We Made Hartney

We Made Hartney

Tradespeople

Milliners Alice and Ida Edwards

 

 



TWO YOUNG WOMEN, Alice and Ida Edwards came about 1894 to Hartney from the Melita district, where their father was a pioneer farmer, and set up a dress-making business above Dan Sutherland’s bakery. The demand for dresses was so great that they soon had several assistants, among them Miss Mary Morris. So their customers might be clad in the latest fashion, the Edwards sisters visited Minneapolis to observe the styles of that city and on their return created the floor-length, stiffly-boned, high-collared frocks then in vogue. These were worn with the large heavy hats and bonnets of velvet, silk and straw turned out by a milliner at the A.E. Hill Co. store.

After running a successful business for over five years the Edwards sisters were married on the same June day in 1900 at their father’s Melita farm, Ida to A.E. Fry and Alice to Tom Hopkins. Ida and A.E. Fry had planned a stylish wedding. Tom Hopkins and Alice Edwards were the attendants. The Fry wedding was over, and guests returned to the Edwards home when Tom and Alice announced their intention to be married then and there.

The Edwards’ dress-making business passed into the hands of Misses Eva and Emily Magwood who carried it on until they married and left Hartney. Miss Irene McDermott, as milliner, worked with both the Edwards and the Magwood sisters.



Another pair of sisters, Misses Margaret and Jennie McArter became well known as dress-makers in the early years of the century. Miss Margaret McArter was for many years in charge of the dress-making departments in the J.C. Callander and A.E. Hill stores. Later she opened her own business in her home which she operated for over 15 years until failing health prevented her continuing.

In the days before ready-made dresses were available, it was customary to have a seamstress to stay for a week or more in the home of her customers in turn, to fashion dresses and other garments for the whole family. Miss Jennie McArter, handicapped to a considerable degree by arthritis, was one of those. Her services were booked ahead for many weeks, particularly in the spring and fall. It was a thrill to have her in the home, laden with all the latest fashion books. How the girls in town enjoyed choosing the styles for their new dresses, and how weary they grew from standing on floor and table to have their dresses fitted. Miss Jennie McArter, a patient gentle woman had quantities of beautiful auburn hair that she wore in an intricate coiffure. Arthritis made it difficult for her to arrange her own hair and that was done for her by the women at whose homes she sewed.

 


Couture dress designs from Paris, available in popular magazines, influenced styles even in small towns like Hartney.

A courageous Hartney businesswoman was Mrs. Kate Maley. A widow in Blackpool, England, with two small daughters that she supported by dress-making and needlework, she decided to emigrate to Canada under the farm-help scheme of the day. In 1905 she and her daughters, Peggy and Molly, arrived in Canada. Mrs. Maley answered an advertisement in a Winnipeg paper for a woman to assist at a farm home and soon she and her daughters found themselves at the George Gibson home in the Barber district.

Mrs. Maley’s ability as a dress-maker became known and soon she was going from home to home to make dresses, while Mrs. Gibson kept Peggy and Molly. Assisted financially by Mr. Gibson, Mrs. Maley rented rooms above D.G. Ennis’s bakery and opened her own dress-making shop. Her work advertised itself and she could not fill the orders, so she accepted an offer from J.C. Callander to take charge of the dress-making department in his store and secured several assistants.

During the summer of 1908 Mrs. Maley took a course in millinery at Winnipeg, and with her taste and skill became as able a milliner as she was a dress-maker. On her return to Hartney she opened a millinery store in the Lewis building and rented the Dale house where her mother, Mrs. Goslin joined her before Christmas 1908 to care for the family. The following year Mrs. Maley bought the E.A. Cuthbert store to the north of the Imperial Hotel, enlarged her business to include, beside millinery, blouses, dresses and fancy goods, and moved her family into the rooms over the store.
 

Unfortunately the steady sewing affected her eyes and Mrs. Maley, in need of work that required less eye-strain, investigated homestead land in the west. In June of 1910 she secured a homestead in the Monitor district near Provost, Alberta, and after doing three months homestead duty there returned to Hartney in time for the millinery season in the fall. For the next three years she did her homestead duties in Alberta as well as carrying on the millinery business in Hartney. Subsequently the Maley family went to San Diego California, where Mrs. Maley died in 1956.

Adapted from The Mere Living, page 214.


Making a Dress in 1900

After marriage many women who were fully trained dressmakers would set up as the little dressmaker who could interpret the latest mode at an insignificant price. The answer was to select a dress design from a glossy magazine, then turn to a local dressmaker with a manual Singer sewing machine. The local dressmaker would run up a new gown very cheaply.

Many dressmakers were employed solely to work on blouses. With its profusion of lace and intricate details the blouse was a perfect example of conspicuous waste and conspicuous consumption. Usually the principal fabrics of the blouse were net and lace, cleverly pieced together with faggotting and lace insertions. This was then further trimmed with satin strappings and velvet ribbons. After 1905 cotton net was sometimes embroidered with small designs of leaves, flowers or spots and  since the blouse was so fashionable, machine embroidery both commercial and domestic flourished until 1914.

The trends that marked 1900-1910 fashions reflected a significant turning point in history and style. The end of the Victorian era and beginning of the Edwardian era, this period reflected the manner in which men's and women's clothes were losing a little of their rigid formality and becoming more useful.

An important aspect of 1900 to 1910 fashions is the change of technology across many countries. The Industrial Revolution was in full swing and cloth could now be mass produced. This led to clothing that could be mass produced, which was an entirely new fashion concept. People no longer had to make their clothes themselves or rely on a seamstress or tailor. Some outfits could be bought off the rack for the very first time.

Women adopted a simpler fashion form from 1900 to 1910 than they had done in previous years. Restrictive corsets and high collars relaxed slightly. Dresses were still the standard, but they no longer needed to be puffed up around the hips with petticoats. Skirts became floor length instead of trailing.
One of the popular styles later in the decade between 1900 to 1910 was the hobble skirt. This skirt was somewhat full at the waist and tapered towards the ankles. Hats were still all the rage and the larger the better. It didn't matter what your hat was decorated with, as long as it was decorated and big.

 

 
A seamstress working on a gown.


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