Good god, has it been that long..?


Well, I have an excuse. Brace yourselves, this is pretty sexy...

Don't worry, I survived minor surgery, just a lot of Real Life has happened of late.  I promise, more frivolity and pointlessness to come! After all,what is life for?  Feelings and stuff? God no, Cosplay! 

Thanks a million if you're still following, it means a lot. I'll explain later, promise :-) 

I know, I know, this blog's about a month overdue...

Well I've been busy.  House-hunting, mortgage applications, sewing, keeping myself fed while the girls are off skiing in Italy.  I was invited to ski by the way, they didn't simply have enough of me and bugger off without me, it's more that I don't have the balance or coordination to ski and I won't fly unless I absolutely have to.

That's not to say I've been completely idle on the project front, far from it, in fact a week off of work has given me plenty of time to progress a few different items, along with trying a few things that didn't work out so well...  So sit back and I'll bring you up to date with where things stand.

When we left off last time I'd just finished off my new coat for May's Comic-Con and I was pretty happy with how it'd turned out:

However, I was less happy with adapting my previous year's effort for Jay's (little 'un) costume this year.  So, in a selfless act of generosity I decided to let her use this new coat, while I'd (selflessly) make another one for myself.  I had the time and there were a few new ideas I wanted to try out anyway.  After trawling around the net and mocking up a few sketches I decided to try and adapt a leather/suede over-coat from eBay as a departure from my usual scratch-built items.  Some internet shopping later, £5.50 and a few days' wait, this arrived in my eager little hands:

I was pretty pleased with the coat - it was clearly "vintage" but the suede seemed sound and more importantly it fit me.  I set about removing the woven edging and the lining, with a plan to re-line it in white or off-white cotton to replace the golden satin lining it came with.  So, some trimming and destruction later, we had this:

I added a back split to the waistline, ready to dismantle the lining to use as a pattern.  And then I decided against it...  Seriously, garments from the 70's are really well made.  Seriously.  I must have spent two or three hours trying to un-pick all of the overlock stitching, reinforced seams and the like before deciding that sod it, this wasn't worth it for now.  So the coat and lining are now folded up by the shoe rack awaiting some future attention.  

With this success behind me I turned my attention to designing another coat to wear.  Starting with the Simplicity pattern 4923, which I'd used for the coat Jay would now be using, I decided to adapt the pattern pieces to create a four-piece pattern to simplify and make it my own.  

In reducing the number of pattern pieces required for the coat, I added a cuff extension to the altered arm pieces, lengthened the body sections for a longer, fuller skirt section and trimmed back the front opening so it would sit open when worn.  While researching the style of this coat I had in mind two particular reference images - firstly a piece of concept art from Assassin's Creed 3, plus a photograph of re-enactors wearing a particular type of justaucorps frock-coat, used extensively by the French-Canadian armed forces in the 18th century.  It's not a coincidence in my opinion that the two articles of clothing look so similar, as we know how much research Ubisoft puts in to it's game design.

I decided to take my inspiration from the Ubisoft concept art, and started construction of the coat itself, featuring some coloured panels to add to the overall design.  Theses templates were designed and cut by eye, which went pretty well!

The base fabric for the coat was my usual heavy cotton drill in pale grey, with the blue detail panels of the same fabric.  The piping is a plain, deep red, selected to match the deep red lining I planned to add.  To attach the piping I pressed the bias tape in half with a hot iron then glued it around the edge of each blue panel to provide a decorative trim - I know glue is cheating, but it was only used to keep the fiddly narrow bias tape in place for sewing.  

With the blue piped panels in place, I top stitched along either side of the piping to hold it in place.  Which took an absolute age and a lot of concentration.  Still, it seemed worth it for extra level of detail it brought.  Next came the lining, which followed the same pattern as the shell but without with detail panels.  As an interesting side note, I'm getting pretty good at set-in sleeves and matching seam lines:

And this is where things started to fall apart.  Not literally, I'm a stickler for double-stitched seams.  Once the lining was inserted, I realised that even though the grey shell fabric is of the same type and make-up as the other colours of cotton twill I use, it seems to be a lot less "rigid," much more pliable and less able to hold it's shape.  The result of this was awkward bunching around the sleeves and a shell that was being dragged down by the weight of the lining...  So this coat is now hanging unfinished in a cupboard.  If anyone wants it, let me know. 

