One of the things I wanted to do this year at the retreat was a costumed swim. My friend L from Staten Island and I invited the rest of the group to make historic bathing costumes of any time period. We even had a slot in the schedule to meet at the dock for our swim.

I had in mind this incredible pattern for a Grecian inspired bathing costume from 1870-1890.

As you may have gathered from my previous post, the mens’ attire that I was making for the retreat took a LOT of time, and when I got down to the wire, it was clear there was going to be no time for an elaborate swimming costume.

L had sent the link for instructions on how to make Martha Washington’s bathing costume while I was still planning to make my fancier suit, and I had that in my head as a backup if needed.

Well, it was needed. Burnley and Trowbridge had some nice gold checked linen at a decent price, and I got some water friendly washers from the big box home improvement store for the weighted hem to Preserve My Modesty.The MW bathing costume is a linen shift, the same as the ones I wear under my historical costumes. Just a series of squares and rectangles. As always, I machined the innards, and finished the other bits by hand. I finished sewing the weights in during one of the talks at the retreat.

At the appointed time, I headed down to the dock in my shift. I used a linen neckerchief as a makeshift bra because the sports bra I’d brought for regular swimming in showed too much at the neckline of the shift. Neckerchiefs are good for everything. It was a chilly weekend, and I think all of us costumers were a little burnt out this year, so L and I were the only ones there for the swim. The air was cool. The water could have been worse.

We both had our Turkish towels for the maximum appearance of historical accuracy. The weighted hems on our shifts Preserved Our Modesty. We accidentally got our hair wet, which was Indecent.

It was a brief dip – it was too cold to linger longer than 10 or 15 minutes, but I wouldn’t have gotten into the water otherwise, so I’m glad we did it.

Did we remember to take photos before we got wet? Why would we do that?