What were some unusaual uses for colonial clothing? Were they made of weird material?
You are searching for information that is so specific that you have to be prepared for the possibility that none of it may be online. Or some may be, and some may not. In addition to searching on the Internet, you also need to make best friends with the reference librarian(s) in your local or college library!
http://www.sou.edu/library/searchtools/
At this webpage, you can go immediately to the search sites (first three columns across the top) -- or even better you can scroll down until you see the section called HOW TO SEARCH THE INTERNET. Those are the links to start with. You'll not only learn how to come up with good search terms, but also how to evaluate the webpages you get as results. Some will be good and others will be garbage. You need to know how to tell the difference.
My favorite way to search is to go to Google's advanced search page
< http://www.google.com/advanced_search?hl=en > and put my search words or phrases into the first or second search box (either "all the words" or "exact phrase"). However, there many other strategies for searching you can use, and the HOW TO SEARCH THE INTERNET section will help you best.
I went there and searched for colonial clothing and here are the results:
http://www.google.com/search?q=colonial+clothing&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a
If you don't find what you need, then think up different search terms and try again. Sometimes it takes several or even many tries before you find what you are looking for. And then again, remember that it might not be online.
=)