Museum of English Rural Life. (It’s on September 19 & 20, and there are still places left! Book here…)

As you can see, we’ll be working the smocking stitches on gingham. For beginners it’s the easiest way to keep everything neat and lined up.

The top panel shows a variety of traditional smocking stitches – like the ones found on the smocks in the Museum’s collection.

The lower panel is made up of more modern smocking stitches that you tend to find on clothing from the 1930s onwards.

I find it interesting that the traditional stitches keep the gathering in very neat little columns all the way down, whereas the modern stitches are almost all designed to form a diamond pattern. The modern stitches are much more stretchy, but they take quite a bit longer to work.

In reality, although smocking looks very elaborate, you only need to know how to do one embroidery stitch, and you can turn it into all of these. If you can get the hang of back stitch, you can be smocking away in no time!

Busy as a bee…

Bee

I’m sorry I haven’t been posting about anything other than work lately, but that’s because I haven’t really been doing anything other than work!

I have finally managed to buy a new bike, so today Paul and I cycled all the way to (guess where…) work, so that I could time the journey. The theory is that I’ll cycle to the Museum and back starting from next week, but I’m not entirely certain that my knees will agree with that decision. I’ll have to see how it goes.

It was an absolutely beautiful afternoon, so we mooched about in the Museum garden with the cameras.

Paul took the macro lens (how does he always manage to hijack the lens that I want to use?!), so I took photos of things from a long way away with the 300mm. I have some lovely ones of the chimneys on the East Thorpe building, but seeing as I’m so short of things to blog about, I’ll save those for another time.

Grow your own!

Toy Food

Contrary to the label on the box, this is in fact Real Food, from the MERL vegetable patch!

The Museum of English Rural Life has a huge garden, about an acre, and there are currently two vegetable plots. One is planted in a wartime style, and the other is modern. Both of them are yielding lots and lots of vegetables, thanks to the hard work of the staff and volunteers.

At the moment there’s also a Grow Your Own! exhibition, which runs until September 1st. The exhibition explores how gardening and vegetable growing have become embedded in English culture.

For the children (and young at heart!) there’s a Gnome Trail to follow. There are seventeen garden gnomes dotted around the Museum and in the garden, and some of them are pretty well hidden.

Something I hadn’t anticipated when I started working at the Museum was the necessity of learning the phrase “Garden Gnome” in other languages. In French, they’re Nains de Jardins, and in German, Gartenzwerg.

According to folklore, garden gnomes come alive at night and help out in the garden. If that’s true, they’ve been doing an excellent job!

Still working on the smocks

MERL smocks

This is a sneaky peek at one of the object storage cases at the Museum of English Rural Life. Frances and I took out every single smock, photographed and measured it, and took lots and lots of notes.

Now the task is to type up all of those notes, which is one of the reasons I haven’t been blogging much lately. I haven’t been doing much sewing or knitting because I’ve been hanging out at the museum, typing. Apparently there is no limit to the number of times you can type the word “smock” in a single paragraph.

I’m about half way through now, so the end is (sort of) in sight, and there are plans afoot for possible new displays in the future.

I do have some close-up pictures of a couple of the really fine and delicate smocks that we looked at, so I’ll post those for you very soon.

Starting on the smock

Smocking

Yesterday I spent a pleasant hour in the Reading Room at the Museum of English Rural Life, having a look at a couple of books about smocking that had been put to one side for me.

The books were Smocking: A Practical Beginner’s Guide, by Audrey Vincente Dean, and Smocking: Traditional and Modern Approaches by Oenone Cave and Jean Hodges. Both of them were really useful, and I’m currently on the lookout for second hand copies that I can keep open while I’m sewing.

As you can see, I’ve made a start on the prototype child’s dressing-up smock. It’s taken me all day to reach this point – I spent most of the morning cutting out the back, front and sleeves, and completing all the gathering. In the background of the picture you can just see the smocking dot transfers that help you to space the gathers very neatly.

My next mission is to try and find out whether honeycomb smocking is a traditional stitch used in the eighteenth century, or whether it’s too modern for me to use on this particular smock.

I’m going to be volunteering at the Museum on Monday, looking through their smock collection, so I guess I’ll be able to find out!

Coveting clogs.

Ever since my visit to the Museum of English Rural Life, I can’t stop thinking about clogs.

The pair above (which I believe are the same ones that you can try on in the museum) are an eight-eyelet farmer’s style clog made by Walkley Clogs. I’ve been coveting a pair of these for years and years, although I’d probably cheat and go for the padded derby style instead.

Back in 2001 I had a stall (selling waistcoats and jewellery) at a clog dancing festival. I took just enough money on the stall to buy myself a pair of clogs. They were a gibson style, black at the quarter, but with a fabulous crackle printed black and purple vamp. I was told that they were made with offcuts of Dr Martens leather, hence the unusual pattern.

I sold the clogs to a dancer a few years ago, after I was told that I shouldn’t be wearing any type of footwear without an orthotic inside, and my insoles wouldn’t fit into the clogs. I also worked as a Library Assistant at the time, so I didn’t get to wear them very much. Despite the full rubber soles, they were still a bit noisy for the library!

I’ve found out since that these were the one pair of shoes that I could have safely worn without the orthotics, and I very much regret getting rid of them. It seems unlikely that I might find another pair in such an unusual style.

I’m quite tempted to buy a new pair of Swedish clogs to wear in the summer – and to remind me of my student days. I thought that I’d end up with a plain black pair, and then I found these! Now I can’t decide between flowers, spots, dinosaurs or skulls – or perhaps I should go for the plain black ones, and then paint them. Decisions, decisions…

Museum of English Rural Life

Smocking

On Sunday afternoon I persuaded Paul to wander round the Museum of English Rural Life.
I hadn’t been since it moved location (in 2005!), and it’s in a much bigger space now. It’s a slightly strange museum – laid out more like a store room than an exhibit, with things shoved up corners and hanging from the ceiling – but it’s an amazing collection, and there’s a wealth of information to go with it.

The highlight of my trip was getting to play dress-up with the reproduction linen smocks. They didn’t have a pair of farmer’s clogs in my size, otherwise I’d have been wearing those as well!

(I used to wear slip-on clogs all the time when I was a student. My friends kindly referred to them as “those sawn-off wellies”. Charming.)

The highlight of the trip was tagging on to the tail end of a guided tour, and being allowed upstairs into the archives – and they have MASSES of textiles! Lace fans, embroidery samplers, tatting, and LOADS of clothing.

I’ve taken a large number of photos of the reproduction smocked coat and tunic, although I was so over-excited that I completely forgot to take pictures of the inside. These garments would have been made entirely by hand, so I’d like to have a look at how the seams were finished.

I can’t help wondering whether there’s been an extensive study made of all the garments hidden away in the archives. With the exceptions of craft books and sampler patterns, I can’t find anything that’s been published on the subject in more than twenty years. (A study was done in 2001, but it’s out of print.)

The next time I go over to the University library, I might have to browse around the clothing and folklore sections, and see what I can find out. This smock collection is crying out “PhD” to me. I wonder…