W is for Waistcoat

I wasn't joking when I said things were going to slow down around here, was I? :) I've been working away, finishing up all the little odds and ends like buttons, hems, etc., and finishing my gown. I've posted about my dress on my new all-purpose blog, V is for Vintage - so if you're interested, please check it out over there!

A couple nights ago I had Chris put on the whole outfit as a first "dress rehearsal". Remember how I was talking about trousers a couple months ago? They're about halfway finished, and we fit them, but he was feeling a little nervous about wearing them. It's a lot of costume to try out all at once, which I completely understand. We decided that instead of him wearing the new trousers, he'll wear some cream high-waisted 1930's style pants he already has - they're fly-front, and the legs are fairly wide, but so what. (kinda funny that he'll be more comfortable in those kooky pants instead of the other kooky pants, but that's how it is. :)

Now that I'm off the hook for his trousers (for now), I think I have time to slap together a waistcoat. It'll be mostly hidden under his coat and I'm just using random fabric from the stash, so I'm just cutting into it without fitting it first. Funny enough, the only appropriate fabric in my stash was the leftover cream wool from abovementioned 1930's pants, so he will be well-coordinated!

Like the shirt and trousers, I'm using the waistcoat pattern from Kannik's Korner. Once I get all three sewn up, I'll be curious to see how well they all fit together (do the top of the trousers meet the bottom of the waistcoat, etc.)

I'm making View C1. Because that's the most dashing.

During the "dress rehearsal", I had him put on a vest from his closet , and I marked where the front of the tailcoat hit. We both decided that his waistcoast shouldn't be too long (not more than an inch or two longer than the front of his tailcoat), and comparing the pattern to the vest, it will be shorter than the tailcoat. That's fine, so we're leaving it alone. Quick and dirty!

Don't forget to account for seam allowance
if you compare a pattern to a garment!

Fitting the ACTUAL COAT!! :)

Hal & Betty - LA Balboa Dancers, 1939

This past week has been busy! Last weekend we drove up to San Francisco to visit my sister and do some dancing - and in some exciting news, yours truly is the 2010 North American Balboa Champion! Okay, Chris and me both, not just me. That sounds much more impressive than it really is...but then, that's usually the case with Titles. 

Enough with this mid-20th century junk, let's go further back in time.

I've gotten the tailcoat body assembled and the collar attached - looks pretty nice, if I do say so myself! I love love love sewing with this melton wool. It's smooth in the machine, presses beautifully, and is even a dream to cut. I hate cutting! I've adjusted the brightness on the pictures so that hopefully you can see the detail. The actual jacket is deep black, not splotchy. My tailoring book actually recommends using a dark fabric for your first tailoring project, so that mistakes are less likely to show. Good call!

As you can see, I went with modern construction techniques, machine sewing the inside and flipping it right side out. If I had known I was going to use that method from the beginning, I would have picked easier/less pointed collar shapes. The M collar point would be much easier to handstitch together on the outside edge - but I felt that I couldn't just do the collar and not do the rest.

I'm not thrilled with how wide the gap is between the collar point and the lapel - I think that on my mockups the points were closer together, almost touching. I think the difference might be partially because of the thickness of the fabric, and maybe something to do with the roll line/breakpoint placement? Anyway, the right and left sides are even, so that's fine. Something to worry about next time.

I used French Collar Canvas from B. Black, and boy is that stuff heavy-duty! I doubt I'll use it again, and instead opt for a medium weight hymo. But I don't have to worry about his collar drooping!

In the back, I took in a little at the shoulder seam at the armhole, because it was gapping away from the body. That's why the seams don't match at the outer edge. To compensate, I might set the sleeves in toward the center back a little further, but this was an Era of Small Backs, so that should look good.

I haven't touched the tails yet, but already the wool is draping in the back much more nicely than the muslin did. Love that wool melton!

Tailcoat Sleeve Cuff

As I posted last time, I find the tailcoat sleeve cuff intimidating - and still do, even after working on it. I'm just not sure how it's supposed to work, with an overlap but no slit/placket above the cuff like on a shirtsleeve, so it's the construction aspect that's tripping me up. I'm just winging the whole cuff thing because the only references I can find for this style of cuff are portraits (so not much nitty-gritty detail), but it seems like there was enough variation in cuff construction and style that I should have some leeway.

Instead of using the cuff pattern from Tidens Toej, with its wavy lines that also probably aren't the right length (since I drafted my own undersleeve pattern), I decided to draft my own cuff pattern. I just did straight lines, with a little flare at the end - it's going to be a trial and error pattern piece.

First Cuff Draft and Mockup

The first cuff with the straight edges is a little too tight at the front (top edge of the mockup), and I want it to flare more over the hand. I was reading this article by Lynn McMasters on the shape of different top hats, and realized that the flare of the top hats illustrated are similar to the shape I want for my cuff. So I reworked the cuff to curve, more like top hat pattern "D".

