The Wanderer Returns

It’s fair to say, I’ve been an absolutely awful blogger of late. Everything happened at once, leaving uni, moving house, two new jobs, off on holiday, and now another new job for the next few weeks. It’s been all go. But I’ve finally sat down with a sprinkling or energy which for once is simultaneous with a (mostly) working internet. There is so much to catch up on. We finished the dagged hoods (previous post) and moved on the the main part of the outfits; the gambesons. A sort of historical puffer jacket worn under armour.

Just for a bit of fun, we made the mock-up (above) out of this completely inappropriate floral fabric, very many we thought. The sides don’t match because we tried different patterns of quilting. I prefer the side with less diagonal in it personally.

Aside from the quilting, the actual pattern was very simple. Just a standard straight jacket. But for each pattern piece, there was a long process to go through to get it ready. It was made of four layers, a beautifully soft brushed cotton lay next to the skin, a wadding, and then two layers of linen. The wadding was an authentic cotton, it was so much nicer to use than the normal man-made stuff. As the gambesons were going to be broken down, we used two upper fabrics so that we could really work into the top one, and where holes were formed you just saw a slightly differently coloured linen; rather than straight to the wadding (below).

When all the layers were so completely pinned we almost faced the catastrophe of empty pin pots, it was time to quilt. First with a standard straight stitch to hold everything in place, and then with a decorative one over the top. The second layer of stitching is what can be seen above in grey, large stitches which the machine goes back over 3 times. It took a long time going backwards and forwards like that, but it was definitely worth it, the quilting was much more visible (see difference between the two sleeve panels below). We also added strips of leather between every other row of stitching, for an extra dimension.

After all the panels were ready it was assembled together. So that the panels flowed together nicely, we waited until this point to add the leather pieces which would cross seam lines, which especially across the back gave it better continuity. I hand stitched cotton twill tape over the top of every single seam on the inside, grading down and enclosing all the seam allowance.  It took hours, but was completely worth it, it really finished off the inside. Unfortunately I completely forgot to take a picture.

After I had done that, Denise bound the edges in leather, and our work was complete. 

Not quite a shirt.

I don’t have the time, or the money to make a full shirt for under the jacket and waistcoat. But the collar is a very important part of the costume and it can’t be completely forgotten, so I’m making a false shirt top. This is only the toile, which is the reason for the the oh so lovely floral fabric.

Fairly simple in pattern, but I still haven’t quite got the hang of the construction technique yet. Curves have never been my strong point and this one is really tight. Adding interfacing really helped stiffen it though.

Something to keep her Warm

The performance I am making the lady and footman costumes for has been lengthened slightly, it now involves the two characters walking outside for part of it. It’s only for a short while so the footman costume is warm enough, but the lady only had a short sleeved dress; not suitable for a March evening.

So I made a very quick toile for a spencer. As usual the pattern doesn’t go small enough, so I reduced it further. It’s still a bit big, but I’m planning on making it out of velvet which is obviously thicker.

I know they’re right, but the sleeves look a bit ridiculous to me, maybe its the green, but they’re really not the most flattering.

More green for the Waistcoat Toile

I started off with a historical pattern for this, but it was absolutely massive, and way too long, so this is a estimated combination of a much reduced version of that, and the jacket body.

It needs enlarging a bit around the arms and neck, but other than that its pretty good.

Kermit the frog Breeches

Here is the toile for the breeches, I used a historical pattern. Its lucky they came with instructions because working out the flap at the front took me a while. I shall take this opportunity to say thank you to the inventor of the zip fly, well done, brilliant invention, why did it take so long?

The waistband will lace up at the back. The arse is absolutely massive, but apparently that’s accurate, even if it does loo strange. The legs are not uneven, I only pinned one of them closed.

I’m absolutely loving using green for my toiles, nothing like a pair of Kermit the frog trousers to brighten up the day.

3rd times a charm…

I’ve had an absolute mare with the footman jacket. I’ve ben working on it for the past two weeks, drawing the pattern, making toiles, failing, repeating. I did this loads and no matter how much I measured it kept coming out too small. Maybe its lack of sleep or I’m just the ultimate scatter brain, but it took about a week for me to work out what was going wrong. I was using Hanna’s (my female model) measurements, not Lee’s (my male model, above), not sure how I managed to make such an obvious mistake for so long. Anyway, its fixed now, and so I finally have a toile that fits well enough I can bare to show it to the internet world.

It needed a bit of adjustment, but mostly it fitted okay. Though Lee did complain it was very tight under the arms. I’m not sure how much bigger to make them, I don’t want him to be uncomfortable, but historically the arm holes were a lot tighter than we wear them.

In this image the left hand side has been taken in and the right hand side hasn’t. It definitely hangs better.

This is an option for the buttons, its either these or fabric covered…I still have to decide.

Starting the Footman

I started work on the footman’s jacket today, I was going to finish the ladies outfit in its entirety first, but I still haven’t settled on a fabric for it, so i thought I would make a start on this. It’s quite daunting, I’ve never worked on male clothing before (other than tunics). I found a full size version of the pattern above, but my model is a little on the small side, and the pattern was for a person over 6 foot. So I thought I would do better to work straight from the book. I had to completely ignore the scaling it gave, it would again have been way too big.

