Caption This! 6/15 - 6/21

ami

First Lady of CivilWarTalk
Super Moderator
Joined
Apr 1, 1999
Location
West By God Virginia
Grace01.jpg


photo credit: @grace
 
I'm not going to caption this--it's too good a photo, not at all funny! I love the bonnet!

@grace, may I do a small critique? It's a pretty dress, but, if you want to be more historically correct, it needs a correction.

The one universal characteristic of mid-19th century dresses--and certainly the Civil War era--was the dropped armscye. Your dress has the armscye (seam where the sleeve is attached to the bodice) up on the shoulder like modern dresses, and this definitely didn't happen in the Civil War era. Often that seam was horizontal on the upper arm at the level of the armpit!

Here's are several articles on the shoulder seams and armscye seams of the era:
https://annaworden.com/category/resources/resources-reenacting-lh/page/4/

Another, by the same author, a well-respected expert on the 19th century, on The Anatomy of a Dress in the Civil War era--this might give you a better picture:
https://annaworden.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/anatomyofadress.pdf

Hopefully you have some material left (from the hem?) from your makeover to put some kind of frill at the shoulder to make it appear that the armscye seam is actually a bit farther down on your upper arm.

Also, it was usual to add a white collar and cuffs (which were just hand-basted on so that they could be easily removed for frequent laundering). It's a lot easier to wash, bleach, and iron small white items than to launder and iron a whole dress! As with chemise and drawers, you want one set of collar and cuffs for each day of your event. During the 1860s, the collar would have been very narrow, maybe 1 to 1 1/2 inches across.

Solid color cotton dresses didn't happen back then (the dyes of the time faded very unevenly), but you can always pretend your dress is part wool or part silk (wool/cotton, silk/cotton, and wool/silk blends were quite common at the time--another thing that has been lost over the years along with the lovely wool prints of that era). I love the color, though!

I hope this will help you and others trying to make, refurbish, or buy Civil War clothing!
 
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If you do not wish to enter a caption, that’s is fine. However the person in the photo entered the photo of herself knowing how caption this works.

Captions need not be hateful. But if you don’t want to participate you don’t need to tell the rest of us not to play.
 
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