Costume-making 101: The End Drawers Nigh(er)

Hello again and following a hectic few weeks of Real Life getting in the way of the important business of costume-making and then writing blogs about it, we're back in business and ready to finish up the latest item in my dressing-up box: the brown Assassin's Creed overcoat.

So when we finished up last time I'd discovered the arcane art of sewing machine embroidery - witchcraft I tell you - to decorate my projects.  I'd tried a test piece on a scrap of my corduroy fabric and it had gone quite well, look:

I'd planned to use this piece in my completed coat, but after drawing in the cutting lines I realised how wonky the design was - I didn't mind the roughness of it, after all it's supposed to look hand embroidered, but my OCD wouldn't let me use a design that was off centre and tilted.  I also wanted to use some kind of backing to give the piece some more body.

Breaking out my denim lining material I cut out the piece of fabric I needed to the correct size and shape (more on the hood pattern to come...) and started to mark out the design.  It was based on the eagle emblem found on Connor's hood in Assassin's Creed 3, with some modification.  Typically, I didn't take a photo of the completed marking out, just the completed piece, but following the marking out I pinned the lining to the outer corduroy and starting embroidering...

It's hard to see in the photo but after drawing out the pattern I marked points along each of the lines where i needed to adjust the width of the stitching to create the taper - for example on the outer lines of the "wings" I started out at a width setting of 4 (out of 6), then around a third of the way down  turned this down to 3, the for the final third down to 2.  The 2 setting seemed to be thin enough to define the points without being too thin to see properly.

 Here's the design from the front - ignore the bumps, they came out following liberal use of a hot iron.  Once completed I cut around the denim pattern piece around 6mm out and again with the use of the trusty steam iron turned over the edges to create a neat piece ready to add to the hood.  Going against my belief of not using glue to create costumes, I glued these raw edges down as they were quite small an fiddly.  the result?

I was pretty pleased with the result, but thought it could use some more definition.  So, back onto the sewing machine, it was time to add a line of stitch around the whole design:

A small detail, but I think it really helped define the design.  I put this aside for now along with the rest of the hood pattern to complete later.

So, back to the coat then and time to start adding some buttons.  I ignored the original pattern as far as the button placement was concerned as I wanted to pin the lapels back on themselves with a row of buttons.  After playing around with button placement and numbers I settled on a design I was happy with and started opening the buttonholes, following the method in previous entries:

Next, the buttons themselves.  For rows such as this the method I've developed to ensure a flat, even row is to first place the top button of the row, then the bottom one, making sure the placement allows the lapel to lay flat when turned back.  Once turned, I used pins to mark the location of the remaining buttons, along with a tape measure to ensure they were a uniform distance apart:

Sew, sew, sew, more hand sewing buttons in place and we end up finally with the finished article!

The coat tails in the final picture are held up through two buttonholes opened up in the lower edge, allowing the coat to be worn either long or "for marching," as this design is described in military clothing design manuals, or, my particular favourite as "in the French style."

So, coat done, yes?  No, actually.  I still need to add more buttons (really?) to the cuffs, plus complete the hood, which I've mentioned a lot but still haven't shown you how to make.  I'll cover these next time, along with some glamour shots of the finished coat.  Right now I have to finish photographing the current coat I'm working on, ready for a future blog post...


Until next time.