PLAY & WORK at OSV

PLAY & WORK at Old Sturbridge Village

Fashion Group photo from the PLAY session at Old Sturbridge Village. L-R Colleen, Van, Aly, and Danielle

In May 2026, Old Sturbridge Village in Sturbridge, MA happened to be having a series of weekends called "Yankee Ingenuity" dedicated to different parts of 1830's life for its residents as part of an overall celebration of America's 250th year as a nation. Each weekend of May was a different theme. I attended the PLAY weekend with my fashion group, from May 23-25, 2026, and then again the following weekend for the WORK program with my partner. 

For the PLAY meeting, I asked folks in my community to wear anything that they thought was particularly playful in subject matter or style. Color did not matter, but there was one stipulation--if you wore anything that vaguely looked like something an actor at Old Sturbridge Village would wear, be prepared to be assumed staff of the village. I didn't think any of us looked like we worked at the village, but folks still gave us the right of way on the horse cart and asked us where the bathrooms were. 

My coordinate featuring a dress with the print of animals wearing old-fashioned clothes posing for a family portrait

I don't like to be a coordinate repeater if I can help it, so I went through my dress collection and looked for a dress with a playful type of print on it (that I hadn't worn yet this year). I thought in honor of going to Old Sturbridge Village and it being the PLAY weekend, that I would wear my Animal Family dress from Chinese Indie brand Alice Girl. This dress features an underbust boned bodice with a printed skirt of cartoon animals wearing old fashioned outfits posing for a family portrait. It's weird and its wonderful, and has a hidden pocket on one side. Under the dress, I'm wearing a cotton blouse from Chinese indie brand Miss Point that came with a similar style underbust dress. Over that I'm wearing a hooded brown velvet caplet with white details on it. Over two braided pigtails, I'm wearing a flat brown floral "trivet" bonnet from the Chinese indie brand Infanta. The under the knee socks and cream and white and I've paired my look with brown suede oxfords for sensible walking throughout the museum. Also attached to my person I have a teddy bear bag, which is of course wearing a cream colored dress to match my coordinate, and a cream and light brown violin bag as an instrument is also something you PLAY with.  You might be thinking--end of May for long sleeves and a velvet caplet? Believe me I didn't think it was necessary either until the day of when it was overcast and on and off raining all day.  

Aly's Coordinate

Aly's coordinate was playful in an entirely different way. She used a dress that her mother made her that looks like it's from more than one time period. The back layer of ruffles looks like it could support a bustle undergarment from the Gilded Age but the shape of the skirt at the bottom has a more Edwardian hem. The royal blue short velvet jacket stands out nicely against the dress. She made the gloriously large hat from up-cycled gallon water bottles which she cut to make the shape and covered with fabric and other embellishments like faux flowers. 

Colleen's Coordinate

Colleen is wearing the powder blue version of the jsk "Dreamy Egg" by Japanese brand Metamorphose. The dress features an all over repeating print of different eggs with rabbits, birds, ribbons and bows tied together with a star and moon motif. I'd count the print as being playful. To finish off the look, she added a round sun bonnet with faux matching flowers, a long sleeve white blouse, and white tights and rocking horse shoes. A pastel blue, pink, purple, and white cross body purse ties it all together.

Van's Coordinate

Van's coordinate is the most obviously playful of the group. Her outfit features nostalgic 1980's toys/tv series including the Popple crop hoodie (with matching contrasting neon blue and pink Popple ears) and the Carebears glitter bowler bag.  Bright purple sneakers with neon lime green socks balance out the neon and black further up in her coordinate. 

Doll Making Workshop inside The Small House

Now as far as activities for the day, the museum had a lot of special events going on  that we could walk to and participate in as part of the regular admission. We only had about 4 hours by the time everyone arrived, so we checked out the doll making class in The Small House first. We missed the official class, but it ended up being okay as we learned everything we needed to know from the examples and the papers they left out on the table. 

Lamb

On our way to the town square, we passed by a field of sheep grazing in a field. When we got closer to their pen, the lambs were right up against the fence accepting pets or lamb pellets from small children. While all the children and baby animals were gathered around the fence, I snapped this photo of one particularly photogenic lamb. 

The group walks towards the covered bridge.

At this point, we just missed the horse-cart and it was getting time to head back to the town square anyway so that we could learn dances of the time period just outside of the big barn. It was an activity that I really wanted to do so Aly made sure we didn't miss it. We joined in on 4 different country style dances that were accompanied by a live flute player as well as someone else with a tambourine. We learned partner style dancing in parallel lines that had fairly simple moves like catching hands, turning in a circle, making a bridge with your body, and skipping down a central line from the top to the bottom. I don't have any photos or videos of this because we were all dancing, so you'll just have to imagine it the best you can. 

The Horse Cart Returns!

To my utter luck and amazement, the horse cart returned just as we finished with dancing, and we were able to take the last ride over the covered bridge together on it. It's a first come first serve, and we were so well dressed, folks just thought we worked at the museum and gave us the right away. We got a seat right in front behind the carriage driver!

My view on the horse cart- I did not see any new road apples---phew!

Colleen and I and my bear bag on the horse cart

Once we got to the other side of the bridge, we checked out the farm, the black smith at his forge, and a substantial home that had several rooms and and an upstairs we were able to explore. 

