Finished Waistcoat and Playing a Tailor

Got the waistcoat done in time for my event at Fort Frederick portraying a refugee. Didn't get my diet done in time though 😂 Maybe if I wasn't spending all my time sewing, I would have enough time to exercise. I'm pushing the "tight without constraint" a little bit. I may not be constrained but my buttons sure are.

For this event, I was portraying a refugee tailor who was forced to leave his home in a state of undress, thus only the sleeved waistcoat and no coat. As per usual, no pictures of me were taken at the event, but my wife snapped this one at home before I changed back into 21st century attire. It was a fun event, I spent most of my day working on mariner cuff flaps for for my waistcoat and making death head buttons and talking to visitors.

It was a nice day and a great event. I'm hoping to be doing some new stuff at Fort Frederick in the next few months, but those plans are in the very early stages at this moment.


UPDATE!!! Someone got a picture of doing things! See ma, I don't just dress up like a weirdo for the fun of it.

Word of advice to anyone sewing in a historical manner. Never sit tailor style on a bench. The edge will dig right into your ankle bone and completely cut of the circulation in your foot. Then you may or may not try to stand up and fall over because your foot is completely numb. Spoiler warning: you will fall over. Anyways, here's us sewing at Fort Frederick during the "Repair to the Fort," Pontiac's War event. As always, I'm making a stupid face.

Moving Right Along

Made decent progress over the past few days. Interfacing is completely secured on the front and back. Installed the turnback panels on the front edge, and I installed the pockets. My cat got a lot accomplished too. He managed to cover the entire thing in his hair.

Here's a shot of the interior of the waistcoat. The plain linen lining will be slip stitched to the turnback panel once it's installed to conserve fashion fabric. As is stands right now, this waistcoat will have 29 button holes on it. That may reduce to 25, if I change up my sleeve closure plans.

In the 18th century all buttonhole and buttons were functional. I'm currently researching if jiggers (a button on the inside of the coat to hold the interior panel in place) existed in the 18th century, but have not found evidence thus far. There will be a row of 10 buttonholes on the edge of each front panel, and the buttons will be on the inside edge.

The next big thing that I got done were the pockets. Pockets are something that drive me up a wall. I am a measure twice, measure again, and measure a fourth time just in case kind of person, and pockets just do not required that amount of intricacy. It drives me up a wall. I won't got into too much detail about the process of putting together pockets because there is a video of Henry Cooke sewing a pocket out there on YouTube that is much better than anything that I could put together. Check it out. 

Instead of a tutorial, you just get the finished product, cat hair and all. Deal with it. 

On our next episode: Button hole purgatory. 

Progress

Got started on my double-breasted sleeved waistcoat this weekend and things are coming together. My fabric came this weekend, and I have to say that I absolutely love it. I'm using an indigo colored kerseymere from Burnley and Trowbridge, and this fabric is amazing. The color is beautiful and I love how this fabric lays. It even marks well. Too bad that I got purchased the last of it and it was a one-off because I cannot tell you how awesome this stuff is. In a somewhat true-to-history fashion, my fabric came in a 1.5-yard section and two 1-yard sections that I will have to make work to cut all of my pieces.

I got off to a good start this weekend. I cut my linen pieces for the interfacing for the fronts and pockets then coated them with Tragacanth Gum to turn them into buckram. The first coat went fine. After I put the pieces out to dry after the second coat, we had a sudden storm show up and I had to run out in the rain to get them. Luckily, I was able to rapidly dry my pieces with a hair dryer so they weren't ruined and stiffened up nicely. I bet this sort of thing occasionally happened in the 18th century, and I wonder what they would have done in place of using a hair dryer?

These first two images show progress on the pockets. First, you baste the interfacing to the fashion fabric to keep it in place. Then you fold the edges and secure the fabric to the interfacing. Finally, you attach the lining by folding under the seam allowances and sewing an underhand stitch along the edges to secure the fabric. The top example is the finished pocket flap. The bottom example shows the pocket before the lining is attached and the basting stitches are removed.

You can see how nicely the flap cleans up once it's underhand stitched and the basting is removed. I try to keep the stitches small and uniform to keep them like original garments. Unfortunately, occasional imperfections in the linen thread make a clump show up in the outer stitching. Some people do not interface their pockets (I originally didn't), but I've found that they stay in place better and retain their shape on your body better if you interface them. 

If my waistcoat were a turkey, there is no chance that it would be dry with all the basting that I did. Can we first get into how ridiculous the interfacing piece looks? If you want the entire front panel to say in place you have to interface it. Everything about this waistcoat is ridiculous, and I love it. 

Cutting the interfacing piece was a bit interesting. to achieve that interesting shape, I traced the outside edge of the front panel piece on my linen for interfacing. I continued around to trace most of the neck and a few inches of the bottom of the piece. Next, I took the interfacing piece from the single-breasted waistcoat that this pattern is modified from, and lined up the back edge of that piece to the matching location on my pattern and drew the back line for the interfacing piece. I set the interfacing back 1/4" and basted the outside edge of the interfacing.

This was the first project that I've gone baste crazy on the interfacing and it is completely worth it to make your front much smoother and reduce the chances of loose fabric. When basting, I suggested working from the outside edge in to ensure that everything goes down smoothly.

