Time travel isn’t as impossible as it sounds.
Every other week, the “Historical Girls” gather at Edyne Vatt’s East Brainerd home to don a period dress, bend over intricate needlework, sip from dainty teacups and step back in time.
“You never know what period is going to be running around the front yard,” Vatt laughed.
It could be Colonial, Victorian or Civil War era, or the scene could be reminiscent of a chapter out of a Laura Ingalls Wilder book, she said.
Home-schooling mom and history buff Vatt has been leading the Historical Girls, an extracurricular club for local home-schoolers, for the past seven years. With three separate classes of 10 girls each, the word-of-mouth Christian group has a waiting list that stretches to 2015.
“I just combined the two things I really love,” she said, adding that she’s taught young girls music, dance and needlework for more than 20 years and has been a Civil War re-enactor for the past 13. “I love Colonial Williamsburg [in Virginia]. They try everything they can to give you that historical experience, and that’s what I’m trying to do.”
Vatt’s niche is 18th- and 19th-century history. The Historical Girls consists of a four-part cycle: participants start out in Colonial Girls, graduate to Prairie School, then to Victorian Girls and finally to Civil War Girls.
“History is about real people who really lived. That’s why I do this. I want people to understand what it was like for people to live that long ago,” said Vatt. “I’m hoping, if anything, we spark [the girls’] interest in history. It’s not a dry, dead subject, it’s a living thing.”
The ages range from 9-13 years old and up. Vatt’s 15-year-old daughter helps out at the two-hour meetings, during which the girls learn a period song, work on their needlework projects, listen to a history lesson from Vatt and even play historical or period games. And, of course, tea parties are a staple of each gathering.
The girls, often with the help of their parents, come up with their own clothing for the meetings, and, under Vatt’s guidance, complete service projects.
“We like to bring our fun to other people,” Vatt laughed.
The Victorian Girls recently visited the residents of Garden Plaza for tea and to sing and present a period dance.
In past service projects, the girls have put on a fashion show at an assisted-living center that displayed the period fashions from each era they study, and the Colonial Girls crochet blankets that they donate to those in need.