Here is my first attempt at the JP Ryan Jacket pattern (view A) in pink 100% wool that I made to wear at French and Indian War events.  I made it up in less than a week so I could wear it to the Feast of the Hunter’s Moon in Lafayette, Indiana, and there are some fit issues I’m still working on.  I did make a toile, but it was sleeveless; my first mistake. Somehow I managed to not notice that the shoulders are much too big for my shoulders, which I really should have anticipated.  Also I think I was a bit more conservative in my seam allowances than I needed to be, resulting in an unpleasant baggy fit through the body.  That will be less of a bother to fix than the shoulder and sleeve issues.

Feast of the Hunter's Moon 2009

Note that the jacket does not have cuffs yet. I ran out of time and just pressed the raw edges up inside the sleeve  so it was temporarily wearable.

MOMCC Fall Conference 2009

Now we have cuffs, but note that the sleeves are too short. The cuff begins at my elbow resulting in a cuff that sticks out instead of down when I bend my arm as can be seen in this shot of me goofing off in the hotel room.

This is my best "lazy milkmaid" look

I believe that the waist of the jacket is a bit low in the back (I’m short-waisted) but fixing the shoulders might help that a little, otherwise I might have to go adjust all the seams at the waist to try to make them flare out a bit more.  Unsure about this alteration because it doesn’t bother me half as much as the shoulders and sleeves being so strange.  I might have enough pink wool to cut a longer pair of sleeves, or I may have to piece them because after taking another look at paintings and drawings of this style, I want my cuffs to be bigger.

Finished!

While taking some pictures of the whole outfit, I realized that there were several tiny issues that needed to be taken care of before I could really call this one done. Here are the pictures anyway, and it is seriously, for real this time, finished! (except for the red acrylic thread at the back waist but shhh! I’ll fix it.)

The problems were (surprise!) all button-related. The shirt needed another button at the neck, I had more buttons on one of the breeches leg openings, and I fixed the shirt cuffs to accomodated the nifty shirt buttons I got from Wm. Booth, Draper. They rock my socks.

Who doesn’t love a quilted petticoat? Even I can’t resist them, and I don’t much care for quilts besides Jane Sassaman’s and well hers are amazing so what can I do?  This project is inspired (of course) by the white satin quilted traveling suit in Patterns of Fashion. As a lover of historic clothing I am required to love this outfit. That’s ok. I bought some charcoal silk taffeta online that turned out to be much more black and less blue than I was hoping, and it was only three yards, and I didn’t want a black jacket, and how cool would a black quilted petticoat look? Super cool. Trying to make a decision about the interlining took a long time. I was going to use some worsted wool that my mom had in her stash for quite a while for the wadding, but it turned out to be motheaten, so while parts of it can be mended, I didn’t want to use it for what was already such a labor-intensive project.  I considered doing combed wool, but I don’t have a large dedicated workspace so leaving tufts of wool lying around for my dog to eat is not ideal. Maybe next time.  Most extant petticoats I’ve read about use either wool felt or combed wool, I ended up buying Warm & White cotton batting. It’s not fluffy like roving or combed wool, more like a cotton felt. I bought it mostly out of frustration with online options and because it was in my local crafty store.  For the lining I’m using some very light weight white silk taffeta.

I hand washed all the silk and then ironed it and cut it into period – appropriate widths  (18 inches) and sewed them up. Next I cut the cotton interlining into 2 pieces and sewed them together leaving lots of room for pocket slits.  Then I sandwiched the three layers together and basted them near the bottom edge.

fabric sandwich!

black taffeta, white cotton batting, white taffeta, icky green basting thread for visibility

cats sit *on* your sewing to show love, dogs just lie there sadly *near* your stuff

The quilting design is not the Snowshill one, I’m crazy, but not crazy enough to figure that out IN BLACK ON BLACK for my first attempt at quilting! For the border I’m copying the pink satin petticoat on page 23 of Costume in Detail. I started by making a cardboard guide for the curve of the hem design and making several rows of basting where the border pattern will go to keep the layers from shifting. Then I used a fabric marker (which doesn’t really show up that well) to make a guide on the fabric one panel at a time. I’m a little surprised that I don’t need a hoop to stabilize the fabric. A quilting frame would be nice though.

tracing the curve onto another panel

waves/feathers/leaves/pretty!

So I’ve still got quite a way to go, but I’ve gotten past the scariest bit and am even used to the 10-12 stitches per inch!

I’m out of brown silk thread, so I suppose it’s time for a progress report. Making my own pattern based on two different pairs of breeches wasn’t so scary after all, though there are a few changes I’ll make next time. I opted not to do pockets, mostly because they would always be covered by the long waistcoat. They are done except for the knee bands and one of the leg flaps needs buttonholes. After they’re done I don’t think I’ll know what to do with myself!

