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. 

Costume-Making 101: The Hoods Have It

Hello again and this week I'd finally like to take a look at the hood designs I've been working on over the past few weeks.

Now regular readers (there must be some out there...) will of course remember that some time ago I' set myself the challenge of coming up with a design for an Assassin's Creed hood that held its shape, looked correct, but didn't feature any "cheats," such as wires, Velcro, etc.  My first crack went fairly well, relying mostly on layers of interfacing and lines of stitching to create structure.

As it happened, working from scratch on the templates, the hood turned out to be too big for me to wear without it looking a little silly - hopefully I'll be able to adapt it for someone else to use.  Despite all of panel lines on the shell of the hood, the actual pattern is pretty simple, based in part on the hood of a coat I own.  

To clarify, the parts are as follows:

1. The centre back part of the mantle, which will button to the coat

2. The centre of the hood itself, which runs from the base of the neck over the head

3. Side panel

4. The sides of the mantle, which sit on the shoulders

So a fairly simple pattern, but once I'd added in the panel details, doubled up some of the details etc, the  final part count for the shell was pretty high:

So, one hood under my belt, where to next?  I'd dabbled in the past with the fantastic pattern designed by Yulittle on Deviantart's website, which I'd used for the little 'un's coat, plus another white version, which I expertly modeled in a previous blog post:

I was pleased with how these had turned out, but really wanted something of my own design to wear to this year's events.  So, break out the crayons!

The Brief: create a simple hood pattern that can be adapted, added to or scaled to fit the majority of people.  

The idea was to create a design that could be created from two panels for the hood itself, with a third part to act as a mantle over the shoulders.  I wasn't going to use wires to keep the front opening in place, so trial and error it was.  Following a few glasses of liquid inspiration, one evening while the girls were out, I set to creating a pattern.  

Having been playing through Assassin's Creed Unity at the time, I decided to make things complicated for myself and go for something that resembled the "Sans-Culottes" hood from the game, featuring the Medieval-looking tail on the back.  I had some corduroy laying around from a previous project, so after cutting two rough panels, I pinned them together and proceeded to adjust them with pins, wearing it in the mirror.  A small warning here, be careful when pinning things onto your head after three glasses of wine.  Enough said I think. 

After some refining, re-drafting and test hoods, I had the following pattern:

Some more sewing time later, I'd put together the finished hood.  It was constructed using red cotton twill (to match the in-game reference), lined with cotton calico and bias trimmed in dark blue.  A bit like this:

You can see the "tail" is pinned down to give a neater look and the small tucks to help gather the hood into a more fitted shape.  In the end it turned out a little too large for me to use, but a useful learning tool.  

From here I reasoned that a more fitted approach was needed, along with a wider opening across the bottom of the hood at the front - my original design gathered the front together in a similar way to modern hooded coat when buttoned.  So, out came the scrap material, the pins an the crayons again, and I came up with this:

Once again I went on to construct the hood using red cotton twill, with a matching cream fabric at the front as a contrast.  Inside, it was lined with cotton calico again, with a small tuck in the front edge to pull it into shape around the opening - you can see its position in the photo above - on the side panel piece there are two gather lines, giving me this:

The front opening is bias-bound, with the mantle still needing to be finished.  Alas, I don't think this one will see use either, mainly as one too many people have commented on its Santa-esque qualities...

Third times' the charm then, which I adapted slightly, pulling the top of the side panel down and including a small, central dart to help define the shape.  With the second hood above, I'd interfaced the front cream-coloured stripe and the mantle to help add structure and with my third attempt, I planned to use it a lot more.

So, some more patterning later, the final design looked like this:

I decided in the end to match the fabric of this hood to the coat I'd be using it with, so went with my usual dark blue cotton twill, lined with a matching deep red twill, with interfacing through the front opening and the mantle.  I'm cursing myself for not photographing the construction, but here is the finished result:

The font opening has been heavily interfaced, building up in narrowing layers up to the applied embroidered piece, where it is approximately six layers thick.  The embroidered panel has its own interfacing, plus the additional stitching around the panel help create a very structured finished.  The raw edges have all been bias-bound and stitched using the "rustic" pattern from the coat.  I should point out that my new polystyrene friend in the photos has a differently shaped head to me, so the hoods don't sit exactly as they do on me, but they're close enough.  

So there we have it - I've not included pictures of the other eight or nine half-finished hoods I showed in the previous post as they're pretty much the same design but incomplete as I changed dimensions and details.  I'll cover the construction of the next hood in greater detail, once I can get some time sorted out with its future owner.  Please feel free to use, adapt and improve the designs above - I'd love to see results of what everyone else can add to them!

