There are two ways to attach pockets to 18th century coats. In the first method, perhaps the easier method, you simply sew the pocket flap in place to the outside of the garment, tack up the seam allowance and then you're done. The second method creates involves a bit more work and creates what is called a seamed pocket, which is far more elegant in my opinion. I'm going to take you through the steps of creating a seamed pocket.
The main difference with a seamed pocket is that the pocket flap becomes part of the coat and is in line with the body instead of simply being sewn to the outsize of the garment. The construction requires a little more work but your pocket flap will look much more elegant and less bulky.
If you are making an unlined garment, I highly suggest using a seamed pocket, since they allow you to cover up all your raw edges on the pocket bag using the seam allowances from the pocket flap. This feature is seen on every unlined 18th century garment that I have seen.
Step 1. Determine Pocket Placement
Pocket placed centered on a line between the buttonhole and bottom of side seam.
The positioning of 18th century pockets is very easy to determine. (If you are using a commercial pattern, ignore the pocket placement on the pattern because it's probably not correct.) The pocket is placed on a line that goes from the edge of the bottom most button hole to the bottom of the side seam. Use a quilter's ruler and some chalk and draw that line on both front pieces. You will have to determine where the edge of the bottom buttonhole should be on the piece with the buttons or else the pocket placement will be uneven.
Easy right? If you're making a welted pocket, the pocket will go right on this line. If you're using a pocket with a flap, the top corners of the flap will rest on this line.
Use the curve of the pattern piece to draw a line marking the flap placement.
The flap will be centered on this line. Measure your pocket flap from corner to corner and subtract that measurement from the length of the pocket flap line. Divide the remainder by 2, and that will give you the distance from edges to place the corners of the pocket flap. Measure from the edges of the pocket flap line, and mark where the flap corners should be placed.
Step 2. Draw Flap Lines
Once you have the corner points marked, place your pocket pattern piece with the corners touching those points and draw the curve on the fabric with a piece of chalk. This is where your pocket flap will sit. After drawing the line, baste an even running stitch along the chalk line. You will be using this line as a stitching guide later, so make it evenly spaced as possible.
Baste and even running stitch on the flap line. Seen from the inside.
On the pocket flap piece, measure in from the seam allowance and sew a similar even running stitch.
Baste the same stitch on the pocket flap stitching line
Step 3. Pin the Flap in Place
Now that you have running stitches sewn for the flap on the body and flap pieces, you pin the flap to the body piece. Placing the right sides together, use the running stitches to match up the seams and pin in place. You can go overboard on pins if you want, you are trying to match up two seams that are naturally going the opposite direction. Stiff fabrics will fight it. Try to get the seams pinned as flat as possible or else the body above your pocket will be a little lumpy.
Pin the flap from the outside. Sew it down from the inside
Step 4. Sew down the Flap
This is the most important thing to remember. Turn the pattern piece to the INSIDE and sew the pocket flap to the body using a back stitch. Don't ask me why, but if you sew from the outside, the body is lumpy every time. Always sew from the inside.
If you want, you can remove your pins as you sew to check on your work and make minor adjustments.
Step 5. Cut the Pocket Bag Opening and Press the Flap Allowances
Now that your flap is attached, you will need to cut the hole for the pocket bag. Working from the inside, make a cut approximately 1/2 inch from the flap seam to make an opening for the pocket back. As you get toward the edges of the flap, make a 45 degree angled cut to join the bag opening to the corners of the pocket flap seam.
Fold the pocket flap down flat over the body, tuck the seam allowances inside the garment so that they lay flat, and press all of the seams so that everything looks nice.
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.
The interfacing is, without a doubt, the most important part of an 18th century coat or waistcoat. It keeps everything where it is supposed to be and makes sure that your front panels stay erect and do not sag under the weight of fabric and buttons. At minimum, you will need to interface the front edges of your coats, but you should also interface the pocket flaps (and sleeve flaps if you are doing a mariner cuff).
For your interfacing, you will need pre-made linen buckram, or you can make your own from cheap linen fabric. I make mine because it ends up being cheaper in the long run, but it does add a delay to your sewing process. I'll cover making buckram in another post.
