#bed jacket

Bed Jacket

c. 1900

silk, lace

1930s crochet kimono jacket. Sport weight yarn and 3.25 mm. Mode by Rowan in Alpaca Haze. The original pattern called for laceweight but said to size up yarn to size up from the 34" bust. If you want to size up in another way, you need 8 + 1 stitches to add a new open/closed square space.

The Met Museum via Pinterest.

Bed Jacket

1888

United States

During a recent debacle, my basement flooded and many boxes and storage bins were saturated. My daughter helped me to haul the sodden boxes off the floor and we took out countless books, photos, clothes etc. For most of the soaked items all we could do was spread them out on towels and turn fans on them to dry. But I simply tossed the clothing into the washer. I wasn't sure if all of it was washable or not, but by this point it was too late to worry about these items were going to react with water.

To my surprise, almost everything emerged, a little wrinkled, but unharmed. When I pulled this bed jacket out of the dryer, I could hardly believe my eyes.

I believe that it is the bed jacket that Mother was wearing in this photograph that was taken of her as she held me, on my second day home from the hospital in September of 1946.

During the Second World War, while all of their husbands were deployed, Mother, one of my aunts and one of their friends had shared a house. While he had been in the service, the husband of the friend had been trained in photography and he decided to set up a studio when he returned to civilian life. When I was born, he schlepped some of his equipment upstairs in the house my family had recently bought to take pictures of Mother and her new baby. It’s a good thing that I can identify the wallpaper because my older brother and I looked so much alike as babies that in some baby pictures even Mother incorrectly identified us!