I'll leave it there for today, other things to do and probably more sewing I need to get on with.  There has been some progress on a couple of other projects, but I'll tackle those next week. 

Until next time.

And So It Goes On

As February begins I feel it's time to take stock of where we're up to with the current projects I'm messing about with - May's deadline is just peeking its head over the horizon so I need to keep focus and get on with things...

As I'm still waiting on delivery of my polystyrene mannequin head, so the hood side-project will have to wait for another week for its own post, so lets see where we stand on the other bits and pieces!

The Coat:

Finally completed the bias-bound edging of the coat!  After nearly ten meters (yes, ten) of bias binding the coat is now enclosed and essentially ready to wear; that said we're far from finished with this one...  I've spent some time this week deciding how best to tackle the turn-back lapels and skirt sections - there's buttons, ties, eyelets, hooks, pressing, press studs, rivets, the list goes on.  One intriguing idea that I read about last week comes from the uniforms of Prussian infantry during the Napoleonic era: indulge me for a minute.

French line infantry coats featured turned back skirts that could be buttoned back for ease of movement during long marches; indeed a feature of many Napoleonic-era uniforms, making for a smart unbuttoned skirt for parade and functional garment when marching (see above - not period, but it'll be do for now).  As time went on and the wars took their inevitable toll on funds and resources, these turn-backs were eventually replaced with coloured fabric panels applied directly to the coat to give the impression of turn-backs and the attractive flash of colour they added, but without the expense of using extra fabric and labour time.  Now, with Prussian coats, in what could be seen as a mockery of the time and fabric saving measures, full turn-backs were retained in the skirts but they were actually sewn in the "open" position, meaning like the French faux turn backs they were non-functional, but still used the extra fabric and labour as a functioning turn-back - a prime example of form over function, they even featured buttons applied as decoration without a real use.

I liked this idea, and it happened to solve several problems involved with making functional turn-backs, namely the nearly three dozen button holes I'd need to construct.  I'm still not 100% on this but I'm leaning the way of non-functioning turn-backs, I just need to convince myself it's period-accurate enough - remember, these items have to be garments first, then costumes...

Anyway, enough wordy stuff, some pictures:

The finished coat with the right-hand lapel already pressed back and pinned for sewing.  You can see in this picture the divide at the centre-back of the skirt, which originally featured an additional panel to increase the skirt's volume.  I ended up removing it though as the thickness of the cotton twill shell and lining caused it to bunch and hang strangely...

The completed lining and bias bound skirt edging, featuring the "rustic" style stitching, thanks to a handy setting on my sewing machine.

And a couple more shots of the lapel pinned in place, ready to sew open should I decide to go that way.  I have some period pewter buttons on order, so I'll dry-fit these and decide whether to open all the button holes from there - more on that next time.

The Hood

I won't go into the construction of this too much here as once my mannequin head arrives from eBay tomorrow there'll be a post detailing my hood research in some more detail.

What I will say is that this one is based on my "Revolutionary Hood" pattern, constructed of cotton twill in burgundy and off-white, though my camera seems to show the red as a bright crimson.

The shape looks a little odd on my torso stand-in, mainly as I'm still using my Jelly Bean packet head stand-in.  I'll keep this brief as I want to spend some more time on the hoods next week, so here's a few pictures of where I'm up to:

The hood may or may not be permanently sewn to the coat once it's finished, but again I'm not sure on this yet.

Other Things

In other news, I've taken delivery of a couple of additional items to add to the costume - a very fine plastic training sword from Cold Steel, a katana as it happens (my weapon of choice in the AC Unity game), which I've just started to prep for paint.  The sword itself is nicely weighted but completely blunt, making it perfect for conventions.

I'll finish sanding this as and when, then I need to teach myself how to wrap Japanese sword hilts - another skill to add to the list hopefully!  Paint will be car bumper paint for better adhesion to the polypropylene plastic.

I also picked up a belt on eBay.  I'd wanted to get some leather-working under my belt soon, it's been a number of years since I've tried it out.  Unfortunately I won't have time before the next convention deadline, so picked up this item from a company called Gekko of Camden.

It's real leather, well constructed, and I think originally designed for hippies at a festival.  Still, I like it and although press studs aren't strictly period I can over-look this as it smells like leather and looks great.

So that's where we're up to for now.  The pattern pieces are cut for the other coat I need to make, ready for the mock-up fitting next week.  I'll leave it here for now as I need to eat and there's more houses to view and Real Life to catch up with.  Stay tuned for the highly-anticipated (I imagine) hood blog coming next week, along with anything else I can get done!

Until next time.