Placing the Interfacing
Where interfacing is placed in your coat depends on the fabric that you are using:
For Linen, Worsted, Silk, or Cotton
If you are using a fabric that the edge will fray on i.e. linen, worsted, cotton, etc. your interfacing will be cut the match the edge of the garment and will be set back from the edge of the fashion fabric right tracing seam allowance line. I use 1/4 inch seam allowances, so my interfacing is 1/4 inch from the edge of the fabric. The key is that when you fold the fashion fabric back over the interfacing, the crease forms the finished edge of the panel.
For Wool Broadcloth
If you are using a fabric that will hold an edge i.e. wool broadcloth, the outside seam of your fashion fabric will not have any seam allowances and will be left raw. If you cut your interfacing piece to match the true edge of your garment, you risk that the interfacing will stick out once finished. You will need to trim about 1/4 inch off the outside edge of your interfacing piece, and place it 1/4 inch from the edge. You will lose a tiny bit of stiffness on the edge of your garment, but it will be made up for with the underhand stitch that you will run later to join the lining to your fashion fabric.
Securing the Interfacing
Before you can do any actual sewing, you need to do some pre-sewing to make sure that your interfacing does not shift and is sewn in flat so that your garment does not come out looking lumpy. This pre-sewing is called basting, and it is meant to keep everything in place.
Basting is essentially a less stabby version of putting a ton of pins in your garment to keep everything from moving. The nice thing about basting is that it keeps everything in place perfectly without constantly stabbing you and it makes your garment very portable to work on because you don't have to constantly worry about where all the pins have gone. The bad thing is that it takes a while to do, and you will eventually pull it out.
Basting is a simple process. You are simply sewing a very spaced out running stitch down the length of your interfacing to secure it. You run your basting stitch though the fashion fabric and buckram for a few threads, then you space the next stitch about an inch or more apart. You want to use a thread that is light and that you can easily see.
I cannot stress this last part enough: to make sure that everything lays flat, do all bastings on a table keeping the garment as flat as possible. You will not realize it at the time, but the fabric is moving constantly if you try to baste with the garment in your hands. The result will be that your panel is lumpy and you have to start all over again.
To make sure that everything is secured in the right place, I pin the outside of the interfacing in place, then baste down the edge until everything is secure, and remove the pins.
Next, I turn the piece over so that I'm looking at the fashion fabric. I then do a series of bastings on the right side of the fashion fabric, moving across the interfacing to ensure that the outside of the garment is flat and that it is properly lays flat across the interfacing.
Finally, I turn back to the inside of the garment, and baste the inside edge in place. The final result looks something like the picture above.
I know this seems like a ton of work for nothing, but your garments will come out looking much better for it.
Sewing the Interfacing in Place
Now that you've done all this prep work, it's time to finally sew the interfacing in place. For linen, silk, worsted, or cotton: fold the outside edge over the interfacing and secure in place using a whip stitch. There is no need to fold over if you are using broadcloth; simply whip the outside edge of the interfacing in place. In either method try to avoid stitches coming through your fashion fabric.
To secure the inside edge, you will be using a zig-zag stitch, which is also called a herringbone stitch. Here is a video on how it's done.
This fancy little stitch works much better than a whip stitch because it draws everything in tight and it will make sure that your interfacing does not move at all. This is a strange stitch because it moves backward. Your needle will be pointed in the opposite direction from the direction that you are sewing. You get no points for big stitches here, try to only catch a few threads for your zig zags. Historic garments show about four of these per inch.
When doing this stitch, one point of the zig-zag goes through the interfacing only, and the other side goes through the fashion fabric only. Make sure that you only catch a few threads on the fashion fabric to show as little thread as possible. I keep my outsize stitch so that it nearly touches the interfacing, and the inside stitch is about 1/4 inch into the buckram.
Extra Interfacing for Coats
M. de Garsault and Diderot talk about putting an extra layer of interfacing running the length of the buttons on coats. Although, some see this as an optional step, I see it as a must to provide extra stiffness behind the weight of the buttons.
The period documentation calls for using "stay tape," which I think may be a mis-translation from French, because I could not imagine using 1 1/2 inch or wider linen tape to make a interfacing strip for my buttons. I also don't know where to find linen tape that wide. I personally have not seen linen tape used to back buttons in period garments, so if you've seen it: send me a picture!
Securing the button backing is much easier than the large interfacing. You do not need to do the whole whipping and zig-zagging to put in in place because there are other stitches coming later that will overly secure it.