2nd Cuff, based on top hat shape

I like this version more - the cuff definitely has more attitude now! And after playing with cuff shapes, I realized that the 1825 tailcoat in Norah Waugh's Cut of Men's Clothes has a curved cuff too. I love discovering the nuances of period clothing - different coats in the same period would have had different cuff shapes, and it's fun to have options.

Tailcoat Sleeve

After plugging along on the tailcoat pattern pretty good, I lost some steam after working on the collar and took a break before getting to the sleeve. I think I'm especially intimidated by the cuff. But now it's time to dive back in!

For the top sleeve pattern I used my original scaled up version of the Tidens Toej pattern. I drafted the undersleeve from the top sleeve, using instructions from Men's Garments. It was very easy - basically you trace off the top half of the sleeve (armhole seam to elbow), then rotate it slightly at the elbow and finish tracing to the bottom edge. No need to true up the pattern, because the underarm seamlines should be the same length. I checked to make sure the sleeve cap was larger than the armhole seam, but since it's supposed to have a little puff at the top I didn't really mess with it.

Reshaped the Undersleeve Sleeve Cap

I stitched a sleeve mockup and quickly looked at it on Chris, not attached to the rest of the coat. Not bad, but a couple adjustments were needed:
- the sleeve cap gathers on the Tidens Toej pattern were too far forward for my taste
- the undersleeve was too high under the arm
- the elbow was too low - raise it just 1"




At first I didn't like the look of the undersleeve seam being so far forward and I was going to move it further back to the underside of the arm. Right before I changed the pattern, I read this post on A Tailor Made It that made me realize that 20th century 2-piece sleeves have much smaller undersleeves than earlier garments. It guess it's my modern sensibility coming through wanting to "fix" it. I still don't love how it looks, but since it's "correct" I'll leave it alone.  Laziness wins again!

Mockup with Corrected Sleeve

There's some schmutz at the back underarm, but
he's got good movement, so I'll leave it for now
and maybe take it out of the final version.

With the blousey shirt on, the coat sleeve looks much tighter than before! The armhole is too tight at the front, but once I scoop that out a little I think I'll be ready for my final mockup! (So tempted to cut into my real fabric, but then I remember how  much it cost and I'm okay with another mockup!)

Collar Pattern & Fitting, Part 2

I worked on the collar pattern a little more, and I'm much happier with it now. I did take it into work for pattern help - I wasn't sure if the problem was the neckline or the collar, and I didn't want to waste time "fixing" the wrong thing. Turns out the major culprit was the collar - much easier to fix.

To review, here's the collar in the 1st Fitting:

1st Collar Mockup - Collar is pulling away at the neckline seam where it meets the Lapel

Collar Pattern after 1st Mockup - Darker Line shows the refined Point

So here's the fix - the collar needs to curve up more along the neckline seam. Because the collar seamline was too straight, it was tugging in an odd direction. I decided to curve the neckline up about 1" higher than it was before (1" was just an educated guess).

I traced the straight-ish back neckline edge with no changes, marked the new point I was aiming to curve up to, and slashed the collar from edge to the neckline (at one point I thought this was all wrong and threw away the process pattern, so no pics...but I'll do some if anyone ever asks). Keeping the front neck seamline the same length (bottom edge), I curved it up into my new shape. But! By overlapping the outer edge to make the new curved shape, the pattern became too tight on the outer edge, which was the same problem I had with my very first collar draft. GOING IN CIRCLES!! So I laid the pattern back out flat, and traced that top edge in the shape it wanted to be - but it's now longer than my original CB line, so I had to change the angle of the CB seam.

Collar After Correction - Neckline edge is more curved (bottom edge), Point remains the same

 The collar pattern looks completely different from any of the examples I've been looking at (thus the trashed collar pattern mentioned above). But I decided to give it a shot and stitch it onto my mockup - VICTORY!! Now the collar lays much more nicely where it joins the lapel. (Okay, I have to take out a smidge from CB, but you can't really tell here.) If I ever make another coat from this pattern, I'll want to rework this area, but I think it's time to call it good enough and MOVE ON. :)

Corrected Collar Mockup - Note the smooth roll where the lapel and collar meet

Collar Pattern & Fitting, Part 1

With all these options, it seems like it should be easy enough to make up some sort of collar, right? Well hopefully for you it's easier than it was for me...for the last couple weeks I've been struggling to get my collar to fit and lay right. 

Remember how I changed the front neckline in the first fitting, and the neckline curve became a tighter circle? Because the neckline shape changed, I decided to scrap the collar I scaled up from the Tidens Toej pattern and draft a new one using Men's Garments 1830-1900. This book has been extremely helpful to me so far, but that version of the draft didn't work because the neckline is so much tighter...the inner edge is so tightly curved, that the outer edge became too tight.

