Coat Series Step 3 - Finish the Front Panels

With 18th century clothing, you do all the hard stuff up front then you piece it all together when you're done. It's a very strange process to modern sewers, who are used to putting the garment together first, then doing all the finishing work.

Diderot describes the process as first completing the buttonholes, then adding the buttons, and finally adding the pocket bags and pockets. This is the best order to follow because it allows you to fit your semi-finished coat after finishing the buttonholes and make any adjustments to the side seams before placing the pockets. If you finish the pockets before the buttonholes, your pockets will not be centered if you have to make adjustments.

Buttons and Button Holes

Contrary to modern sewing practices, buttons and buttonholes should be finished before sewing together the coat and installing the lining. This approach helps minimize the stitching showing on the inside of the coat from the buttons and the holes. If you buttonholes are not functional your lining will be completely flawless. Otherwise you have the option to piece the lining in between the functional holes, or simply cut small slashes in the lining and then secure the openings in place with a slip stitch.

Button Stand Prep

The button side will require the installation of an extra piece of interfacing for the button stand to provide extra support. I covered this in the interfacing write up but will cover it again here.

The button stand piece should be about two times as wide a the button, and it is installed on the right front of the garment. Baste the piece in place from the inside, and sew the outside edge down (you can sew it to the main interfacing piece). After securing the button stand on the edge, you are should sew a tiny running stitch outlining that is seen in many coat on the inside of the coat. The distance of this stitch from the outside of the garment should be the size of the button plus 1/2 inch, giving you 1/4 of space on each side of the button. The finial result can be seen in the pictures.

Draw on the Buttonholes

Draw the line line for your bottom buttonhole only in chalk on your coat. You will then need to draw another 9 button holes on the coat between the bottom button hole and the top of the coat. Depending on your height, the distance between the holes is somewhere between 2-2 1/4 inches.

Although the buttonholes appear to slope when worn on a person, they are actually all parallel when drawn on a flat surface. To easily draw parallel lines, I use a quilter's ruler and tailor's chalk. Getting the proper distance in between the holes may take some trial and error but luckily tailor's chalk comes out when rubbed with a scrap piece of fabric.

After drawing the lines, you will need to mark the start point of your buttonholes (make it consistently  between 1/4-1/2 inch from the edge; I do 1/4 inch), the end point of your buttonholes, and the point marking the end of the buttonhole opening if you are including decorative long work.

A few things to remember about buttonholes:

• Fashionable 18th century button holes are approximately 2.5 times a large as the button. If you have a 1 inch button, your buttonhole should be 2.5 inches long. 
• Although your buttonhole may be 2.5 times as long as the button, button opening average 1.5 times the size of the buttonhole on 18th century garment. That means for a 1 inch button, only 1.5 inches of the buttonhole is open, the remaining 1 inch is closed and purely decorative.
• Not all buttonholes are functional, depending on the period and manner of construction. Only the top four buttons are functional on most 1770's era coats, which means the remaining 6 buttonholes are purely decorative. 

Sew the Buttonholes
I'm not really going to cover the stitching technique, since I'll just tell you the same thing that numerous other people will tell you. Instead, here's a video from Fort Ticonderoga that highlights the button stitch method. The key to a good buttonhole is even stitching and tension on the thread. Don't worry if your first buttonhole looks terrible, they'll start to look good after you've sewn a thousand.

You will notice that Stuart mentions gimp thread. You don't really need to use it for purely functional buttonholes with no ornamentation. If you are doing any sort of long work, I strongly recommend it. It will make your buttonholes pop and look so much better than without. I use colored 18/3 Londonderry Linen thread, which can be purchased from various online book binding supply stores.

I cannot stress this one point enough: DO NOT CUT YOUR BUTTONHOLES WITH SCISSORS! Use a chisel. Even the cheapest chisel from a hardware store is going to work better than a pair of scissors that will stretch your fabric.

If any of your buttonholes are functional, they will be sewn through the outside fabric and the interfacing only at this point. There are two methods of attaching the lining, which I will cover later in the series.

Button Placement

Once the buttonholes are sewn, pin the two wrong sides together to determine the correct placement of the buttons. Mark the placement point for each button in the center of the button stand using chalk. For functional buttonholes, you'll be able to stick a piece of chalk in the opening and make a mark at the center point for the button. For non-functional holes, you'll need to mark the edge of the buttonhole and estimate where the button should sit on the button stand.

If using using cloth-covered or thread buttons, simply sew the buttons in place. If using metal buttons, you will punch holes in garment using an awl then secure the buttons in place from the inside of the garment using a piece of linen tape. The tape will run along the button stand from the inside, then go through the hole to the outside of the garment, run through the button shank, and then go back inside the garment. After running the tape through all the metal buttons, whip stitch the tape in place. 

Check the Fit

The proper tight fir that hugs the body and then tapers after the fourth button.

Now that you have the buttons and buttonholes finished, you need to check the fit. Checking fit is very important because you are going to start cutting into the coat when you do the pockets. If you don't check fit and end up needing to adjust seams after doing your pockets, it will move your pocket flaps off center, and you want your pockets to be centered

Baste all of the torso pieces together and make sure that everything fits properly. It should be TIGHT without constraint. If it fits like a modern coat, it's too loose. Take in or extend seams as required and make the necessary adjustments to the side seams on the fabric.