The garden is doing very well this year.  There are still some gaps that need filling, but it’s really taking shape. Winter garden pics: Spring overview: Pics from the front yard: birch trees, crocuses, woodruff & anemones Raspberry bushes, herb bed (was pumpkins last year), currants, New Dawn rose: The birds love it — we’re going to have to get nets for the berry bushes, next year. Molly is quite literally chewing the shrubbery:

I’ve seen a couple of posts / guidelines / mentions lately asking whether stripes and prints are ok for camp follower impressions because “they would have been more expensive.” Ok, let’s break that down a bit. Stripes are not high fashion. They show up frequently in working class clothing. From a textile production point of view, stripes and checks are easy and cheap. All you need is two different colors of weft (and in linsey-woolsey, it’s usually the weft that’s wool). You could even argue that it’s a way of stretching your dye material because you’re not dyeing all the thread, just what’s needed for the stripes. It’s actually easier…

This site is primarily dedicated to 17th and 18th century costume in Europe and Britain’s North American colonies. On the Research page you’ll find links to pages on existing items of clothing, an article on 17th and 18th Century Scottish Costume, a pictoral timeline of women’s stays, a timeline of women’s jackets, and various other stuff I’m working on. On the Patterns page you’ll find period knitting patterns, instructions for making a shift fitted to your dimensions, directions for fitting and sewing 18th c. stays, and links to other patterns online. Buy Whatever Shall I Wear: a Guide to Assembling a Woman’s Basic 18th Century Wardrobe About the Author Citing…

  May 12, 2004 — Ok, first things first: this is not a 100% accurate 18th century garden. It is a garden made more or less in the 18th century fashion. I’m not sticking strictly to period plant varieties. For instance, the roses along the back fence are “New Dawn“, a climbing variety that I like very much. The apple trees are “Sops of Wine” (which dates from the 13th or 14th century) and “Stayman Winesap” (which dates to the 19th century), and the grape varieties are modern red seedless grapes, because that’s what I want to eat. The garden does, however, combine herbs and flowers, rather than segregating them…