To secure the button backing, I simply do a basting stitch using a back stitch at the securing points instead of a running stitch along each edge to make sure nothing moves. There is not need to go through the fashion fabric at all. Simply run the back stitch through both layers of buckram and call it a day.
Ending
Your interfacing is finally secure. Huzzah! I know that it's tempting to pull out all the bastings right now, but don't do it. You put all that hard work into it, and it's giving your garment a little extra security.
I toyed with making this a pre-step. In the end, I decided that pre-treating your fabric and cutting your pattern is actually very important to your finished product and can affect the overall garment and should be included as a step unto itself.
Choosing a Pattern
There are many various patterns out there from a few vendors that do a good job. My advise: you get what you pay for. If you are looking to make a costume, go ahead and buy a pattern from a company that makes costumes. If you want to reproduce 18th century clothing, buy a pattern that cites its sources.
You can also create your own pattern using any of the various books I've mentioned in previous posts. You can find a multitude of tutorials on how to blow up a book patterns through a simple google search, so I won't go into it here. A friend of mine uses an old overhead projector to display the pattern on the wall and then traces onto pattern paper based on the required size.
If you want my two cents, I'll let you know what patterns that I use. Selecting and Treating Your Fabric
The most fun, yet stress-inducing part of sewing is choosing the fabric. Use natural fabrics that are suitable for your impression. Avoid synthetics as much as possible (a small percentage occasionally can't be avoided in some wools). Before going out and buying that fancy silk brocade, decide who you are going to be portraying and what that person would be wearing.
Honestly, silk sucks. It doesn't breathe as well as linen and wool, and you can't do immersion laundering on it either. My two cents, linen and wool are your best friends. They are suitable to most classes and are generally durable fabrics. Linen is great in the summer for cooling and can be washed by hand or in your washing machine (if you're confident in your stitching). Wool regulates the body temperature, lays great, and is very easy to work with.
**As I rule, I do not fully immerse my coats for washing because it removes the stiffness from the buckram. I will spot clean the outside or odorous parts, and, if required, replace the lining to rid the smell.**
If you plan to wash your linen garment, wash your fabric before cutting the exact same way that you plan to wash your finished garment and hang to dry. Linen will shrink a bit, but not that much. I do not wash wool, but if you think that the color will bleed from your body heat, it's a good idea to soak your wool in hot water and then hang dry to remove that excess dye.
Tracing Cutting Your Pattern
None of my pattern pieces have seam allowances. I draw them on myself at 1/4 inch to be more consistent with extant garments. Modern patterns use 5/8 inch seam allowances, which is too big for the 18th century (you can use whatever seam allowance you want; it's really your preference). Not only that, but outside edges of wool broadcloth garments should be left raw and have no seam allowance in the 18th century fashion. Here is my pattern process:
For Linen or Worsted Wool (Fabric that Frays) 1. Lay out fabric in folded in half length ways (making a long, thin rectangle)
2. Trace the true pattern pieces pieces using tailors chalk, charcoal pencil, or heat erasing quilter's pen, etc. starting with the large pieces of the body, then the smaller pieces.
3. Add 1/4-inch seam allowance to all sides of true pattern pieces.
4. Pin all pattern pieces and cut
5. Repeat for the lining
For Wool Broadcloth (Fabric that Does Not Fray)
1. Lay out fabric in folded in half length ways (making a long, thin rectangle)
2. Trace the true pattern pieces pieces first using tailors chalk or a charcoal pencil starting with the large pieces of the body, then the smaller pieces.
3. Add 1/4-inch seam allowance to only the inside seams of true pattern pieces. Any seam that is not joined to another i.e. lapel seams, skirts seams will be cut at the true pattern piece line.
4. Pin all pattern pieces and cut.
5. For the lining: Repeat steps 1 and 2, but at Step 3 add 1/4 inch seam allowance to all sides for the lining. Pin and cut.
I'm pretty free with information. For some reason, those in this hobby don't seem to be. I'll tell you anything if you ask though. I often get asked how to actually make clothing step-by-step in the period method, and how it differs from modern sewing other than doing it all by hand, so here it is straight from the horses mouth. In this series, I plan to take you through the basic steps on how an 18th century coat or waistcoat is made in the period method, including the steps and stitches used.
In case you want to do your own research, or you think I'm full of crap. Here are the sources that I use for my methodology:
Art du Tailleurby Francois Alexandre Pierre de Garsault (1767) Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiersby Denis Diderot (1771)
