at the stroke of Midnight

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Reynard the Fox, Drawing by Josef Wolf, Etching by Augustus H. Fox, 1853

"And he would tell his beads and seemed to pray. And smite his breast, and so pass on his way."

Working on an unfinished waistcoat from The Pile that I cut out at least a year ago, and I had intended to line the left front and do the buttonholes through all the layers, but I forgot so now I'll have to do the pieced lining. That's ok though, it's one I'll wear a lot, and it'll be nice to have a cleaner looking lining around the buttonholes.

These yellow silk breeches were technically my last project of 2022, but as soon as I finished them I realized I'd made the fall a couple centimetres too high and I needed to shorten it and redo the buttonholes on the corners.

It was an easy alteration that only took a few hours, so naturally I put it off for 6 months.

Oh right, I have some finished stuff I should be posting pictures of.

The last finished sewing project of 2024 was this blue silk waistcoat, which had sat unfinished on The Pile for about 3 years. It was mostly finished for quite a long time and I was reluctant to finish it because I was having trouble getting the shoulders to sit smoothly. (I ALWAYS have trouble getting the shoulders smooth on waistcoats with stand collars and it's very frustrating. It's the one thing I genuinely struggle with in fitting patterns, which I take to mean it's the fault of my shoulder shape vs. 18th century seam placement. Yes I have tried adding cotton wadding to fill out the collarbone hole, it only sort of helps. Next time I'll try adding more stiffening too, and maybe remaking my pattern again.)

But I finished it up, and the shoulders are indeed wrinkly, but they don't show under a coat and the rest is ok. The neck area also got stretched out from all the collar fussing, which puts the lapel facing seam much closer to the fold line than intended.

The silk is from Puresilks (they still have it, but it's much more expensive now than when I bought it) the back is a heavy linen twill from Pure Linen Envy (they don't seem to have it anymore, but they have other brown linens), and the front lining is a couple of glazed cotton scraps.

crossfire with @s-u-w-i

Journal des Dames et des Modes, Costume Parisien, 5 juillet 1810, (1071): Habit habillé. Chapeau à Plumet. Epée à poignée d'Acier. Collection of the Rijksmuseum, Netherlands

This is from the diary of William Brooks Northcutt, a 22-year-old distiller’s apprentice from Bourbon County, Kentucky, who signed up for a yearlong stint with Captain William Garrard’s company of mounted volunteers. The context is the return to Fort Greene Ville after the Battle of Mississinewa in December, 1812:

We left it on the 18th and got to the fort on the 24th of December, it being Christmas Eve. We had a hard time of it getting in for we had to build a Breast work Every night clear until we got to the fort, but when we got to the fort we had a Jubule for there we found a plenty to Eat and drink, and we had a merry Christmas of it.

We Encamped at one Edge of the fort without puting out a regular guard and had a real old fasheoned Christmas frolick.

— Quoted The War of 1812: Writings From America's Second War of Independence, ed. Donald R. Hickey.

It's evident from the next few sentences that Northcutt means a Thomas Rowlandson-style old fashioned Christmas.