Hi my name is Nicole Kerr I'm the seamstress here at Townsends
I've been here for about eight years. I've been sewing basically my whole life
from the time I was five years old where my grandmother put a needle and thread in my hand
to sew basic little pillows until I could work my way into a sewing machine. Simple little project
starting with doll clothes all the way into making my Easter dress. From there making
bags that I would sell at the local coffee shop, then having children and sewing their clothing,
family clothing, Christmas presents, you name it. And then about eight years ago I was hired
here as a seamstress at Townsends first at home and then upstairs doing production work.
One of the things we really strive to do here at Townsend is to get our clothing closer and
closer to being historically accurate with the information that we already have. And
sometimes that looks like Jon reading through a book and finding something and
bringing it to us and saying "hey I think that we need to tweak this a little bit"
or it's not as durable as we want it and let's go back into history and see how they would
have done it. Because even though these aren't everyday clothing they are still being worked in
in reenactments or people who are trying to teach you through living history at museums
they are wearing them every day and we need to treat it like it needs to last. Oftentimes when
we're going back and looking at our research and the information we have and we start piecing these
together they do become more durable because we are doing them in the correct way. The work shirt
is the most popular piece of clothing that you are going to find in the 18th century.
It is your basic foundational garment that keeps the rest of your clothing clean it's what we can
wash over and over again when you can't wash your coats or your breeches. They're more expensive
they're harder to make so we want to protect them and that is what our work shirts do for us.
The construction of the shirt is the same as it was for a 100 200 years you have your basic
squares and rectangles but it's just how it's put together.
These shirts were mainly made in individual households it's the the mothers, the wives,
the daughters that are just sitting and making these shirts for the men in their lives the boys
in their lives. It takes a lot of time time and effort we're talking 40 or 50 hours per shirt.
You could find advertisements in the paper for these shirts for the people who couldn't just make
them on their own maybe they didn't have wives and mothers or else they had the means to buy them
and so you could find advertisements in the paper. And something that was really neat that I found
was that they would distinguish between American made and English made and I'm sure at that time
period there are some people who still want their imported English work shirts what they're familiar
with. Even though we are seeing advertisements of these it's mainly made in the home.
If we look at the upper class they're using mostly heavy white linens, very nice white linens. But if
we go down to the lower class that's the more coarse fabric, the checked fabric, the striped,
the osnaburg which has a lot of variation in its color and texture and that is for the practical
purpose of it just being harder to see dirt in it being soiled from your everyday wear. You can
get more wears out of it if you can't see how dirty it is. The upper class you know they're
they're not wearing theirs over and over again to the point where they're numbered for rotation.
When Townsends decided to improve the work shirt it was really fueled by the guys who were working
on the cabin and actually putting it to use every day. Finding its stress points where it rips
a lot where it's just not as durable as it should be overall and that is what really pushed us into
the research and seeing what they did because obviously they were wearing it every day not
on one cabin build but on multiple projects. That led us to Larkin and Smith the manual for the 18th
century shirt. In that book we found the shoulder strap the reinforcing there the longer slit down
the front which was a huge problem because taking a linen shirt off when you're hot and sweaty
the fabric just tears. So we have the the longer slit and then even this reinforcing
heart that's sewn from the inside which is not a way that I would expect it to be put on today.
And then even the the chain stitch that keeps it from even pulling further so we have a lot of
reinforcement just in the neck slit. So outside of those little details we even have gussets on the
side slit because you are doing a lot of bending a lot of moving in these work shirts and so
as structured as they are because they're only squares and rectangles you need a little bit of
extra movement a little bit of extra give and the side guess it gives that to you. When Townsends
wanted to rework this shirt for their product line it became personal for me because I really enjoy
the historical research that goes into these projects some things I learned along the way
also just really kept coming back to me. Like the fact that I can make this shirt at work in two
hours or so and that seems like a really short amount of time compared to
what they're saying in the research was just 40 to 50 hours.
That's a whole work week and overtime so I wanted to look back and see does it even make
sense when you're thinking about two hours on a sewing machine translating into 40 to 50 hours
by hand. But we're also looking at things like stitch count they were very meticulous in
their documenting how many stitches are in each piece and when it goes together they're saying
20 000 hand stitches and that is really hard to wrap your mind around doing that over and over.
So I sat down and I cut out all of the pieces and I followed these instructions to the best of my
ability learning all these stitches that I thought I already knew but as I practiced them over and
over I realized I wasn't nearly as proficient with hand sewing as I would like to think because
I am an accomplished seamstress who can make something as grand as a tail coat or a frock
to then go back down to something as what seemingly basic as a work shirt that's a little
bit of a humbling experience. And so if you look at the shirt closely because the stitches are tiny
you can see where my stitches improve along the way there's also a lot of like very meticulous
details in the instructions where it's as you're sewing only pick up one thread in the fabric.
Which I don't know if you've looked at how a piece of fabric is woven together finding one single
thread to then pick up with your needle that can be challenging. Even in the best of light not to
mention you know the wives who are probably sewing it by the fire in the evening so there's there's
a lot of little nuances there. This is my work shirt that I made by hand I know that my count
stopped at 45 hours and I continued after that this was a pickup in the evening kind of project.
So the women that we're doing is where I know for a fact we're at least doing 40 hours and that was
when they were proficient at it. There are some things in the directions that I really tried to
follow and just could not because I'm not at that skill level something as small as 30 gathers per
inch in the cuff when you're gathering up the cuff it's just impossible for me I maxed out at 15.
Which was fine for the sailor or the common man work shirt but if you were going to try
to make one for a gentleman they really really wanted 30 stitches per inch. I'm not exactly sure
how they did that but they did. So there's there's just a lot of things that like just little tweaks
that I had to make to the way I would sew things to try to get myself as close to what they did.
This project has been a really enjoyable one for me not only through the research but the
honing of the skills that I thought I had but I didn't and so i would really encourage you
if you're a re-enactor or even if you're just into hand sewing to really start with something
as simple as the work shirt and see what this experience does for you.