Nearly Done.

A bit of inspiration--the March of the Guards to Finchley, by William Hogarth (1750.) George II might not have liked it, perhaps Frederick II had enough of a sense of humor to recognize some truth in the satire.

All the chaos and drunkenness of this work perfectly sums up my feelings toward the Fusilier regimental.  It makes my head hurt. I want it to be over.

Here is the back--fearful symmetry. Ideally the back tapes would have gone on before the lining was in....Only the body is lined.

The pleats on this coat are afterthoughts, tacked down along their entire length.

The cuffs get the same treatment as the lapels. The buttonholes and tapes have similar spacing, four to a cuff. It's heartbreaking to think these coats only lasted a year with the work that went into them.

The lower right corner of the Hogarth painting shows one of the the more common forms of recycling with old coats. The pioneer with the canteen is wearing a forage cap.

I've always wanted one of these. Old coat tails and lapel make a fine hat for fatigue duties. The embroidery is a copy of the Fusilier belt plate engraving. Decoration varied from regiment to regiment, usually just numbers.

Next, brown kersey overalls for winter service.

Stotting Part Two

The over cuff is longer than the under cuff, but has about the same diameter. That means it needs to be stretched, and the under cuff compressed to sew it on. Here it is with the edges of the short sides stitched together. Press the puckers out of the seam, and turn it inside out.

Now pull the over cuff, convex-side first, over the under cuff. The under cuff will curl and resist--scrunch it up so 1/8" of over cuff shows equally around the back edge of the under cuff. Match the over cuff seam to the bottom sleeve seam as shown. Use lots of pins and stretch the over cuff while stitching. The mouth of the over cuff should stick WAY past the sleeve opening.

Turn the entire sleeve inside out. Keep pulling until the cuff pops out as shown. Once it is evenly pulled out all the way around, the free edge of the over cuff can be sewn to the sleeve as shown. I'm using my hand to pull it tight.

Now look up inside the cuff, there is a crease previously ironed into the under cuff. Mark the crease with pins all the way around the outside.

CAREFULLY, turn the sleeve and cuff right side out. Pins mark exactly where the finished cuff folds back over the sleeve. Fold, pull the pins out, and iron with lots of steam. One down, one to go.The reduced seam bulk makes a huge difference. Time to add button holes, tape, and buttons.

Oh yeah, and if you accidentally have the sleeve twisted in your lap while you are measuring for buttonholes, and you carefully mark, outline, cut, and whip over a button hole on the INSIDE of the cuff (where it shouldn't be) It is pretty easy to sew the button hole edges closed again after all the stotting practice!

Stotting Part One

Time to put the cuffs on. Henry showed me a cool way to do this called "stotting." The sleeves of a regimental coat in this period should end 1/2" above the wrist joint. This might sound too short, but trust me.

 First: pin the under cuff piece to the sleeve opening, making sure the short edges match the lower sleeve seam. Pin the mouth of the sleeve to the long concave edge of the under cuff. The under cuff must be exactly the same size as the sleeve with no overlap. Pin it so the edges of the under cuff are touching (as shown.)

Now comes the fun part. Carefully sew the short edges of the under cuff together. Don't sew it to the sleeve. The cuffs on this coat will fold down to cover the hands in cold weather. This technique keeps the cuff seam from bulking up as layers are added.

If the long, convex, outside edge of the under cuff doesn't match when done, carefully trim it.

Next: whip stitch the concave edge of the under cuff to the mouth of the sleeve. Try and keep the stitches to within 1/16" of the edge. Once the under cuff is on, roll it down off the sleeve and iron all the seams flat.

The last step is to carefully fold 1/2" of the under cuff into the sleeve, as shown at right, and iron it all the way around. Now the cuff comes right down to the wrist. Next time, the blue over cuff gets added and it becomes a mini lapel: complete with tapes, buttonholes, and buttons.  

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.

Field Trip!

I spent a fantastic weekend with my pal and mentor Henry Cooke, helping at a workshop for 18th century regimental coats. Participants got a coat kit, cut to their size, and two days of expert help in sewing and fitting. This is how I learned to sew all those years ago, and I picked up some new tricks which  I will share in the months ahead.

Henry dressed three reconstructed figures of George Washington at various ages, that really have to be seen to be to be believed. He is one of the most skilled period tailors in the World. He also collects period clothing made by drunken and sober tailors alike. Needless to say, I worked for free.

Even my stuff looks better than this thing:

Made from horrific sandpaper-like broadcloth, this late 18th-century French jacket is unlined, and has sleeves similar to an early waistcoat. Henry thinks the neck shows signs of a military heritage. If so, it is a perfect example of recycling and reusing. The English definitely had their neighbors beat in the wool quality department.

The interfacing bits are random pieces of broadcloth (cut off pleats?) One of the pocket bags has adorable cross-stitch initials on it. A closer look reveals more curiosities:

There is only one working buttonhole in the front of this coat. Each pocket flap has THREE working buttonholes (bad neighborhood?) Francois must have had a nice waistcoat to go under this. Aside from the olive buttonhole thread, I love the fact that a poor guy has fake buttonholes on his work jacket.

ALSO: broadcloth covered buttons? Sounds like a huge pain in the ass, which means I'll have to experiment. Now if you were to leave my rum-soaked shop and go to the good part of town, you might see something like this:

This frock coat is made from Nankeen, produced in what is now Nanjing. The embroidery is likely Chinese, done before the coat was assembled. And yes, it is lined in hot pink silk. Yet ANOTHER example of how the Victorians ruined everything. The cotton textile is so narrow, the garment has multiple side seams. There are surviving 18th century embroidered "kits" for coats and waistcoats, that tailors could cut out and assemble.

Here is what the top of a pleat looks like on the inside. Water stains appear at the back vent. I can only image how pimptastic this coat looked when it was new. It has worked buttonholes and center back, reverse pleats like the linen coat I made (but much nicer.)

Nankeen was so popular, the natural warm color was widely copied by dyeing ordinary cotton in the 18th and 19th centuries. It's nice to see the real deal up close. I leave you with a few more pictures of this amazing coat.

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.

&%$##*&^%@!

So with the hooks and eyes secured over the form, and all the buttons buttoned this happened. Pinning the side seams makes the inside curve of the lapels so severe that the buttons are now too close together.

Note to self: in future, sew on hooks and eyes BEFORE the buttons. Time to cut all the linen tape holding the buttons and move each down a 1/4". I love sewing.

The original holes in the broadcloth will gradually shrink and be covered by the buttons. Next time: collar and collar buttonholes.