NHS/Audrain Exhibition: Making Mounts

In May, I did some volunteer work on the Newport Historical Society and Audrain Auto Museum's co-curated exhibitions "The World in Motion, Fashion and Modernity 1885-1945"/"Women Take the Wheel: Fashion, Modernity and the Automobile: 1900-1945." This was under the supervision of my professor, Rebecca Kelly, who was curating, conserving, and mounting the fashion objects. It…

Good, Better, Best Practices for Storage of Vintage/Antique Sewing Patterns

When I started out collecting I could not afford conservation grade materials (nor did I realize how important they are) so I have tried to write this as a Good, Better, Best Practices so that each collector may do the best with what resources they have at hand. I, myself, am just starting the process…

Historic Reproduction and Conservation Stitch Samples

As usual, I have taken on too much this semester and have been unable to do any posts and non-school sewing. However, I have to make stitch samples for my conservation portfolio, so I thought at the very least I could post about that. I was surprised to find out that a number of students…

Wet Cleaning an Infant Shirt for Conservation Part 2: IDing and Dating the Object

23 SEP-22 OCT 2019Supervisor: Professor Rebecca Kelly for TMD 538, University of Rhode Island I had some hunches about what period this shirt might be from based on the pieces being cut from geometric shapes. It resembled my 1810s chemise I made, as well as patterns I have seen for reproducing 18th century Western European…

Wet Cleaning an Infant Shirt for Conservation Part 1

Dear readers, the beginning of the semester has swept me away as usual and here it is a third of the way through and I haven't written anything here since winter break. Since I have several projects from last semester that I would like to discuss here, I am going to try to take an…