Chapter 5 Oilclothing and Clothing Making
On the day of Dinghai, it is auspicious to make clothes and cut cloth.
And it just so happened that the weather had cleared up after a long period of rain, and the streets of Sangling Lane were full of tailors.
Lin Xiushui could tell at a glance that tailors were very easy to identify. Their durable aprons always had a pocket with two pairs of scissors in it, one large for cutting the fabric and the other small with a pointed tip for cutting threads and poking holes.
Although the clothes they wore were of inconspicuous color, they were all well-fitting, neither too loose nor too tight.
The one wearing narrow sleeves, with her hair tied in a bun, carrying scissors larger than everyone else's, and with a cloth rope draped over her shoulder, was cutting fabric at the silk shop.
If someone is wearing reddish clothes and is cheerful, they are definitely helping with wedding preparations, such as cutting curtains, red tablecloths, and bedding.
Walking at a leisurely pace, without haste or rush, that's the proper way to tailor clothes. The outer garment is the easiest to make, and the inner tube top only requires cutting long strips of fabric. Nowadays, everyone is making spring clothes, and the fabric is gradually becoming lighter and thinner, unlike the thick fabric of winter which is difficult to cut.
The oilclothing cutter, however, found it particularly difficult because of the strong smell of tung oil.
Even though Lin Xiushui was sitting in the empty courtyard with only a long table on all sides, she still felt like sneezing because of the stench.
Tung oil comes in two forms: raw and refined. Raw tung oil is generally used in medicine, while refined tung oil is used to brush onto paper and wood to prevent rain and moisture, but it has an unpleasant smell.
The oilcloth used for this batch of oilcloth was first brushed with tung oil twice. When it was ready to protect against light rain, it was rolled up and handed over to the tailor to cut the garment pieces. After sewing, it was soaked in tung oil twice more to ensure that the seams would not leak.
These were said by Yu Liuniang from the oilclothing workshop. She was three years older than Lin Xiushui and worked as both an oil maker and a tailor. She was straightforward and spoke without mincing words, which offended many people.
Lin Xiushui took a liking to her at first glance; she was soft, chubby, and seemed easy to talk to.
Madam Gu brought her here, saying that they were short-handed, but she was completely absorbed in cutting clothes herself. She was only told what to cut, and no one else was said to her. She was ignored when she was asked questions.
It was no problem for Lin Xiushui at all; she would strike up a conversation with someone on her own.
In less than half an hour, Yu Liu Niang started calling her by her nickname and chatted with her about everything from tung oil to oilcloth, and even found her a good pair of scissors.
These oilcloth scissors are exceptionally sharp, as they are sharpened daily. After all, the cloth coated with tung oil is quite thick, and ordinary cloth cutters would find it difficult to cut.
Lin Xiushui picked up the scissors, which were particularly heavy, and tried cutting them on the scraps of cloth to test their feel. Each pair of scissors felt different; some were rough on the hand, while others were difficult to hold.
When she was trying on the cut, a young woman next to her scoffed, "So thin, how can you even hold a pair of scissors when we call you over to cut clothes?"
Lin Xiushui had barely eaten meat during her three-year mourning period. She was poor and in debt, so thin that she looked unrecognizable. Even when she wore two or three thick coats, her frail appearance was still obvious. She was also not very tall and seemed easy to bully.
But she was quick-witted and said, "If tailoring really depends on body size, then what's the point of having tailors?"
She's here to practice, not to argue. If arguing could make money, she'd be happy to argue every day.
Yu Liuniang chimed in from the side, "It's not that important anyway, you're not like you belong to Madam Gu."
"So nosy."
Lin Xiushui looked up at Yu Liuniang. Good heavens, those words were so blunt, they made her face turn red with anger.
Lin Xiushui thought to herself, if the blush on this person's face could be dyed the color of cloth, it would actually look quite nice.
She thanked Yu Liu Niang first, ignoring her expression, and picked up the garment piece herself. This oilcloth was a style of spun jacket, which could be worn by both men and women. It was essentially a wide skirt with two sleeves sewn on, and the side slits were very high, making it convenient to wear while riding a horse.