The Blacksmith working hard over the forge

Aly took this photo of Colleen and I next to some great wallpaper

We were starting to get a little tired so we checked the schedule one last time to see if there were any special events left for us to enjoy. Van saw that there was going to be a hurdy-gurdy demonstration in the Bullard Tavern. I didn't know what a hurdy-gurdy was, but I found out that it's a boxed string instrument that produces sound by means of a hand-cranked roisined wheel that rubs against the strings when you press on the tangents (small wooden wedges that pressy on the strings) at the side of the box. The wheel functions like a violin bow. Like most other acoustic stringed instruments, it has a sound board and a hollow cavity inside to make the vibration of the strings audible. I've been playing the cello as a hobby for over a decade, how hard could the hurdy-gurdy really be?

Trying out the hurdy-gurdy. Photo credit to Aly

It turns out that actually pressing the buttons on the hurdy-gurdy is much easier for people with normal or large size hands. And the winding "bow" was something you had to crank pretty quickly to get a decent sound out of it. But I wouldn't consider the hurdy-gurdy sound particularly beautiful or easy to tune. It's kind of more of a party instrument where if you're drunk enough, you won't notice any wrong or off notes. I'm not even sure if you can change the pressure on the strings like you would with a normal bow and you certainly cannot pluck the strings either. But I can appreciate this earlier short lived instrument in its historical context. 

OSV Yankee Ingenuity: WORK 

The clockmaker describing the wooden mechanism of these 200+ year old clocks that still work today!

The last weekend in May was the Yankee Ingenuity WORK program. This particular weekend focused on jobs that New Englander's might have during the late 1830's. It was kind of a last minute decision for my partner and I to go to this event, but it was the last day that my comped ticket I received in a Christmas gift was able to be used. When we got up there, it turned out someone else had surrendered another comp ticket that was about to expire, so we got in for free! We had about 3 hours total to explore that afternoon and we still managed to see 3 special WORK related demonstrations.

The first one we saw was the annual sheep-shearing. A team of sheep shearers worked together to present this program at the back of a farm house. While chickens were walking around the yard, a man of medium stature and build straddled a sheep and carefully sheared off her hair, which was very thick with large manual shears, while the other person explained what he was doing and how even though she was trained on sheep shearing, she doesn't feel as confident yet shearing the sheep. A single sheep could take up to 4 hours, depending on the thickness of its hair and buildup and such. All of the sheep at the village are female, for safety purposes, so that they are more docile when it comes to shearing and so that they don't break the fences in the pasture areas. This individual sheep didn't seem to be terribly inconvenienced during the shearing, as it was still eating bits of grass located on the lawn even while the rest of its body was held down. 

The second demonstration that we saw was just sort of out in the street next to the herb garden. They were boiling and dye-ing wool. They said that the wool had to be boiled to make it soft as well as remove any dirt and impurities. Afterwards, natural vegetable dyes like those from roots and leaves would be added to the wool mash and the dye would seep into the wool. Sage green is truly made from sage! The only thing though about these natural dyes, is that they would eventually seep out or fade from the fabric as they were not made to last long term, so sometimes pieces of clothing would be re-dyed later on. 

After having a spot of lunch (we shared the chicken pot pie and I dare say it is one of the best ones I've ever had), we managed to walk into a clock making demonstration in the Bullard Tavern. The volunteer happened to be on the Board of Directors from the Bristol Clock & Watch Museum, and had brought some of those clocks with him to explain how they worked, along with the difference between early and later mechanisms and various clockmaking making tools. 

Some of the clock maker's tools

Basically in the early days, nearly every piece of the clock mechanism was made by hand, in wood, including cogs that fit together. In those times, owning a clock was only for the extremely affluent or royalty, as a single clock maker could only produce about 15-20 clocks per year. After the mechanism changed to a more automated cog making system, they were able to increase production at an exponential rate, and clocks became more affordable so that even people of modest means could afford them. 

Seasonal clothing from the Needle & Thread Exhibit

Back of gown in Needle & Thread Exhibit

Lastly, we went into the temporary indoor gallery for the Needle & Thread exhibit. This was in a section of the village I just didn't get around to visiting the weekend prior. Inside there were various examples of clothing from different seasons, as well as undergarments, thread, lace, and other devices and tools that were used to make clothing from that era. Both Pahl and I were wondering why these types of clothing are not available in the gift shop. Long story short, but the museum just doesn't have enough skilled staff to produce pieces like this for sale at the gift shop. We can still dream!!

I insisted that Pahl take a photo of me with this sign over my head from the Needle & Thread exhibit

You were probably wondering if I would wear a WORK themed coordinate for the second weekend, but like I said it was a last minute decision, so I wore a fun outfit I had planned on wearing that weekend regardless of where I ended up. This My Violet dress looks very cute and sweet styled pink with white trims, but it's actually dedicated to Gloomy Bear, which is a Japanese mascot of a pink bear that looks like its just mauled something with very sharp claws. You might be able to see the embroidery of its claws on the straps of the dress, but you wouldn't see the head unless I wore the hood part of the dress. I also wore the gloomy bear headdress, which is a white rectangle headdress with an applique of Gloomy Bear across it--his dripping blood claws on one side and his pink cotton ball tail on the other. Very subtle, very sub-verse.  Pahl really encouraged me on the pink and white candy stripe socks. The shoes are incredibly boring and do not match--it was again for safety and comfort walking around the musuem. 

Danielle in the archway of the herb garden

Overall I had such a fun time during both weekends and I learned so much about recreational as well as work/life activities that New Englanders did in the 1830's. I really appreciated how these programs were part of the normal ticket price, which is about $27 if you buy online in advance, or $30 at the door. By being able to use my complimentary tickets, I was able to justify making even half days out of my visits, and turning around and spending that amount in food and/or a few things in the gift shop!  Old Sturbridge Village has lots of America 250th programs throughout the summer and into the autumn, so if that is of interest to you, please check out their offerings on their website.