Alice in 18th century shift and stays, with a petticoat of possibly 18th century appropriate fabric. Very *Ren Faire* but very cute.

Rose in her Saxon dress. I have plans to reattach the skirt to the bodice (I did it in the middle of the night on a train… not my best work!) and it’s a bit loose on her. That kind of dress was worn very tight and provided its own support, so it should be more snug.

The Kansas City Renaissance Festival was super fun, though not all of our costumes were done. I finished Alice’s kirtle except for the strap placement and sent it off to her, but the USPS decided not to deliver it on time even though I paid through the nose to rush-ship it to her.

no grommets here! brown silk thread & linen cord

back view of almost-finished pink linen kirtle

ANYWAY! I ended up lending her enough random *faire garb* to make a cute if historically ambiguous outfit. My mom whipped up a very cute Venetian outfit (even though one faire-goer was like “oh you’re Burgundian!!” WHAT??!?!) though I think she’s still planing all the fancy embellishment for her camicia. Rose’s dress was finished by myself on the 10-hour train ride from Chicago to Kansas City, and she looked fabulous.

bodice with inside-out sleeves!

much better! now it just needs more trim and hooks & eyes

She even had a cute Saxon-ish hat to go with it and prevent sunburn! I made the ultimate sacrifice and made sure everybody else looked great and I just bummed around in street clothes. In short, a good time was had by all.

my dear husband, looking quite fancy in his new waistcoat

Kirtle pics & KCRF recap with more pictures soon!

Progress! Photographic evidence! It’s the amazing technocolor internet!

This outfit for my husband has been in the works for a REALLY LONG TIME. At first I wasn’t in a particular rush to work on it because of that old wives tale about knitting for your boyfriend, but he’s gotten more interested in historical costume and since we’re going to a few 18th century events this year, it only seems fair for him to have something nice to wear as well. For materials I used hankie-weight white linen for the shirt & linings, brown linen, silk thread, about 1 million pewter buttons.
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This lapse in updates really does mean that progress is being made! I can’t believe how many fabrics choices have fallen through! I need to get back to pleating so here’s a quick and dirty update on where everything stands:

Me:
After screwing up my hemd cutting diagram the first time (I was trying to cut 2 trapezoids using the least amount of fabric possible) and then going back to it it turns out I cut it too big in the first place so that was salvaged with zero piecing! Go me! I can’t find that painting with honeycomb smocking at the neckline, so I’m just going to leave it plain (just pleated) till a later date when I can research and plot out a really awesome pattern. I’ve got the front and back sections ready to be attached by sleeves which I still need to cut out and pleat up. I’m waiting to do that because I’m almost out of hankie weight linen and I have to make Alice a smock and probably some false sleeves as well.
As for the gown, my fabric (which miraculously made it here despite being first sent to New Mexico due to a zipcode error) is very nice and I think I’m going to look like a bumble bee (yellow + black stripes).

Rose:
The blue silk fell through so we picked out a really nice sage green silk that was shipped to her for some reason. Hopefully she’s mailing it today.

Alice:Of the original fabric we picked out, only one piece came: the black velvet for the turnbacks. So they’re done, and she’s picked out new fabrics which are on order. The kirtle is 99% done instead of 100% because I like to try to fix mistakes the lazy way and then go back and fix them again. It can be quite time consuming. Case in point: the skirt is made up of three panels, one center front and two back panels. The front panel has a dip in the middle for the center waist, so of course I cut three front panels. I realized this before I sewed them up, but instead of inserting tiny little triangles to fix the mistake, no, I’m to clever for that. I cut even more off each back piece so that it is no longer curved but straight (and now much shorter than the front). Sew it up, pleat it, try it on, and what do you know? The back looks HORRIBLE! It’s several inches shorter than the front and just looks awful. So last night I unpicked all the stitching on the back pleats, figured out how to fix the shape, and now I just have to pleat it back up. The eyelets on the bodice are done, and it just needs to be attached to the skirts and then sent off to Alice for shoulder seam placement. Hopefully she can handle sewing them down permanently.

Mom:
I haven’t gotten a full update from her, she says she’s working on her camicia and she ordered fabric.

The 1530s Madness continues. The fun refuses to stop. Both of our computers are dying slow horrible deaths so I’ve been even lazier about adding pictures to the 1530s page, which makes it very boring. I’m guessing by the end of the week I’ll have some progress pics up. I’m also having some coding problems with making spaces between entries on my pages, and I can’t seem to figure out. So for now there will just be lovely asterisks dividing entries for clarity.