When one is in quarantine and slightly (very?) bored, one must find a project to entertain oneself.
Enter the new 2020 adaptation of Emma. Loved it! Gorgeous costuming, fabulous sets, candy pastel colours everywhere. All around, an absolutely delightful cupcake of a movie. And it suddenly gave me the urge to make a regency era outfit…
The idea for this project came about after seeing Matthew Williamson’s post on Facebook on the Second Boer War Re-enactment page. He took the “Boer War” What Price Glory tunic and reworked it into a proper Pattern 1896 khaki drill tunic.
The What Price Glory tunic is based on the Pattern 1906 khaki drill tunic and needs some alterations to be used for Boer War re-enactments. I figured I could draw upon the talents of my well known tailors (ie, my mom and sister) to duplicate Matthew’s project.
Puttees, also known as leg wraps, have been worn in various forms since antiquity. Every possible manner of wrapping them has already been invented. However, those re-enactors that don't have somebody to show them how to do it, end up having to figure it out for themselves with varying degrees of success...
Perhaps most commonly associated with the French Foreign Legion, thanks to countless books and movies depicting the Legionnaires in North Africa wearing the iconic white cap cover with neck flap, the havelock was known to be in use since about the middle of the 19th century by the British army in India. Being an extremely useful piece of kit, it's use quickly spread to other armies in other hot regions of the world.
Known to be the oldest church in BC still on its original site and having been in continuous use since being built, St. Stephen's Anglican Church was once an important center to a new and, for quite some time, isolated community. It is now little known, few remembering or knowing it's history or significance to the area.
The history of Vancouver Island is very recent. White settlement didn't start until the building of Fort Victoria, a fur trading outpost of the Hudson's Bay Company, in 1843. Farms were needed to support the Fort and provide fresh produce. One of the earliest settled in the area was Craigflower Farm, named after the farm in England owned by Andrew Colville, governor of the Hudson's Bay Company. Craigflower farm was one of the very first farming communities in all of Western Canada, and it was to this farm that an enterprising young Scotsman, William Thomson, found his way, via an eventful route, in 1854.
The Haversack is an important and often overlooked part of the soldiers gear. In the British Army, it is also known as a bread bag and was used to carry the soldiers food rations.
Haversacks have been used for a long time, but by the 1700's the British Army started to standardize the sizes so that each soldier could carry the prescribed amount of food that was issued, and no less.
