twelve yards ? So ridiculously long?

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1 yard = 0.9144 meter. 12x0.9144 = 10.8 meters!

10.8m long dress?

Context:

Seated with Stuart and Brent Tarleton in the cool shade of the porch of Tara, her father’s plantation, that bright April afternoon of 1861, she made a pretty picture. Her new green flowered-muslin dress spread its twelve yards of billowing material over her hoops and exactly matched the flat-heeled green morocco slippers her father had recently brought her from Atlanta. The dress set off to perfection the seventeen-inch waist, the smallest in three counties, and the tightly fitting Basque showed breasts well matured for her sixteen years.

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Type: Question • Score: 6 • Views: 5,668 • Replies: 22

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@oristarA,

Muslin is thin so it used in several layers.

2 Replies

@fresco,

fresco wrote:

Muslin is thin so it used in several layers.

If 1.8 meter long, 12 yards mean 6 layers.

Can that be?

2 Replies

@oristarA,

Yes...with pleats, petticoats etc. A single layer can be as thin and translucent as nylon stockings.

0 Replies

@oristarA,

The dress is very flair. Many yards are used to account for the fullness of the skirt. The yardage doesn't contribute only to length.

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http://www.google.co.uk/images?q=GONE+WITRH+WIND&um=1&ie=UTF-8&source=og&sa=N&hl=en&

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@Roberta,

Quote:

The yardage doesn't contribute only to length.

And you whinge about the endless faux pas committed by others. The whole 12 yards of it.

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Thank you all.

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@Miss L Toad,

"And you whinge about the endless faux pas committed by others. The whole 12 yards of it. "

Eh? Maybe you don't understand English.

Let's try another example of how yardage doesn't necessarily refer only to length.
http://www.scottishdance.net/highland/MakingKilt.html

I think you should consider apologising while you sit on the naughty step.

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A yard of fabric has a specific meaning. In Europe in the middle ages, the width of cloth was made standard, and there were penalties for selling "short measure," i.e., cloth which was not as wide as statute required. Cloth was measure by ells, and an ell could be anywhere from 27" to 60." In England, an ell was 45" (cloth imported or cloth to be exported was measured in Flemish ells, but i won't confuse this any further).

So, by custom, cloth in English speaking countries is usually 45" wide (some heavier cloth is sold in bolts--a bolt is a roll of cloth--which are 60" wide, but 45" is the most common standard). That means that a linear yard of fabric is not a square yard--it is not 36" by 36" but it is in fact 36" by 45" or one and one quarter square yards. This measurement is invariably used when referring to fabric sold off bolts. So Miss Butler's twelve yards of fabric is actually fifteen square yards (twelve yards long, 45" or one and one quarter yards wide). I haven't read the novel, but i see nothing in this context to suggest that it is simple 12 yards of muslin wrapped around her skirt hoop. Very likely, the twelve yards of fabric were cut into sections, which were then sewn to produce petticoats, with the result that she wore one petticoat over another to produce the desired effect.

This is an image of a woman wearing a skirt hoop:

http://www.barbaraneri.com/perfpix/dress2.gif

This is an image of a petticoat of the type used for hoop skirts:

http://www.bloomers4u.com/Merchant2/graphics/00000001/hoop5boneSM.jpg

This is the effect acheived by putting petticoats in several layers over a skirt hoop:

http://heather.unwashedmeme.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/6hoop.jpg

The name for the frame was a skirt hoop. The entire outfit was known as a hoop skirt. With Miss Butler's 15 square yards of fabric, i suspect that she could have had about five petticoats made up, certainly no more than six.

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By the way, in English, the " symbol (called a quote mark in the American language and called inverted commas in British English) is used to denote inches. So, twelve inches would be written as 12"--and the ' symbol is used to denote one foot. (Called a single quote in the American language and an inverted comma in British English.) So, ten feet would be written as 10'. A yard is three feet, which is 36".

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@fresco,

Not the muslin I've known, used primarily for dishcloths and aprons and, years ago, for dresses.

1 Reply

@oristarA,

I'm not much on fabric and sewing and stuff but might not this 12 yards be a square yard measurement?

1 Reply

@JTT,

JTT wrote:

I'm not much on fabric and sewing and stuff but might not this 12 yards be a square yard measurement?

The square root of 12 yards is 3.64 yard (about 3 meter long). Still too long.