 Personally, I baste from the wrong side of the fashion fabric on the edges of the interfacing to make sure that everything is in place properly, but base from the right sides in the big empty spots to make sure that the fabric is laying flat. If you have nice hard interfacing, you can't tell if your fashion fabric is laying flat against it unless you can see it. Doing the basting on two different sides leads to some pretty cool patterns on the fabric though.

On our next episode, we will be finishing the fronts by securing the edges and interfacing, adding the pockets and flaps, sewing on the turn backs, and sewing the button holes.

Drafting My First Pattern

This was my first time drafting a pattern, and I didn't completely screw it up! I screwed it up some, but not completely. In theory, I know how to draft a pattern from a book using known measurements. Of course, I have to choose to create something that I have never seen a pattern for in my life for my first drafting project.

Backup for a second. Before I could even start creating a pattern, I had to figure out what I was planning to do. This pattern is going to be for a double breasted sleeve waistcoat. Double breasted waistcoats seem to be common enough as seen in military and sporting attires. From a pure review of extant garments and original images the sleeved variety seemed less common. But then again, who knows what's going on under a frock coat sleeve.

From looking at images and extant garments, I noticed two prevailing styles of double-breasted waistcoats. In both styles the waistcoat starts as single breasted and then transitions to double breasted around the waistline. The first involves an angled flap that starts close to the center closure and gradually widens to the center shoulder at the top of the flap. In the second style, the flap dramatically comes out from the closure and forms a nearly vertical flap from the waistline to the shoulder. Both styles can be seen in my drawing and are highlighted in the these portraits and engravings.

I elected to create my pattern based on the angled flap transition, as I am basing my design off the sleeved waistcoat seen in the included engraving. To create the pattern, I am using an existing waistcoat pattern that I already have and modifying the front panel to include the flap to make it double-breasted. Otherwise, I am using all existing pieces from the current pattern.

To start, I traced the current front panel piece on my paper, which you can see in the above picture after the fact. I then determined the point that I wanted the flap to start at on the waistline, and drew a 2 inch line perpendicular to the pattern edge to start the flap.

To create the top portion of the flap, I thought (and this is where i screwed up) that the flap should close on the collar following the same curvature and length of the main body collar. To accomplish this, I flipped the pattern piece and placed it on top of my tracing to that the two center points touched. I then adjust the angle until it was symmetrical. (For reference: the correct angle for me was when the corners of the bottom inside piece of the front panel were touching.) I then traced to the top of the collar on the flipped pattern piece, and accounted for the seam allowance in the corner. Finally, I joined the bottom edge of the flap to the top edge of the flap to create this beauty.

 Unfortunately, this piece was only 95% correct. What I failed to realize is that duplicating the collar angle exactly, puts the flap up too high on the shoulder and it makes the angle of the flap too dramatic. The angle to extend the flap was correct, but the flap was far too long.

After making a muslin, I discovered this error and corrected it by first marking the point on the collar to where I wanted it to end, and the point on the flap edge where I planned to have the collar opening start from. I cut between the two points, and the results were exactly what I wanted. (Well nearly exactly; I could stand to lose a few LBs. My muslin is a little tighter than usual.)

Now that I've adjust the cut on the muslin, I will go back and adjust the pattern piece to match. Then I can get started on the actual waistcoat... and a diet.

P.S. Yes, I know that I've got the top flap backwards in my picture. It's easier to pin that way as a lefty.

Double Breasted Waistcoats

I first saw one of these on a visit to Colonial Williamsburg. The double breasted waistcoat is the primary dress of most of the male shop workers, and I have to say that I absolutely love the look of them. There is just something about the transition from single breasted at the bottom, to double breasted at the top that just says: "Damn! That's a cool waistcoat."

I've been looking for something more convenient to wear when sewing in 18th century attire. Although many engravings show tailors sewing in shirts and sleeveless waistcoats, I've wanted something that I could potentially also use in my impression of Jacob Good, militia captain and affluent tavern owner, for undress wear. A workman's jacket seemed a bit too plain and utilitarian for my Good impression, so I was treading the waters of a standard sleeved waistcoat until I remembered these beauties.



These waistcoats can be seen in all sorts of places for all classes as well. There are several examples of men dressed for a hunt wearing them, but they can also be seen on shop owners and in military wear. The attached military portrait is of General John Burgoyne. If a double-breasted waistcoat is fancy enough for "Gentleman Johnny," its fancy enough for Jacob Good.

I absolutely love the finished product seen in this blog: http://historicallyspeaking.driftingfocus.com/2012/01/20/completed-project-linen-double-breasted-sleeved-waistcoat/

I will be basing my design off of this complete reproduction as well as Gentleman Johnny's waistcoat.  It will have a similar button design and placement to the Historically Speaking reproduction, but I will include complimenting internal fabric like Burgoyne's waistcoat. I plan to make it using indigo kerseymere, available from Burnley and Trowbridge, the internal color is yet to be determined.

The learning experience for this project will be drafting my own pattern. There are no commercial patterns available for a double breasted waistcoat, so I will have to make my own. I'm not quite ready to dive head-first into the deep end though, so I plan to use and existing pattern that I have and draw on the additional portion on the front to make the closure. This sounds good in theory, so it will probably go terribly in execution.