So it was divided into a front piece, a back piece, a back collar piece, and a collar band. The front and back pieces were like half of a garment, and the sleeves and the front body were all made by an old tailor.
They only gave Lin Xiushui the job of cutting strips, which was simply cutting a long strip about the width of a palm. There was no skill involved other than cutting it straight.
“Don’t underestimate the difficulty of cutting straight lines; it’s much easier,” Yu Liuniang said to Lin Xiushui from the side.
She was cutting the front piece. The fabric piece was placed on top, so there was no need to refer to it at all. Her scissors moved as nimbly as a fish swimming forward, cutting straight lines, corners, and diagonals without any mishaps. The front piece was cut in the blink of an eye.
Lin Xiushui still needs improvement; these scissors are made of pure iron and are very heavy, so she has to stop for a while when she reaches a corner.
"Sixth Sister, you cut it so neatly," Lin Xiushui praised without reservation. "I still need to practice more."
Ordinary people would say that you'd be familiar with the trade after two or three years, but Sixth Sister said, "Eat more, preferably get fat."
Lin Xiushui also thought that this was all caused by poverty. Things were better now, but she used to be so thin that her face looked like a yellow bird.
Oilclothes workers don't give lunch, so Lin Xiushui brought her own steamed cakes. Yu Liuniang wanted her to eat the jujube cakes she brought from home, which contained red dates and red beans. They were soft, sweet, and had a sandy texture.
The two sat in a corner, eating jujube cake with their backs to the wind. Lin Xiushui wanted to share the steamed cake with Yu Liuniang, but she refused, saying, "You keep it for yourself."
"It has lard in it."
"I wouldn't eat it even if you put a pig in there."
Lin Xiushui could only eat a bite of jujube cake and a bite of steamed bun. She squinted while eating the jujube cake and puffed out her cheeks while eating the steamed bun.
"Eat quickly," Yu Liuniang urged her, "and then go grab the scraps of cloth."
Lin Xiushui didn't hear clearly, "What cloth?"
“You didn’t see how much scrap fabric was left after cutting the oilcloth,” said Yu Liu Niang, who was very friendly and open-hearted. “The top tailor had to pick out the larger pieces first, and then we had to fight over the smaller ones.”
This oilclothing workshop, backed by the government, wouldn't offend the tailors inside for such a small scrap of fabric. So the tailors got all the scraps, and the higher-ups turned a blind eye.
Lin Xiushui was so anxious she almost spat out the steamed bun, but then swallowed it back down and hurriedly asked, "Can I go too?"
"Why not? Come on, I'll help you grab some more."
Yu Liu Niang spoke as if she were being taken on a robbery.
It was truly a matter of life and death. Don't be fooled by the fact that these oilcloths are only the size of a palm, or even a little bigger. If you collect enough, you can piece together an oilcloth coat, make oilcloth pants, or even a waistband or a cloth to wrap around your hair bun.
Moreover, tung oil is currently ridiculously expensive; a small bucket of refined tung oil costs five or six hundred coins, while an oilcloth costs one or two strings of cash.
So the group made a huge commotion, and Lin Xiushui even got punched several times, her elbows were bruised, and her right cheek was scraped. But she managed to grab a lot of scraps of cloth and was grinning like an idiot.
"What's so funny?" Yu Liu Niang asked, puzzled.
"We can make clothes!" Lin Xiushui exclaimed excitedly. The scraps of cloth varied in size, length, width, and narrowness. In her eyes, as long as they were pieced together properly, they could make quite a few things.
Make a pair of oilcloth gloves for her aunt. The work of dyeing is not easy. Stirring the cloth, boiling the dye, and soaking the cloth all take a toll on both hands.
Make another pair of oilcloth shoes for Xiaohe, so she can always run out on rainy days.
It could also help mend her tattered umbrella, so that it wouldn't leak from one end to the other.
Just thinking about it made Lin Xiushui feel that the weather was really nice, and even the smell of tung oil smelled good.
