Mackenzie Sholtz, owner of Fig Leaf Patterns and a Sumter County Executive 250th Committee Member, has spent much of her life in and out of museums, documenting historic garments and measuring them for collections. When she moved to Sumter, South Carolina, volunteering at the Sumter Museum felt like a natural fit.
The project of drafting a pattern from the gown for use by museum staff during Backcountry Days in South Carolina ultimately inspired Sholtz to create the Fig Leaf Pattern line. Each pattern in the collection is based on a real historical garment. See the portrait of Elizabeth Deas below, painted by Jerimiah Teau, 1759. Deas is depicted wearing her wedding dress of white silk with a red petticoat.
“They’re kind of like dissertations,” Sholtz said. “I am so lucky and privileged to work with museums like the Sumter Museum, where they allow me to handle and document these pieces, especially ones that are ‘shattering,’ like the Deas dress.”
The original gown is hand-sewn from lightweight, ivory-striped silk. Due to its age and chemical degradation, the fabric has begun to “shatter,” breaking apart like delicate glass. While the garment is now too fragile to be displayed, it continues to provide valuable insight into colonial-era sewing techniques and construction.
“At least we have documentation of how it was made,” Sholtz explained. “That allows us to replicate it and better understand these garments. Whether modern sewers follow those techniques or not is up to them, but I can show them what I’ve seen. It becomes a kind of mini tour of history.” See Sholtz’s replica, based off the Sumter Archives’ Deas dress, below.
For Sholtz, clothing is far more than costume. It is a living connection to the past.
“Each dress tells its own story,” she said. “When I step into these garments, it transports me. You feel history differently—the weight of the fabric, the cut of the clothing, the way it moves. It connects you to the legacy of the women who came before.”
Keep an eye out for future sewing opportunities with Mackenzie at the Sumter Museum! And mark your calendar for Saturday, May 9th from 10 AM–3 PM for Sumter Museum’s Carolina Backcountry Springtime, experience what life and dress was like in the Sumter backcountry during the Revolutionary era and early 1800s.
By Kylie Cordell, Sumter Museum Creative Marketing Coordinator