1 Reply

@ossobuco,

Quote:

Not the muslin I've known, used primarily for dishcloths and aprons and, years ago, for dresses

Quote:

muslin
1609, "delicately woven cotton fabric," from Fr. mousseline, from It. mussolina, from Mussolo "Mosul," city in northern Mesopotamia (modern Iraq) where muslin was made, from Arabic al-Mawsul , lit. "the joined," a reference to the bridge and ford over the Tigris here. Like many fabric names, it has changed meaning over the years, in this case from luxurious to commonplace. In 13c. O.Fr., mosulin meant "cloth of silk and gold." The meaning "everyday cotton fabric for shirts, bedding, etc." is U.S., 1872.

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Here's a link to information about the dress in question. The info here is that 18 yards of fabric were used for the dress, but who's counting?

http://www.pegee.com/patterns/barbecue_party_dress.html

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@Setanta,

Setanta wrote:

By the way, in English, the " symbol (called a quote mark in the American language and called inverted commas in British English) is used to denote inches. So, twelve inches would be written as 12"--and the ' symbol is used to denote one foot. (Called a single quote in the American language and an inverted comma in British English.) So, ten feet would be written as 10'. A yard is three feet, which is 36".

In handwriting e.g. in carpentry class, the little marks I was taught to use singly for feet and in pairs for inches are more like mathematician's prime marks... that is, small vertical or slanted marks placed so the middle is level with the top of the numeral. In printed or typed material often stylised but not really like commas, inverted or not. I know that people who use computers often use quotes instead these days.

Incidentally, typography freaks often moan about the use of inch marks where quotes are the proper things to use.

When expressing angles, degrees are a little circle, minutes (of angle, one sixtieth of a degree) are single marks, and seconds (of angle, one sixtieth of a minute of angle) are two marks like these:

http://i124.photobucket.com/albums/p29/badoit/foot-inch.jpg

These are double quote marks...

Technically only the opening quotes are "inverted" (upside down) commas, but using the term for both opening and closing quotes seems pretty widespread. In handwriting lessons we were taught to remember "sixty-six, ninety-nine".

http://i124.photobucket.com/albums/p29/badoit/quotes.gif

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The use of those symbols to denote minutes and seconds are not expressions of angles, but of arc. Minutes and seconds of longitude vary according to the lattitude, because they are expressions of arc, and in the high northern or southern lattitudes, the proportion of the arc is much smaller. I don't know if this is the case, but i suspect that the use of the terms minutes and seconds derives from the first use of reliable chronometers to establish longitude.

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@Setanta,

Setanta wrote:

The use of those symbols to denote minutes and seconds are not expressions of angles, but of arc.

I am not sure what you mean by this, but in ordinary plane geometry and hence everyday discussion of angles, a degree of angle is divided into minutes and seconds.

Angles are most commonly measured in degrees or radians. There are a number of other measurement systems (angular mils, decigrades, and I daresay more)

Quote:

Note: Do not confuse the angular mil with the MOA (minute of angle). 1 mil = 3.375 MOA

(Wikipedia)

Quote:

Radians and degrees are two units for measuring angles. There are at least four such units, but degrees and radians are the ones you are most likely to encounter in high school and college.

Degrees

Degrees are used to express directionality and angle size.

[...]

When you work with degrees, you'll almost always be working with decimal degrees; that is, with degrees expressed as decimal numbers such as 43.1025°. But just as "1.75" hours can be expressed as "1 hour and 45 minutes", so also "degrees" can be expressed in terms of smaller units. These units, just as for "hours", are called "minutes" and "seconds". Just as "hours" can be expressed as decimals or else as hours - minutes - seconds, so also "degrees" can be expressed as decimals or else as degrees - minutes - seconds, denoted as "DMS".

* Convert 43.1025° to DMS form.

I can see that I have 43°, but what do I do with the "0.1025" part? I treat it like a percentage of the sixty minutes in one degree, and find out how many minutes this is:
(0.1025 degrees)(60 minutes / 1 degree) = 6.15 minutes

...or 6 minutes and 0.15 of a minute. Each minute has sixty seconds, so:
(0.15 minutes)(60 seconds / 1 minute) = 9 seconds

Then 43.1025° = 43° 6' 9"

http://www.purplemath.com/modules/radians.htm

I have left out the part about radians.

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I was referring to the spherical trigonometry of navigation.

1 Reply

twelve yards ? So ridiculously long?

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