18th C. Menswear Patterns from LACMA

Reposting this link from the fabulous Two Nerdy History Girls Blog. LACMA has posted free annotated pdf files online of patterns from their new costume collection - similar to the patterns from Tidens Toej, but these have notes in ENGLISH!!

1790's Tailcoat pattern for FREE!

Included are patterns for a men's tailcoat, 2 waistcoats, and a banyan (just learned that term - thanks Lauren!). I'm trying really hard to be happy that they chose all menswear for this project... ;)

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!)

Kannik's Korner - Man's Shirt Pattern 1790-1830: Pattern Review

Man's Shirt 1790-1830

This pattern is super-complete. For a shirt that is just made entirely of different sized rectangles, the instructions could easily breeze through in a couple pages, leaving you to figure out the details yourself. Instead, it takes you through the process, including primary and secondary source documentation for the pattern, fabric suggestions & cutting layout, and instructions on how to "cut by the thread" - pulling out threads to get a perfectly on-grain cutting line.

Grainline is straight when the fabric is cut "by the thread"

When you're ready to sew, it carefully takes you, step-by-step, through the construction process with clear and complete instructions and illustrations. Plus it gives instructions for all the hand-sewing techniques needed for the shirt construction, and some added info for shirt ruffles and embroidering the owner's initials. 16 pages total for the instructions!

The one drawback for me was that the patterns are written encouraging you to sew every step by hand. I wound up sewing a lot of the shirt by hand, and I appreciate that they are trying to help you make an authentically reproduced shirt. But because I'm trying to zip through as much of a complete Regency men's outfit as I can, I would have liked a little more guidance about what can be done on the machine and what should be done by hand to still have a pretty authentic shirt, in less time. At least I got better at figuring out which steps to do by hand vs. machine as I went along (for example, sew the first seam of the cuff to the sleeve by machine, then flip it closed and finish the inside by hand, so that no top-stitching shows).

Shirt Overview - no changes to pattern

All in all, I completely recommend this pattern for its authenticity and quality. Even someone with no sewing experience and no sewing machine should be able to make this pattern, and they don't even need to worry about the fit because it's so loose.

Tall Collar!

Chris wears a size 15 shirt, and the pattern came sized as either 14.5 (Small) or 15.5 (Medium). We went with the Small, and the collar is a little tight, but wearable.

I wanted to make this pattern exactly the size without making changes in order to show how it looks, but for next time I'll make the following changes:

-Make the collar/neck size a little bigger (size 15)

-Shorten the collar height - the collar is meant to fold over, but we would rather have it stand up. He'll probably wind up scrunching this one down under his cravat.

-Shorten the neck slit a couple inches for modesty. It'll still be plenty big for his noggin to get through

-Take in the body width/shoulder width ~1 1/2" on each side. It will still be a rectangle, but I think it can be a little less wide and still have a dropped shoulder without restricting arm movement (this will shorten the sleeve length too, but they'll still be acceptably blouson)

-Shorten the body length (we'll hem this one shorter too)

Collar Detail: Still needs shirt ruffles and buttons at the collar

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

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

Getting Started: Pattern for a Tailcoat

After all digesting all that research, it's time to get a pattern going!

My top 2 choices came down to the Tidens Toej pattern and the tailcoat from the Cut of Men's Clothes (see my previous post for links to these resources). These two patterns fall in the period we want (1800-1830), and seem to be the most historically accurate - I'm willing to take shortcuts some places, but I don't want to deviate too far too fast.

I chose to start with the Tidens Toej pattern for a couple reasons - I like that you can see the actual garment from which the pattern is taken, and it comes with a grid already on the page! It's the little things that matter in life. 

I scaled up the pattern using the scale of 1 box = 2" square. I used pattern paper/aka alphabet paper/aka dot paper, which has 1" markings, so I made a 2" grid for myself and just freehand drew the pattern, using the grid as a guide. 

First Pattern scaled up, Terrible overview

This is actually easier than you'd think! Just get the approximate shape of each line in the box. It's just a starting place, so don't worry about making it perfect.

Collar, Close-Up and Upside-Down. Note the 2" grid.

Next, true up the pattern. This mean making sure all your seamlines are the same length by "walking" the pattern pieces. Put one piece on top of the other and wiggle them along the seamline to check the length (pattern paper is slightly transparent in order to make this easier). This method is faster and more accurate than measuring the seamlines. Check the front and back at the shoulder seams, sideseams etc.


Last, add seam allowance - I add 1/2" all around for mockups because that's easiest for me to remember while sewing, but for the final version I'll do 1/4" at the neckline (for the ease of sewing the tight curve) and 1" at the major seams (for potential alterations).

Back, with 1/2" seam allowance all around

EDIT: I forgot about to mention the grainlines! One thing that really confused me was the grainlines on the pattern. If they follow the grid, then the Center Front would be off-grain. So I changed the grainline so that the CF is on grain and the bottom edge is on the crossgrain. I'm not sure if that's right or not, but it's what I did.

Front Body - arrows indicate new grainlines

Next Up: First Mockup
**plus I promise to take better pictures. It might be nice to actually see what I'm talking about! :)