THE LADIES’ HAND-BOOK OF MILLINERY AND DRESSMAKING, WITH PLAIN INSTRUCTIONS FOR MAKING THE MOST USEFUL ARTICLES OF DRESS AND ATTIRE. WITH ADDITIONS BY AN AMERICAN LADY. NEW YORK: J. S. REDFIELD, CLINTON HALL. MDCCCXLIV. ENTERED, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1843, BY J. S REDFIELD, in the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the United States, for the Southern District of New York. STEREOTYPED BY REDFIELD AND SAVAGE, 13 CHAMBERS STREET, N. Y. CONTENTS. INTRODUCTION 5 CHAPTER I. MILLINERY 9 Directions in bonnet-making. Materials. Drawn bonnets. Silk bonnets. Children’s bonnets. Mourning bonnets. Directions for cap-making. Night caps. Day caps. Net dress caps. Bonnet caps. Helmet caps. Widows’ caps. Capotte. Lappets. Collars and capes. Widows’ collars. Turbans. CHAPTER II. DRESSMAKING 31 Silk or stuff dresses. Muslin and print dresses. Children’s dresses. Frocks for girls. Mantelet. Ladies’ silk cloaks. Capes. Carriage cloak. Garden cloak. A boy’s cloak. Piping. Plaits. Tucks. CHAPTER III. CONCLUSION 56 INTRODUCTION. In a community like that in which we live, where respectability of appearance is essentially important to our prospects in life, and where, at the same time, the means of the vast mass of the population are more or less limited, a wise and judicious economy is one of the most valuable habits which can be formed and practised by those who see a family rising up around them, with daily-increasing wants, and whom they are naturally and laudably desirous of introducing into the busy scenes of the world with that education, and those capabilities, which appear most likely and best calculated to insure success. So strong is the wish in the bosom of the parent to see his offspring prosperous and respected, and to save them, as much as may be, from those difficulties which beset his own path in his youthful career, that we must consider it as an innate propensity of our nature, which, though often abused and carried to a most criminal excess, is yet planted in the bosom of man, by his all-gracious Creator, for the best and most salutary of purposes.