22nd September 2004

Getting started

After a space of a couple of months, I've decided to pick this up again. Why? Simple: I'm spending four days at Kentwell shortly and the weather's turned cold. Since sewing beats pneumonia, it's time to actually finish this coat.

Every costumer has their weakness, and mine's sleeves. I can cope with seperate, laced on sleeves, but the sewn in type drive me nutty every time. I guess it would help if I had a dress form, or someone else who could drape fabric on me but, alas, today there's noone around but the cats. And, although they're good at sleeping on the fabric, their paws aren't really designed for pinning.

So it looks like I'm doing this one on my own.

As I mentioned above, the red fabric I had in mind is rather nice. It's a good wool - I'm sure it'll be warm and waterproof - in a nice madder colour. It's rather too good, though, to use for a project that has a good chance of going wrong upon the way.

So I'm going to use some scraps of brown wool to make a trial run. I'm going to make the shorter, cropped jacket illustrated at the top right of this page. I figure the sleeves will be trouble enough. Let's keep the body as simple as possible.

I started by generating a pattern for the body. I took a bodice pattern and copied it onto a piece of calico, guestimating where I would have to add in fabric to fill in the neck line. I cut these pieces out making sure I cut them rather too big, and then I pinned them together.

Then I put my kirtle on, praying that noone would come to the door. I slipped the trial run on, scribbled adjustments on the bits I could reach, and tried to just visualise the adjustments I wanted on the bits I couldn't. I took it off, recut and pinned it, put it back on again, and kept repeating the process until the body looked about right.

Then I draped the sleeves. This took a certain amount of swearing but, after three attempts, I was happy that the sleeve was fitting the armhole correctly.

I then decided to make life difficult for myself. A modern coat, for example, has a sleeve that is basically a tapered tube. It's straight all the way down. But many of the sleeves in Janet Arnold's Patterns of Fashion aren't cut like that. Instead they're cut in two roughly banana shaped bits, so they are in effect precurved at the elbow. One seam runs up the back of the sleeve (connecting with the side back seam on the body of the coat) and the other down the front.

When you think about it, it makes sense. I want to be able to work in this coat. I usually work with my arms bent. Thus it makes sense to make the sleeves to fit. It should have been an easy adjustment. It wasn't.

After four hours of beating the fabric into submission, I ended up with something approaching a viable pattern. Good enough to use for a trial run, anyway. The picture to the right gives you an idea of how things ended up: I've cut out the brown wool and laid it onto the lining fabric. Like the wool, this is a remnant left over from another project. It's a fairly coarsely woven medium weight linen in a straw yellow colour, and there's just enough for my purpose. I like it when the fabric cooperates.

24th September 2004

I now have both wool and lining cut out and ready to go. The next stage is to decide how to put it all together. Normally I assemble garments by making up a package of wool/interlining/lining and then whipstitching them together. I don't want to do that in this case - the wool is sufficiently thick that, were I to add in an interlining I don't think I'd be able to move in this at all.

I was idly flicking through Janet Arnold's Pattern's of Fashion the other day when I stumbled upon this:

"In other examples the seams were backstitched and the turnings folded back over the interlining and hemmed down to keep them flat."

That quote is from page 126 and it's illustrated in Fig. 197. I decided that this method of construction was worth a try, not least because I've never done it before and it seemed like a useful skill to acquire.

I started by pinning the wool and linen together with the wrong sides together. In otherwords, the side of wool the I wanted visible in the finished garment was visible when the lining was pinned to it. No turnign things right side out here. Then, treating wool and linen as one piece of fabric, I placed two panels together with the wool sides together. I back stitched along the seam, the needle passing through linen-wool-wool-linen in that order. Once I'd finished all the seams I trimmed back the linen nearly up to the seam line. That meant that when I folded the seam allowance flat against the garment I didn't have tufts of linen sticking out beyond the wool. This trimming was the most tedious part of the process. The final stage was to sew the wool to the lining. Because it's good fulled wool the edges are unlikely to fray, so there was no need to worry about tucking the raw edges under.

I'm pleased to say it worked very well. It sewed up relatively quickly and the seams appear strong. They lie smoothly and look 'real' somehow, like clothing rather than costume. That's always a plus in my book.

The edges of the jacket were treated in a similar manner - the wool was turned turned over the lining and sewn down to it.

The jacket is fully assembled and I've sewn down the seam allowance on about half the seams. I'm not worried if I don't get it finished before the weekend - it's wearable with the seams just back-stitched together and I can finish the rest of it off once I'm at Kentwell, if I wish.

Another advantage of this technique is that, if you wished to, the back-stitch could be replaced by machine sewing. That would speed things up enormously and, once the seam allowances were sewn down, the machine stitching would be invisible. I decided not to do that in this case - it was a small enough garment that handsewing wasn't too time consuming - but it's good to know for the future.

29th September 2004

Friday afternoon was spent desperately finishing off the red jacket prior to leaving for Kentwell. I didn't quite make it; I was still running up cord to fasten the thin in the pub on friday night. But, inspite of that, the jacket served it's purpose.

Friday's work consisted largely of finishing off the raw edges. I then had to figure out how to finish off the thing. Many of the men's upper body garments painted by Breughel show a series of ties fastening them. It seemed as good a way as any, so I decided to go with it.

I began by sewing four pairs of eyelets on the left-hand edge of the bodice. These were matched by four ties (made using a lucet) which were tacked to the oppossing edge. These ties could be passed through the eyelets and tied in bows. This worked suprisingly well: the ties stayed securely fastened whilst I worked.

I was pleased, too, with the curved sleeves. Although these ended up being snugger than anticipated, I was still able to work in them. Bear in mind that the kitchen (which has no electricity, gas, or running water) involves hard, physical work with lots of lifting and bending. The curved sleeves really helped the jacket feel comfortable.

The main problem with this jacket was the fit. It was simply smaller than I would have liked. I put this down to the fabric I used to make it. The wool and the linen were so much thicker than the calico of the toile that they significantly altered the fit. I had adjusted the pattern to take account of that, but obviously not enough. Next time I'll know better.

I'm planning on taking a break from this sewing project for a while. I will return and finish the red jacket at some point but, as Kentwell is now over for another year, it'll have to wait it's turn.