Did you know…that each year the unit offers a 50% scholarship to attend a conference of the Civil War? I was lucky to be the first recipient of this benefit simply by participating in 5 unit events in 2018 and agreeing to share some of my findings with you all.

Historic church where many of the conferences and workshops were held

Last weekend I attended the Citizen’s Forum of the 1860’s in Maumee, OH, just south of Toledo. This event ran Friday through Sunday at the Maumee Valley Historical Society. This venue is a collection of 8 historic buildings situated on a piece of land surrounded by a modern neighborhood! Our conference made use of 4 of the buildings, so we had free rein to explore most all the buildings. It is really a great little historic gem tucked away from view and easily overlooked.

This was the first conference I had attended in my 20 years of re-enacting, and I wish I had done it much sooner! The location and price of this conference was perfect for me. The conference fee was $110 and included all the meals for the weekend, four seminars, plus a fun Friday night soiree for all to attend in the historic Wolcott House. Workshop fees were additional and ran about $30/class. 13 workshop options were offered. Generally these fees included materials that one took home with them. In addition, high quality vendors were set up in the old schoolhouse.

I would highly recommend this event for those civilians from our unit who would like to learn more about the hobby. This was the third year for this conference and so it was more intimate and easy to get to know people. Yet in spite of its smaller size, very qualified speakers were brought in to share, some from as far away as Utah and New York. “The Citizen’s Forum of the 1860’s is a conference held to provide educational speakers and workshops for men, women, and teen Civil War reenactors, along with vendors who offer quality reenacting goods. We will create a welcoming environment for sharing knowledge and personal growth as living historians.”

Farm house that housed original clothing

The theme of the conference this year was Reduce, Reuse, Make Do: Practical Frugality in the Mid-19th Century. In the spirit of the conference I attended a workshop called Mending, Remodeling and Remaking: Historic techniques for extending the wearable life of garments with a side-helping of using mending to enhance interpretive goals, by Elizabeth Stewart Clark. In her words, “With any mend, remake or remodel, the goal is simple: to appear as though the garment has not been mended, remade or remodeled.” Some of the items she discussed (and also included in her take home notes) were the strategies for dealing with: repairing a popped seam; patching holes; repairing rips and tears; replacing worn piping; piecing in for armscyes, sides seams and sleeves; remaking sleeves and adding length.

I do have experience in modern sewing and a slight bit with re-enactment sewing, so I went into this workshop feeling like I would not be too ignorant. Turns out I was! For instance…have you ever heard of an armscyce or a dog-leg? I learned a lot…especially that proper mending usually means a lot of ripping out and resewing.

Let me elaborate on just a few mending tricks that I learned. First of all, adjusting length. I thought hemming was a pretty easy task….just measure up from the bottom all the way around and stitch it up. Nope. Not that easy, especially if dealing with a horizontal stripe. To keep the stripe from being unevenly cut due to body shape or hoop shape, it is best to take the dress apart at the waist and alter there. After separating the skirt from the bodice, pin the two together and take up the difference at the waist, probably more in the front than in the rounder back. Measure from the floor up to the hem of the skirt and keep an even distance all the way around. Then, re-attach the skirt to the bodice.

Is your dress hem worn? Again, separate the skirt from the bodice and completely flip the skirt upside down. (Of course, this won’t work with a one-directional print!) So now, the frayed hem is going to become the seam allowance in the waist and the undamaged waist seam allowance will become the fresh, bottom hem of the dress. Pretty clever, huh?

If you need to add length to underpinnings or drawers, (maybe to ease wedgieness!) take off the waistband and add the needed length at the top of the garment and then reattach the waistband.

What if you need to do a repair or remake that requires more fabric but you don’t have any? Ah, but you do in your skirt! Thank goodness for such full skirts. Again, separate the skirt from the bodice and remove some of the fullness from the skirt’s side seams. If you take in a side seam just 3 inches, you are not losing any noticeable skirt fullness, but gaining quite a bit of fabric that can be used elsewhere. Perhaps you need to piece in a side seam or an armscye or mend a hole. Now you have the matching fabric you need!

Okay, now for the armscye. Well, my definition is this: the fabric around the armhole of the dress bodice front. Bodice too snug? Separate the sleeve from the bodice and deconstruct these items to get flat pieces of fabric. Practice first on a muslin test bodice to find the needed size and shape that needs to be added in. Then stitch on the needed extra fabric and then reconstruct the bodice/sleeve. Try to match the pattern of the fabric and press in a narrow fold along the edge of the piece and baste in place. Then sew invisibly along the fold with tiny, single thread stitch.

Wow, there was much more I learned, but enough said for mending. What a useful workshop. (Still not sure I could do some of this myself…but it makes sense. I could always explain it to a modern day alterations seamstress.)

Another very interesting workshop I took was about hair flowers, by Lucy Cadwallader. (lucyshairwork.com) Many of you know that it was very common for people to have jewelry or flowers made of the hair of loved ones. I knew this custom was practiced but I did not realize to what extent. Many women learned this art and passed it on.

In this workshop we learned how to make a small corsage of hair that can be worn on a bodice or jacket. We started with dyed horsehair, since the longer, coarser hair was easier to work with for us beginners. We learned the gimp pattern which involved wrapping the hair around a dowel or crochet needle and twisting small gauge copper wire to knot the hair into coils that could be slid off the cylinder and formed into little flowers.

Not only did people make these items into wearable decorations, but they also served as something like a family tree that was displayed in homes. Often times the flowers (or birds, leaves, etc.) were arranged into an open wreath and framed under glass and hung in a parlor. A family could collect the hair art representing many family members this way. An open wreath meant the family name still lived on. A closed wreath meant that the family name had come to an end. There was a framed open wreath in the Walcott House that included the names of over 100 family members! The names were included in the center of the wreath. It was truly a work of art!

So that concludes my reporting of this great little event, The Citizen’s Forum of the 1860’s. I would highly recommend you attend this to enhance your knowledge of this fun and educational hobby we share. Look up the organizer, Kristen Mrozek, at Greenfield Village later this month. Last year she had a jewelry booth along with the vendors and had information about this event. She is a delightful young woman who did a great job putting together the forum, and she has some beautiful items to sell that will enhance your wardrobe!

Respectfully submitted,

Susan