Category Archives: General

Men´s waistcoat 1820-40

As I promised I show you some pics from the making off a men´s 1820-40´s waistcoat.

First the front part with the pockets. The welt pockets are made a little bit different as nowadays. Baste a piece of linen or cotton to the wrong side of the left front, covering the pocket opening. Mark the pocket opening with a basting thread, clearly visible on the right side of the fabric. Cut your welt from fabric, matching the fabric pattern and fold in half lengthwise, wrong sides together, press the edge and reopen. Attach a cotton tape along the fold to the inner half of the welt with a catch stitch. Sew the outer pocket bag to the inner half of the welt using, right sides together, stitch exactly between the marks of the pocket opening and press open the seam allowances.

Place the front on a table with the right side up. From below, line up the edge of the outer welt half with the pocket opening, right sides together. Sew with a reduced stitch length exactly between marks, indicating your pocket opeining. From above, line up the inner pocket bag with the pocket opening, right sides together and sew, starting and stoping about 1/8” (3mm) inside the marks.

Turn the front to the wrong side and cut the fashion fabric in the middle of the stitching lines, cut V-shaped towards the corners. Pull the welt and outer pocket throught the opening to the wrong side and press the bottom edge of the welt carefully. Turn the welt along the fold line, wrong sides together. The welt seams should match up now, but most important is a regular welt on the right fabric side. Baste together the welt layers and pull through the opening to the right side. From the right side, stitch (invisible) in the ditch of the welt seam, joining the layers.

Pull the inner pocket bag to the wrong side and close the pocket, stitching the small triangles to the pockets, press. Finish the welts, after basting the interfacing to the fronts.

Turn the front right side up again and turn in the loose ends of the welt. Sew down the edges with a prick stitch through all layers, make a second row of prick stitches about ¼” (6mm) from the first. Trim back the turned in ends of the welt close to the second row of stitching.

Join the front pieces at the center back, press. Don´t catch the interlining, place the edges of the interlining one above the other to avoid bulk.

Attach a cotton tape a little bit behind the roll line, prick stitch the collar (you can skip this step). Trim back the interlining right behind the sewing line and attach a cotton tape all around the outside edges (Front, bottom and armhole).

Sew on the collar facing and trim back seam allowance, along the collar attach the seam allowance with a catch stitch to the interlining.

Turn inside out and press. Attach the raw edges of the facing to the interlining with a felling stitch.

Take the lining and sew to the front along the armhole, trim back seam allowance and place inside the front parts. Attach the lining with a felling stitch.

As I need the waistcoat for summer, I decided to make single layer back. Join back parts with a flat felled seam, cut straps for the bottom facing, join and turn over. Attach buckle straps.

Join back and fronts, now you have raw edges at the side seams, the back armholes, shoulders and neckline. Cut bias straps, about 2” wide and cast the raw edges with the straps.

Here you see the finished waistcoat with fabric covered buttons.

Next project? A matching frock coat, what else?

Men´s trousers 1840

This year we do again our history Sumer retreat. This time near Leipzig. As costume theme the romatic era would be suitable.

During the last years I made two Dresses for me, just a suit for the Gentleman is missing.

Let´s start with trousers. After some research it was clear I´ll sew checked trousers with a front fly. From 1830-40 front fall trousers became unfashionable. At the back they have a saddle like Jeans, a gusset and straps.

Unfortunately, I didn’t find pictures or anything else about pockets bags. So I decides to make them like Jeans pockets.

Let´s start with the pockets! The back pocket back gets a facing from fashion fabric and is joined to the front pocket back with a French seam.

Sew the front pocket back to the front trousers along the pocket opening, right sides together, trim seam allowances, turn inside out and press.

Sew the fly facing to the left front piece, prepare the buttonhole stand and sew five button holes. Pin the buttonhole stand to inside of the left front edge. Sew together with a curved seam from the right side.

Sew button stand to the right front edge.

Close pant legs and press. Close the crotch seam. Overcast all raw edges.

Insert gusset at the saddle.

For a clean finish the back seams are covered with a curtain.

The waistband is divided into two parts with a curved back edge.

Here you see the back straps with the buckle.

For the hem cut pieces of linen at the bias and baste to the inside along the hemline.