So at this point I was ready to call it quits, but I remembered I had another coat I'd started some time ago, but abandoned due to other things to do. 

This one was based on Simplicity's 2895 "old west" pattern, but adapted to have no skirt section.  I'd only constructed the body section an one of the sleeves before I'd put it down, so it was time to dig the adapted pattern out and get going.  

After adding the second sleeve, which I'd modified to feature an open sleeve end, I constructed the lining from cream cotton twill with a dark brown facing and collar.  Speaking of the collar, I decided to use the upper collar pattern piece for both the upper an lower collars, thus allowing the finished collar to stand upright, rather than laying flat to add a little more flair to the finished coat. 

Interfacing was added through the body of the coat, plus shoulder pads salvaged from the suede coat I bought from eBay earlier in the post.  Once the shell and the lining were complete, I stitched the two together and used the same bias-bound edging I've come to like from previous projects. 

I've added the hood in the final picture to show the finished effect, but I still need to add buttonholes, buttons and some additional details to finish the coat off.  The hood will be attached with hooks and eyes to make it removable for washing.  

Phew.  That was a lot of updating.  And that's not even all of it (told you I'd been busy).  I also managed to get my friend Scott's coat ready for a final fitting, but that will have to wait for the next update, which I promise will be sooner than four weeks.  As a parting shot I'll leave you with something I'm toying with patterning out after May's Comic-Con, Isaac Clarke's coat from Dead Space 3.  Yeah, that seems like a nice, simple project...

Until next time.

Let's Elaborate a Little...

Following a couple of busy weeks house-hunting, sewing, working, sewing, painting and more sewing, I thought it best to take stock of where I'm up to with the various projects currently in the works.  The problem for me with maintaining a blog is that I don't generally wake up with a plan to work on a specific thing on a given day - generally I wait until everything that needs doing is done and then pick up whatever's closest and fiddle with it until I get frustrated.  It makes keeping track of things tricky and I often skip over complicated or large parts of a build because once I'm in "the zone" I forget to photograph my progress...

Case in point (conveniently enough) is the coat I'm working on for my friend Scott over at www.mudbagrunner.blogspot.co.uk - take a look if you've got a minute - which I've been beavering away at for the past few weeks.  Regular readers will know that I'd planned to combine two different patterns to create a unique one-off for him that should hopefully stand out from the crowd at May's Comic-Con.  The pattern is based on the top-half of Burda's excellent Napoleonic French uniform 2471 (the Bardin standard one), coupled with the skirt section of the ever-dependable Simplicity 2333, otherwise known as the "Captain Hook" pattern.  I'd already constructed the lower portion of the coat, but needed to finish the upper portion and work out a way of combining the two.  So, with camera safely not in hand, I started work:

The body panels went together very easily, almost too easily in fact, and I had high hopes for the set-in sleeves as they looked a good shape and clearly marked as to which points met where.  Boy was I wrong...  These sleeves are a complete shit to get right.  I've made a number of coats with set-in sleeves and these are by far the hardest to get right.  Despite repeated pinning, sewing, trimming and pressing, after two hours per sleeve (no, really...) they still had puckers and minor catches around the sleeve head.  You can see in the pictures above where the material is pulling, but after several pins stuck in fingers, swearing and pacing around, I reached a point where I couldn't do much more  and I realised that most terrible thing - they'd have to do.  I cannot tell you how frustrated I get with the phrase "that will do."  No, it won't do, it's right or it's not finished.  But even I had to concede defeat on these bloody sleeves and to crack on with getting the coat finished.

On to the skirt sections, which were ready assembled with the additional divides I'd added, and how best to match them to the coat body...

