DRESSING IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY A Lesson in the Creation and Repair of Colonial Clothes Photos by Hoag Levins Read Main Story: Back-Breaking History Lessons HADDONFIELD, N.J. (May 21, 2001) -- A founding member of Past Masters in Early American Domestic Arts, Clarissa F. Dillon appeared at the Indian King Tavern Museum on Saturday to demonstrate the Colonial-era skills related to cloth- and clothing-making. Above, left, she operates a tape loom. Above, right, a display of her wool-processing and drop-spinning tools. LISTEN: "The work we're doing today..." Dillon travels with an authentic eighteenth-century sewing basket (above, left) that includes the thorns (above, right) Colonial women often used instead of rare and costly steel needles. Because they were available for free from nearby thorn trees, these were sometimes referred to as "God's needles," Dillon explained. LISTEN: "Things in my sewing box..." Common hand tools for eighteenth-century seamstresses were the lucent (above, left), used to make cording that would not fray when cut, and the snowflake-like winder (above, right) on which a woman would keep the woollen thread she made by hand.