The process involved lots of grid drawing and took a couple of hours. I have decided a pattern master is an absolutely amazing piece of kit that I definitely need to own.

I very carefully made sure all the different bits matched the measurements, checked, and rechecked, then cut and stitched. Took time over tracing it out and ironing the side pleats.

After all that (well, an hour or so) I slipped it on…

How on earth did I not spot it before? The back was about 10cm too narrow! I knew I was having a particularly scatter-brained day, but I remember looking a the back pattern piece and thinking it looked narrow. How come I didn’t measure it? I astound myself sometimes, never mind though, this is what toiles are for.

Regency Gown Toile

I used a combination of patterns and alterations to make this. And seen as I haven’t made a sash yet its tied with a head scarf. Its calico on the top half and an unidentifiable black substance for the skirt.

Obviously it needs a few inches taken off the bottom, but other than that its a pretty decent fit. It is being worn over the corset here, and it covers it all up. I’m trying to decide whether to drop the neckline slightly?

Wollaton Corset Toile

So four hours, one vanilla yogurt, and several pin-pricks later, here is the first fitting of the toile. I’m pretty pleased with it as a first go considering all the alterations I made. I don’t have the right busk yet, at the moment all I have in there are two together which are too short and too thin, so not the best guide.

The only major alteration was that the straps needed shortening, I’d predicted this because it was the only area of the pattern I didn’t alter. From the research I have done, the corsets were almost entirely single spiral laced, I’ve never done that before, but it was a pleasure to only have to do half the number of eyelets.

It is bagging out around the waist, I’m not sure quite how to solve this. The real thing will be made of stronger fabric than calico, so maybe that will help. But I might try shaping the waist a bit more.

It did not feel like making a corset at all to do this, what with the sleeves and the lack of bones, only four in the entire thing.

I’m hoping the wrinkling here at the front will be solved with the right busk, also I need to remember to do fittings with a braless model, I’m sure there was a sneaky bit of padding going on here.

Time for the Paper Armour

My costume has a helmet, a pauldron (for the shoulder) and a gauntlet. I an using plastazote to make them. First I needed to make cardboard mock-ups to get the patterns right.

Here is the front and and back of the helmet, with hindsight cello-tape would have worked better than masking tape.

To make the prototypes I basically made myself a nest of card, tape and armour books.

I need to figure out how to fasten the pauldron to my models shoulder, either D-rings and ribbon, or double sided body tape.

I didn't take a picture of the gauntlet before I dissembled it to take a pattern from, but there are lots of overlapping layers like there would be on a moveable gauntlet.

Waddy-waddy

I really wanted the quilted skirt to be padded, to give it depth and a sense of 3D, but I couldn't pad it evenly all the way through because that would make the top too thick, or the bottom too thin. Luckily I discovered that the wadding is made in layers, and you can effectively grade it just by tearing off layers to different points.

I traced the pattern of feathers I drew on the calico onto pattern paper, with a few little neatenings along the way, then traced it all back onto more calico for the toile.

To create the different layers of feathers was a bit of a puzzle. I didn't have enough of any one of the (very kindly donated) silks to cover the entire wing expanse, so I am using slightly different ones for each of the 3 layers, they are like 3 complicated patchwork pieces. I think the slightly varying tones will give it a nice effect as well.

As it was only the toile I tried out about 6 different ways of attaching the pieces together, find out how to do it, see which one looked best, and how long each would take.

Surprise, surprise, it was the by far the most time consuming had sewing that looked by far the best. But never mind, I enjoy hand sewing (luckily). After that I put the now complete pieces right sides together, sewed round the edges, and tacked the carefully cut and graded wadding onto one side.

Then it was just a question of turning the whole thing inside out, quilting on the feather shapes, and gathering the waist onto the stand. The above is what was produced from all this, with some sari fabric underneath to show where the netting train will sit.

I was pleased with the overall shape of the wing, and the way the wadding worked. But I was unhappy with the feather shapes, they were just too pointy and made me think of fire breathing dragons rather than elegant swans. So I did some cutting, pinning and tacking of extra bits into place to see how curves would look. I definitely prefer the outer edge, and the inner one is slightly better, but now its a bit too flattened. I think the best one will be somewhere between the two, so like the pointed ends, but with a rounded tip.

And onto the skirt...

Its hard to know exactly where to start with the skirt, it not being a typical shape. So I used this pattern as a base.

It has a long train section, a version of which I think would look lovely underneath the folded wings.

I shuffled it around a bit, I ignored the stay section of the pattern and fitted it over the bustle. I does give a nice shape, but not quite what I wanted.

So I got a large piece of calico, pinned, tucked, and nudged it around into place.

Then I cut out the shape that I wanted. And went off to analyse swan wing anatomy for a while to get the feather shapes.

And after about an hour, drawing and redrawing, I sketched it roughly onto the calico.

It looks pretty decent I think, time for the next stage of toiling.