Make button holes at the corners of the pockets, close pockets with small covered buttons.

Finished!

Next time I´ll show you the making of the waistcoat.

19th century mitts

Next summer some friends of mine are going to organize an early 19th century costume ball. Of course a lady needs a pair of gloves to wear with her ball gown. But I don’t like gloves at all, so I decided to make mitts out of modern tights. I´ll show you my first attempt to sew a pair of mitts out of a cheap pair of tights.

First I thought a small size will be perfect to fit my arm, but it seemed to be a little bit too bulky at the wrist, so I had to make them tighter and ad a seam at the hand edge. I sewed all seams with a normal sewing thread and a normal sewing needle by hand.

All seams are sewn quite loose respecting the elasticity of the material. To give more stability to the seams they are sewn twice.

On the whole it worked better than I thought. Next time I´ll try it with tights with a looser pattern.

Making-of my 1830 Dress Part 3 The Skirt

The original skirt is made from georgette, I don´t know if there is a sateen layer underneath, but it looks like.
For the skirt panels I took three times my waist plus 2cm for the underlap at the back. If you are quite thin (thinner than me, my waist measurement with the corset is 78cm) you should take more to reach the desired diameter of the seam.
I sewed togehter the skirt panels first and made a slash at the center back, folded in the raw egdges and stitched them down. Why I didn´t used a seam at the center back? Because so I would have a visible seam at the front side.

I made 7 folds each side, opening to the back, shift the edges to form a curved waistline

Sew the skirt to the bodice. The picture shows how it looks like at the center back.

Trim the seam allowance at the waistline, fold it into the bodice and stitch down, catch only the lining.

Fold in the fabric along the hemline. The skirt should end about 10cm from the floor at the ankle. You would wear ballerina shoes with that dress. I decided to sew my hem with small stitches from the right fabric side, because the original dress has a visible hem stitching line, not even tried to be covered with the trimmings and I was aware the sateen fabric doesn´t tolerate a hem stitch.

For the belt I took one layer of sateen and one layer of cotton fabric, the edges neatend with bias binding. The belt is closed with hooks and sewn eyes. Finally a large bow is attatched.

That´s the finished dress. Excuse the picture but the dress doesn´t fit the dress form quite well and I just made a quick picture of the finished dress to show you.

Go to Part 1 or Part 2

Making-of my 1830 Dress Part 2 The Sleeves

I think that sleeves are the most exiting sleeves I´ve ever seen. Some years ago when I started to sew historical clothing I couldn´t imagine to wear dresses from the romantic era or the 1880´s. At that time, I even decided never to sew dresses from that eras. I don´t know what happened, but I changed my mind and made some 1880´s dresses and I loved them! Searching the internet for inspiration I found the dress from the LACMA and felled in love with it! Let´s start sewing the sleeves!

The sleeve pattern itself isn´t anything special. It´s just a pattern you would use to sew a puffed sleeve, it´s all about the folds! I´ll show you on a paper model. The length of the upper sleeve edge has to be the length of the underarm part where you don´t have folds, plus the upper part with the folds multiplied by 5. Length of upper edge = (2 x a) + (2 x b x 5). We have 15 folds, so depth of one fold is (2 x b) : 15

First fold your sleeve lengthwise to the half, wrong sides together and press a little bit, not too strong because later on you don´t need that fold. You have calculated the depth of the folds before, now fold the double layer of fabric overlapping as shown and press.

Open the sleeve and lay it flat on a table. At all “hills” you mark 1,5cm from the half-line and fold diagonal “hills”-folds with the help of the iron. The 2nd picture shows how it looks like on fabric.

Close the fold´s again along the upper edge. Shift all corners to give the edge a straight finish, so the sleeve opens better when finished. Baste all folds in place. Do the same with the lower edge, it´s just the opposite direction to lay the folds.

Sew a piped band to the lower edge of the sleeve

Insert the sleeve into the armhole. Add lace along the bottom edge.

Attatch thin tapes, about 15cm long, to the highest shoulder point and to the inside of the sleeve tape vis-a-vis the sleeve seam. Tie the tapes to loop up the sleeve as desired.

Got to Part 1 or Part 3

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