Simplicity's pattern features a full skirt with box pleats to add volume when moving but reduce bulk when standing still, which are aligned on either side of the center back seam on the original pattern.  My problem was that on the Burda coat body, it included side panels to aid shaping around the torso and to match with pleats in the original skirt section.  Looking at how the coat hung I decided to (hopefully) match a pair of custom box pleats with the side panel seams, continuing the line down through the length of the coat.  Some pining and adjusting later, I attached the skirt section with the following result:

Safe to say I was very happy with the result - I'd managed to match both pleats almost exactly with the side back seams, continuing around the coat to match the side seams:

You can see the top-stitched seams matching up as well, one of the small details that makes me happy in a way it probably shouldn't...  The center front didn't match up exactly, but I can lose the excess once I come to adding the lining:

Next came a quick test fitting, which threw up another problem - those bloody shoulders again...  Up until now I managed to get away with not adding shoulder pads to any coat I'd made, largely through careful fabric and seaming choices, but it became clear that I'd need them with this project as the coat demanded a structured approach.  To construct the shoulder padding I pre-washed a pair of commercial shoulder pads and, following a tip from a sewing book I have, wrapped them in interfacing to make a shoulder wadding sandwich, as follows:

 This was then pinned into the shoulder of the coat, ready for fine adjustment once the coat was tried on.  You can really see the difference between the shoulders before and after adding the pads:

Hopefully we'll get another fitting in later today (house-viewing permitting) to refine the shoulder head further, but once I have the lining and interfacing in the rest of the coat body and upper sleeves - bloody sleeves! - it should soften the shoulder seam and add enough structure.

Aside from the coat I took delivery of my new button solution this week, which will be used for a period accurate and washing-machine-compatible fastening solution; instead of simply attaching buttons and constructing the matching button-hole, for Scott's coat I'll be using shank buttons attached with shank pins.  This means that rather than sewing the button on as usual, a small button-hole will be inserted where the button would attach to the coat, through which the button's shank will be passed and held in place with a split pin.  

The buttons themselves came from the excellent www.pewterbuttons.co.uk, who I cannot recommend highly enough, and purchased in two different sizes, 24mm and 20mm from memory.  Here's what I received, along with the "shank pins" from eBay which are in reality 21mm r-clips:

Once the button shank is passed through it's corresponding hole, it will be attached as follows:

This will allow the buttons to be completely removed for washing, which as well as being period accurate will also prevent the buttons from tarnishing and that annoying noise of buttons rattling around in the washing machine...

In addition to working on Scott's coat I've managed to get some more done on my own garment, resolving the question of how I'd tackle the various turn-backs and details in a way that was both practical and sat well with my desire for historical realism.  I decided that I was happy with stitching the turn-backs down as per the actual historical military uniforms I'd read about, so I started pressing and pinning the various sections into place ready for stitching.  These were largely done by eye, trying to go for what looked right rather than for fervent accuracy.  Here's the result:

The front opening was pressed back about three inches on either side down the entire length and stitched in place, after which I put the coat on and picked a point to turn back the lower edge.  This was done by eye and chosen for how well the coat sat, rather than for it's proportions.  Again, the whole length was sewn down, resulting in the "panel" effect you can see in the lower left picture above, resulting in a finish very similar to the Assassin's Creed 3 Connor Kenway coat.  The center back was also doubled back to add contrast and reduce bulk, sewn down in the same way as the front, by running a line of stitching through the bias edging.  

These pictures were taken before the addition of the hood, which after some deliberation was also sewn in place to help provide stability.  Also note the addition of the turn-back cuffs, which I added to provide a bit more detail and to help lengthen the sleeves slightly, after it turned out I'd cut them a little short to be practical.  The cuffs have since been trimmed in bias tape with the usual decorative stitching, the simple pattern I made shown below:

This means that my coat is essentially finished bar the details - I'll be adding button-holes through the various turn-backs for the shank buttons and pins as per Scott's coat above, then any additional finishing touches - more to come on this next time, along with some photos of the coat being worn with the long-awaited hood.

Speaking of hoods, I need to get Scott's one started.  And little 'un's attached to her coat.  And get her coat finished.  Damn, I'd better get started..

More to come next week, hopefully featuring some progress on Scott's coat, the completion of my own and the adaptation of Jamie (little 'un)'s coat from the one I wore for last year's Comic-Con.  I'll leave you with the progress on my latest painting project, a 3D printed replica of Corvo Attano's folding dagger from the Dishonored video game by Ammnra Creations, purchased through Shapeways.com.  I'll be featuring this in a future post, so stay tuned.

Until next time!

Costume-Making 101: A Minor Update

So, busy busy the past few weeks, but things are happening...  I feel a little bad for not updating properly, but here's some photos to keep you going until this weekend's full update!

Stick with me, there's a decent post coming...

Until the weekend.