18th Century Coat Series: Introduction

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 Tailleur by Francois Alexandre Pierre de Garsault (1767)
Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers by Denis Diderot (1771)

The Cut of Men's Clothes: 1600-1900 by Norah Waugh (2015)

Costume Close-Up: Clothing Construction and Pattern, 1750-1790 by Linda Baumgarten and John Watson (1999)
The Workman's Guide to Tailoring Stitches and Techniques

Pattern Hack: Cut Off Those Seam Allowances

Two posts in one day. What am I thinking? Perhaps I'm not and that's why I'm taking the time to pontificate more than my usual amount. This pattern hack is simple, terrifying, but will make your clothing so much better. Cut the seam allowances off your pattern pieces. Just do it!

Modern patterns usually call for over large 5/8 inch seam allowances, which is way too big compared to the tiny seam allowances on original garments. Costume Up Close mentions that a study of seam allowances showed that most were somewhere between 1/8-3/8 inches depending on the garment. I split the difference and go with 1/4 inch. To achieve this, I trace the pattern piece, add the seam allowance, then cut.

If you are confident in your exactness of tracing, you could always trace each piece twice in opposite directions. The traced lines then become the stitching lines for the pattern pieces. Then all you have to do is guesstimate the seam allowance but cutting about 1/4 inch outside of the lines.

The other reason that I completely cut off the seam allowances is to accommodate making garments out of wool. Period wool garments typically have raw wool edges for the outside parts. Meaning, the broadcloth edge is not folded under like you would do with linen, cotton, or worsted. Why? It saves fabric and it shows off that your broadcloth is of a quality that it will not unravel. Trust me, nothing looks quite as sexy as a raw edged wool garment.

When using broadcloth with a raw edge, you have the added complexity of remembering which seams are part of the body and need a seam allowance, and which are the raw edges and do not. Trace twice, cut once.

Pattern Hacks: Do Your Research

Before you can even start, you should do your research. I don't mean month and months of it, but you should have a basic understanding of how the clothing is constructed. Here's a little secret, techniques varied from tailor to tailor in the 18th century so there are various correct ways to do something. Find what works for you. I am going to suggest three books. I have more in my library, but these are what I would call my must reads.

My Book Suggestions

For a breakdown on garments, I suggest reading Costume Up Close by Linda Baumgarten. The Forward section related to construction and stitching is probably the most useful three pages that you will run across. The analysis of the garments is exceptional from a deconstructionalist perspective. My only complaint is that the pictures are black and white, so not much detail can be gathered from the images.

For actual period instructions, check out the translated section on the tailor from the Diderot and d'Alembert Encyclopedie. This is a fantastic source for garment construction. The text not only instructs in clothing construction, but also the cutting and fitting portions of tailoring. The language is a bit confusing if you are unfamiliar with 18th century instructions and terms, but the the instructions are straight forward.

The final book that I suggest is the Workman's Guide to Tailoring Stiches. It's not the most user friendly book, but the stitch details and instructions are fantastic. I put this one last for a reason because you should read it last. After absorbing the information from the other books, this book shows you what stitches to use to put it all together.

My Museum Collection Suggestions

The second part of your research is looking at original garments. Several museums have massive collections of 18th century clothing, but only a few of them are looked at in fine enough detail as I would like. I want to see the inside, up-close-and-personal details on all of the clothes that online collections cannot provide for each item. The collection of Colonial Williamsburg and the Victoria and Albert Museum provides a good breakdown of materials used in each item, and they occasionally provide the detailed images that I desire for some of the items.

Other good sources are The Met, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Royal Ontario Museum, and of course check out Larsdatter.com and 18th Century Material Culture for a consolidated offering of original garments.

Pattern Hack Series: Introduction

Alright, so new (to this blog) idea. Let's hack some patterns to make the resulting garment more historically accurate. American Duchess does it all the time for ladies clothing, but I don't know of anyone doing it for men's clothing, so I will. I've lamented a few times with my wife that I wish there was a men's equivalent to The American Duchess Guide to 18th Century Dressmaking because men's attire is so much different in construction than ladies but equally as confusing if you don't have the experience. Ultimately, I'd love to write one. (Maybe if I write loud enough someone will offer me a book deal?)

So what the hell am I talking about? Pattern hacking? What is that?

There a few good patterns for creating 18th century clothing out there. You can typically tell the good ones because they cite the original garment that it is based from. The pattern pieces provide you with all the requisite pieces to reproduce a period garment. The problem is that the vast majority of instructions given for most patterns follow modern clothing construction and do not follow the 18th century process. The purpose of this series is to show you what I do to use those pattern pieces to make a more historically accurate 18th century garment and leave you looking Macaroni AF.

Coat Pocket Placement and Buttonholes

Pocket Placement

An unfortunately often overlooked detail in reproduction 18th century clothing is the placement of the pocket flaps, button hole and buttons. This detail, though small, can really make or break the look of an outfit. Most spectators would not know if your clothing was made out of inaccurate fabric, is cut incorrectly, or is of the wrong decade, but if your pocket is in a weird place they'll be able to tell that something is up.

Pocket and button placement is actually fairly simple. It should follow a straight line. If you draw a line from the bottom most button(hole) to the top of the side vent, the top of your pocket (or at least the top corners) should be right on that line. You can see that illustrated on the pattern to the right and again on the picture of the coat front that I'm redoing (pardon the terrible looking pocket flap; it's part of what I'm redoing). The same guidance is true for waistcoats. 

I have seen far too many frock coats and waistcoats that look absolutely wonky because the pockets are either way too high or way too low. It may be a small detail but spectators notice. It has nothing to do with knowledge of historic clothing. The logical symmetry just looks off and people take note.

Pattern Hack: A Note on Button Holes
I have a love/hate relationship with buttonholes. I love how a finished, properly placed buttonhole looks, but I hate sewing them.

In Art du Tailleur, M. de Garsault instructs that buttonholes be spaced about two inches apart on coats and waistcoats, which is a good general guidance. Most extant frock coats have 10 buttonholes, so you may find that spacing your buttonholes exactly two inches apart gives you with extra space between the top hole and the collar. I found that spacing the holes 2 1/8 inches a part gives me perfect spacing for 10 buttonholes. I came to that conclusion after plenty of experimenting, which can be seen by the various chalk marks on the coat front.

Drawing the button holes is fairly simple if you have a quilting ruler with a grid pattern on it. Once you have the first hole drawn, you simply draw the next one parallel to it 2 1/8 inches above it. Keeping them parallel causes the buttonholes to angle in relation to the curved lapel as you move further up the body. I find that most commercial patterns place the bottom button hole correctly, but they lose the proper spacing as you move up the torso so using this method creates a better looking coat front.

Another detail that is overlooked in reproduction patterns is the size of the buttonholes. They are too short. The pattern that I use calls for 3/4-1 inch buttons and then has lines for 2 inch-long buttonholes. In the 1770s, a fashionable gentleman's buttonholes would be about 2.5-times the size of the button. I am using 1 1/4 inch buttons on this coat, so the holes are 3 1/8 inches long. I'm gonna look Macaconi AF when this thing is done!

In a later post, I plan to cover my method for doing long work buttonholes, but I think that I'll leave it here for now.