Original Collar draft - probably should have stuck to this version!

Drafted Collar, Slashed and Spread to open up the outer curve

I was just hoping that my new collar would be big enough, and I planned to tweak it significantly in the next fitting. The shape of that outer edge is really ugly!

It turns out, I over-spread the collar draft a little bit, so I'm taking about 1" out of the center back collar. We also shaped the collar to be a little more narrow at the front - it's on the smaller side for the period, but not quite as small as the original inspiration portrait. I kind of insisted on having the "M" shaped collar point - I don't think Chris cares for it much, but to me it's a really cool feature of the period that I didn't want to leave out.

One part I'm still struggling with is getting the collar to roll correctly at the front collar/lapel - you can see it pulling away from Chris's neck where I've got it marked with a pin on one side. I think it's the neckline shape that's the problem, not the sewing. I'm going to ask a patternmaker at work for help, and I'll post the correction here.

BTW, taking pictures when we fit has been really helpful to refer back to when working on the pattern. That way I don't have to ask him to put it back on every 5 minutes!

Viewer's Left: Unshaped Collar as drafted
Viewer's Right: Collar is trimmed and "M" Point defined

Viewer's Left: Collar Trimmed
Viewer's RIght: Unshaped Collar

Pattern Corrections and Second Mockup

After fitting the first mockup of Chris's Regency coat, I took the mockup apart to trace off the pieces.

Front Body

Here you can see the neckline pinned to correct the droop, and the new armhole that I sketched in based off of where I clipped. You can also see the waistline dart - I tried to pin out the same "banana" shape that the pattern from the Cut of Men's Clothes has, but that doesn't make sense to me for sewing (the outer side of the dart will be longer than the inner side), so I'm going to modify that to a regular fisheye dart.

Tailcoat from The Cut of Men's Clothes
Note the Waistline Dart

Second Pattern with Adjustments after fitting

I forgot to take pictures of the pattern before I modified it after the 2nd fitting, so here's a combined picture. One thing I'm a little concerned about is the neckline shape after I picked up the Droopy Front in the first fitting. See how small it is now? That's different from both the Tidens Toej pattern and the Cut of Men's Clothes, but I'm going with it for now.









Here's the second mockup - looks a little nicer! I'm only making minor adjustments here - reshaping the side/back seam little more, adding 1" to the body length.


You can see that Chris is wearing more Regency-esque clothes under the mockup than the first time round (Collared shirt, vest/waistcoast). It's best to do that every time, but crucial as you get further in the project. It's hard to tell if you have the right silhouette if the undergarments are wrong - that goes for men as much it does for women.

Second Mockup - Back

Second Mockup - Front

First Mockup

For my first mockup (and probably the second and third), I sewed only the front and back pieces for the basic fit. No sleeves, no collar. I didn't really have any idea what size this pattern was, and some major adjustments might be necessary, so those things would just get in the way.


Luckily, the coat is a little small for Chris, but not too bad. I'd say this pattern is probably a good 36" chest. Chris wears a 37"-38" jacket, and we needed to open it up at the armholes and reshape the back, but it wasn't too terribly small on him.


The biggest correction needed on the front is the angle of the bottom edge. It droops down and needs to be picked up to be horizontal. I'm not going to just cut off the bottom edge to form a new angle - that would push the whole piece off-grain. Instead I pick up the front in the neckline, and I'll reshape the neckline & collar later (see why I didn't attach the collar yet?).

Uncorrected Jacket Front - note the tight armhole
and the drooping front

Close-up of the Drooping Front correction.
The pencil arrowmark at the top edge
 is to remind me to fill in that angle.
I also clipped the armhole to fit better,
as it was tight and needed to be reshaped.

Less Droopy now! Plus the grainline is running
 the right direction. Whew!

The back looks a little messier, but it's really not. I'm pinching a little out of the back princess (are they called princess seams on men?) and extending the armhole a little, so I had to add an extra piece of muslin to draw my new armhole seam. There are a couple other little issues (like the back neck - see the wrinkles?) but I'm going to deal with that on the next mockup. Big stuff first.

Back View

Interesting thing about these coats - see that seam going across the back shoulder? That's the shoulder seam. It's so far back it almost looks like a yoke. Why did they do it this way?

Also, coats in the early Regency period didn't have sideseams or waistline seams, so less body shaping was possible. (Waistseams started to be added around 1820, and sideseams were around 1830.) Like I mentioned before, I'm not adamant about perfect period accuracy on a hobby costume reproduction, but this is important information to know because the patterns don't make much sense unless you have this info.

Because Chris likes a good fit, I'm going to deviate from the Tidens Toej pattern and add a horizontal fisheye dart at the waist. (I should really find out what Tidens Toej means...) This simulates the effect of a waistline seam. The coat from the Cut of Men's Clothes has the waistline dart, that's where I got the idea.

Side View shows the waistline dart, pinned to fit