When Lin Xiushui parted ways with Yu Liu Niang in the evening, she said that she would come to the oilclothing workshop again next time to thank her properly.
Yu Liuniang scratched her face, "Next time you come, I'll snatch the cloth for you." Lin Xiushui laughed, "Okay."
Actually, Yu Liuniang also helped her this time, standing in front of her. Whenever she looked up, she could always see that plump figure, full of strength.
However, no matter how happy Lin Xiushui was at the moment, she would be scolded by Wang Yuelan when she got back: "Are you crazy? With your physique, you want to snatch things from other people? You'll ruin a perfectly good girl's face."
"Ouch, ouch, hiss," Lin Xiushui winced in pain. "Auntie, be gentle! I'm not pounding stones!"
Wang Yuelan rubbed the medicated oil on her palms and applied it heavily, saying, "It's deserved, I'll bear the pain."
Lin Xiushui finished applying the medicated oil with a pained expression, then forgot the pain again and started piecing together an oilcloth on the table. She called to Xiao He, "Da Bao, Xiao Bao, quickly bring your cloth shoes, I'll sew you a new pair of uppers."
“Sister,” Xiaohe looked at Lin Xiushui with a worried expression, gently touched her face, and said angrily, “You bad person, you can’t hit someone in the face.”
“That’s really mean,” Lin Xiushui chimed in, then added, “Dabao, your shoes smell awful.”
Xiaohe sniffed it and argued, "It doesn't smell bad, ugh, it smells a little."
Lin Xiushui was quite disgusted. She took a pair of unscented ones, coated them with a layer of paste, and first firmly attached the oilcloth to them. She waited for it to dry and the smell to dissipate before inserting the needle.
Making waterproof gloves isn't difficult. Find two relatively wide pieces of cloth, cut them along the hand seams, sew them carefully, and then apply persimmon lacquer to the inside seams to make them waterproof.
Lin Xiushui made the persimmon lacquer herself. There were many persimmon trees in Shanglintang. The persimmons were green and astringent, inedible but could be crushed and the juice filtered out. The juice was then sealed in jars and eventually became persimmon lacquer. Fortunately, the jars were sealed tightly, and no water got in when it rained.
She lengthened the gloves, making them reach above the elbows, and then asked Wang Yuelan to try them on.
“What a waste of effort,” Wang Yuelan said, but her hands didn’t stop. After saying those three words, she already had a glove in her hand. She clenched her fist and squeezed it a few times before putting it into the basin of water and probing inside. “It really doesn’t leak.”
Lin Xiushui said, "It's okay if it leaks. I'll make you two more pairs, Auntie."
"This way, if your hands are cracked, the dye won't seep in and hurt."
"How did you come up with this?" Wang Yuelan asked.
Lin Xiushui told the truth: "It was in my dream."
"You brat, talking nonsense again."
Lin Xiushui was truly wronged; these days, no one believes the truth.
Wang Yuelan was very fond of the gloves. She looked them over from left to right and said to Lin Xiushui, "The shop across the river that sells old rice said they have a very wide curtain. They asked me to ask if you could turn it into a tablecloth."
"And there's Madam Zhang, who lives three rooms ahead. She needs a garment mended and said she'll come to ask about it tomorrow."
“Tomorrow is perfect,” Lin Xiushui rubbed her sore wrist, trying to laugh but pulling at the cut skin, and hissed, “The clothing shop is closing for a day, so I have to go to work the day after tomorrow.”
Wang Yuelan immediately tensed up, "Should we deduct their wages?"
She was used to working at the dye shop every day of the year, and taking a break for even a short while would cost her five coins; who would be willing to do that?
"I won't deduct it," Lin Xiushui said, but the thought of having to pay two coins again tomorrow when she set up her stall made her heart ache.
Fortunately, she got a mending job early in the morning.
A note from the author:
I'm reducing the word count; the update that was supposed to be tomorrow night will be moved to the early morning of May 1st. There will be a red envelope as compensation then! [heart emojis]
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
