As I sit here on a crisp late August morning, I have pulled on one of the jackets I made this Spring, the brown cassimere for Pierre. It was to be his work jacket, to be worn over British small clothes while we worked at Fort Ticonderoga on their opening weekend. Needless to say that event didn't happen.
The jacket was finished though, and will be used as part of my dissertation collection.
The first weekend of Covid-19 lock-down, back in March, I went over to my favourite wool shop on the island of Montreal. The gentlemen who own this shop on the upper end of Saint-Hubert street carry the finest wool suitings and coatings from all over the world. I expect to come out of that store several hundreds poorer every time I walk in. I find the perfect cloth every time. This visit was no exception. This time, I bought the end of a bolt of brown cassimere. Part of it went towards the simple cut of a work jacket, the rest I will save for a short Fall '50s swing coat for myself.
I based the cut and construction on the blue wool jacket in Henry Cooke's collection. He was generous enough to share enough photographs to the 18th Century Menswear group I belong to on facebook that I was able to create my own version for Pierre. As there are no extant pieces in the Fort Ticonderoga collection that solidifies what the written record speaks of, I was kind of on my own with my decisions. I picked the cassimere because of the hand of the cloth, and it was available for me to walk home with that day. The cloth is also nicely fulled, so seam finishing could be carried out in the same manner as the jacket in Cooke's collection.
I cut the jacket as closely as I possibly could so that the remaining fabric piece would give me more options for a second garment. As you can see, that meant some piecing of the front facing. This jacket was constructed using various historical stitches and was entirely hand stitched and finished.
I chose a late period square welt pocket technique taught to me by facebook user Batley Royston of K&P textiles. Simply put, you cut the long edge, with a short downward clip on either end, this forms the welt. Once the pocket bag is inserted and finished, the short ends of the rectangle are buttonhole stitched through all layers. I did a whipped felling stitch along the top edge, the same stitch used to apply the facings to the front edges of the jacket body.
A simple back vent finished along the top edge with two rows of a spaced backstitch. The buttons used are simple flat pewter buttons created for me by Dale Wyn Roberts in Nova Scotia. Unfortunately, I do not have a photo yet of Pierre wearing the finished jacket. Now that the weather has turned, I might get him into his wool clothes for a few photos. I also finished the final tweaks on his highlander suit this Spring, so that photo needs updating as well.
The second jacket I created this Spring was a regimental jacket in the style worn by Butler's Rangers and other men who worked closely with Indigenous populations in New England during the Revolution. I was sent a kit with all the supplies for completing the jacket by Tommy Tringale of Billerica. This process was an exercise in patience, as I was supposed to bring a fitting muslin with me to opening weekend at Ti, but with the border closing, we had to create new and flexible plans for completing the work.
I began by sending the fitting muslin through the mail, and doing a virtual fitting over a facebook call. Tommy then sent the muslin back to me with the kit of supplies. I got to work.
I had a few images of other gent's coats to reference so that the one I constructed was as close to uniform as I could possibly make it. There was also a bit of a checklist of points that I needed to cover during the construction process. The cutting was the tightest I have ever cut. When you create several garments from a piece of cloth, you can get creative and save fabric over the length of the piece you are cutting from. When you are creating one garment, you might need a bit more cloth...or do some creative piecing to achieve the same end result. I constructed this jacket by hand using historical construction methods with the exception of the edges of the pocket bags.
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| The bits of the kit, and my pattern pieces. |
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| the edges of the pocket bag were the only machine work |
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| Photos of the pocket inserted into the top edge of the half lining. |
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| My label carefully hidden inside the welt of the pocket. |
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| The lining was felled in place. |
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| Many buttonholes were worked along the facing edges. |
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| The finished jacket fronts. |
I built the sleeves at this point, and then let the sit for a bit, as I was wondering a bit, what would/should the cuffs look like. I originally built them as full working cuffs, but the construction notes called for a non functioning cuff. I chatted with Dr. Matthew Keagle at Ticonderoga for his thoughts before I ended up rebuilding the cuffs to be non functional and a single layer of white wool over the green sleeve.
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| The sleeve with the functioning cuff... |
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| The finished sleeve with the non functioning cuff. |
The collar gave me a bit of a headache, or it may have been the fact that I had a pre-existing migraine that caused me to also have to rebuild the collar. Having no cloth left from cutting meant that I had to carefully unpick everything and apply generous amounts of steam to get version 2 into a better usable shape to reapply. I am very happy with how it turned out in the end. And far happier with the roll achieved.
Here is the full jacket, hanging on my smaller dress dolly. Hopefully I will get photos of Tommy in his new jacket and in full kit for my records, and to also fully trust him when he says it fits.
At this point, I switched gears and went through a similar fitting process for a pair of linen gaitered trousers for AR Watts in the DC beltway area. Some photos for you of those...
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| the front fall |
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| Because this linen frays easily, I started with a simple machine buttonhole to hold things together before working a properly stitched buttonhole over top. |
These were made using a combination of machine and hand stitching so that they would hold up in the wash. Machine on long seams, and for seam finishing, and hand everywhere else, because yes, it matters. I ran out of heavy linen buttonhole twist before the end and had to improvise, because shipping thread to Canada is cost heavy and something I'd rather not do unless there's other stuff coming with it. I pulled out a weaving thread, it slowed me down a bit, but the end result is perfectly fine. You do what ya gotta do sometimes.
Now, I am making regency inspired modern clothes for a friend, working on other actual regency clothes for a local client, and working on my dissertation project, Mrs. McQueen's wardrobe. I have also started a second stocking for Jay Howlett at Colonial Williamsburg.
And writing, lots of writing, and editing, because that needs doing too.
