Faux Pocket Flaps

This fusilier coat will be the death of me. With all the hooking and unhooking, rotating, and overall tightness, large hunks of plastic started falling out of my sewing form. The top of the neck opening is no longer straight. Hopefully, it will all hold together.

At the end of the 18th-century, British enlisted men's coats had fake pocket flaps, complete with regimental tape and buttons. The feeling was lowlifes should have as much trouble getting to their pockets as possible, but the coat should still look good.

Here is the flap pinned to the coat, the tapes already in place. The top edge is folded, and a running stitch holds it on.

When uniform re-issue time came around, regimental tailors cut the old coats apart, removed the tape, turned them inside out, and cut them shorter to clean up the ragged edges. The pocket flaps were also removed.

Second order coats (and light infantry/highland coatees) had vertical flaps--like wings. No buttonholes, but the buttons get the "hole poked, secured with linen tape from the backside" treatment. Since this is the drunk tailor, there must be a wtf moment after hours of labor.

 After folding the pleats, the left pocket appears a bit too far back. On the plus side, the tapes are slightly too far forward. Time to remove 1/8" of pocket material. Now it looks like I know what I'm doing.

Collar

English regimental coat collars in this period mimic the lapels in construction. Here is the under collar attached to the coat with the seam pressed open. The lining and interfacing peek in at the bottom.

As with armholes and sleeves, the neck opening of the coat has to be the same length as the long under collar edge. Too long is much easier to fix than too short.

The blue over collar overlaps the under collar by an 1/8". Here is the back turned up, the point is common on late 18th-century collars. To reduce bulk, the left and right collar pieces are sewn together edge to edge. Don't try this with anything but Kochan broadcloth. Make sure to fold the collar down BEFORE attaching the over collar. Pin it in a couple places--important to match the over and under collar fold so it doesn't pull the under collar outward.

The over collar covers the top pressed open under collar seam at the neck edge. The lining edge gets turned under, and covers the bottom under collar seam allowance. It is secured with an underhand hem stitch. Now comes the tricky part--the collar buttons to the top-most lapel button.

Mark and cut a horizontal buttonhole in each collar edge. They get the same treatment and tapes as the lapels.  Next time faux pocket flaps.

Fusilier Lace

There are a couple ways to make a rectangle pattern loop and the 7th Regiment's is the hard way. The larger of the two loops requires 8 3/4" of lace (the smaller is around 8".) Here are two of the larger pieces ready to be folded.

Only one line of stitching holds these things together, the rest is folding and ironing. If it goes bad, unfold it, press it flat, and start again. If making lace for a non-working buttonhole
skip down to step 7. The open end gets hidden under the button.

Match the ends of the lace and pin it at a 45 degree angle. The pin is 1/4"
 in from the stripe side edge. This is the stitch line.

Ino, I used a sewing machine. I'm terrible. It won't be seen when it's sewn down.

Here is the first fold, pressed. The tail needs to be cut off and Fray Checked.

Flipped 90-degrees, here is the tape held against a finished one for size.
Fold the other end back on itself  as shown.

Iron the second fold. This is the height of the finished rectangle: 1 1/8"

With the lace right-side up, press a 45-degree fold to complete one end.
The long sides should be parallel and the inside edges nearly touching. 

Now fold the whole tape in half, to locate the center of the unfinished side. Here
it is marked with a pin. The center keeps the tape symmetrical when folded.

Back to the coat--flip the tape upside down, center the pin on a finished
buttonhole and make two folds, 1 1/8" apart. Make these as even as possible. 

Getting close--two more  folds are ironed. The finished length should be around 2 1/2".

Iron the other side flat with two more 45-degree folds to finish. Here it is from underneath. 

Next time, hooks, eyes, and linings.

Lace and Buttonholes

The 18th-century British army LOVED lace. Musicians were practically wrapped in the stuff. The 1768 Lace Book at Windsor Castle documents the official pattern of each regiment on a sample of the coat facing cloth. Roy Najecki was kind enough to document it on his website. Of course, some period paintings show different lace than the regulation--the perils of research.

It's heartwarming to see a military organization, at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, going bonkers over all the great stuff available to distinguish themselves. Not just all the different colors of wool lace, but folding and pairing, combined with coat facing and lining colors, badges, and numbered buttons all made them unique.

The Royal Fusiliers were no exception. While they had a rather tame pattern, with only one blue stripe, their method of folding was annoyingly distinctive. As far as is known, they didn't pair their buttonholes, so there are ten equally-spaced on each coat lapel, four on each pocket flap, cuff, and back, as well as two on the collar. All but the pocket flaps and back are functional.

I made this rough template from a scrap of cardboard. It measures the distance between buttonholes on the lapel and the exact distance of the buttonhole location from the lapel edge (and some other stuff I can't remember.) After the top and bottom buttonholes are measured, a simple chalk line shows where to edge stitch and cut.

Since the buttonholes will be lined with tape, super-craptastic contractor grade buttonhole stitching will suffice. Edge the chalk line with blue thread, cut it with an appropriately-sized chisel and whip over the raw edges. I know, it looks bad, but the King doesn't pay by the hour.

Here is one of the little buggers folded up (more on that later.) There are two different sized loops on the 7th Foot coat. The ones on the pocket flaps and cuffs are slightly smaller. Obviously, it will be bigger than the actual buttonhole. Start by pinning the inside tape edge to the outside end of the buttonhole.

A running stitch in white thread secures the inside edge, then square and pin the outside and repeat the process. British military contractors were crazy enough to add a THIRD line of stitching to the center, but drunk Irish tailors ignore such things. Once all ten are on, use linen tape to secure the buttons to the interfacing on the inside of the coat.

Make sure to iron the snot out of the tapes to flatten them out. With all that said, this is a lowest bidder job. It's perfectly acceptable to use tapes only closed on one side for non-working buttonholes. The buttons on the pocket flaps hide the open end, so one sided loops are fine there. Next time, the mystery of lace folding.