An historical jacket takes shape

After that evening outside some weeks ago I have continued to think about winter wear. I was warm and cozy in all my layers and with my cape, but would it be enough if the temperature dropped even more. Right now the temperatures around here is around -10 Celsius, as compared to just below freezing on the evening I was out. Also I love my furlined cape, but if there was one place I felt a bit cold it was my arms, so it would be nice to have an outer garment with sleeves. Thankfully there are a lot of images of jackets.

I would really recommend reading Amie Sparrow's documentation of jackets worn by German peasants in the 16th century. There is a wide variation on jackets, some looser, some tighter, some with a waist seam and some without. 

Looking at the jackets without waistseam I really felt that this is a garment that you can see in many centuries, especially on working people.

This is from the print series Cries of London from the late 17th century

This woman is wearing a shortgown in the middle of the 18th century

I decided to make a jacket without a waistseam, and I would try to do it generic enough to be able to use it for several historical eras. It would be a classic time traveling garment.

Then it was time to go through my stash, and I still had a piece of wool left from when I made the cape. It was not as much as I thought though. I also felt that I wanted to line the jacket, since lined garments simply look better. It is a winter garment, so I didn't want to use linen. Linen can actually cool you down. The only wool that I had a lot of though was a fairly modern wool in speckled grey. It was a mistake buy, I thought it would work for TLJ Leia from the images online, but it didn't. Still the speckled grey was quite nice, and I figured that it wouldn't look too out of place in an historical context. Since I would not be able to use fabrics that were correct, I also decided that I would sew the jacket on the machine. Then the next thought came to me. What if I made the jacket fully reversible? The speckled grey wouldn't look too bad in a 17th and 18th century setting, where black and sombre colours were preferred by the upper classes in my town. Well then it was decided. A fully reversible jacket without waistseam, sewn on the machine.

For pattern I started with my latest 16th century bodice pattern, but that was for my tight 1520's court gown. Since the jacket would be worn over a lot of layers I simply added to it. I mainly used the shape as a guide and then drew the pattern. To still get a bit of flare over the hips I looked at patterns for 18th century jackets to see how I could make an integrated pleat. In hindsight it would have been a lot easier to just flare the pieces to create the skirt portion. But hey, why go for simple when you can do complicated.

The pleats were integrated by flaring the center front and center back seam. For the side pleat I made a square extension. Now I had a very limited amount of the pink wool fabric, so the length of the jacket was decided by that. I would have loved to make the jacket go down to midthigh, now it ends at my bum. Also the limited amount of fabric force me to winge some of the cutting lines, they are not totally straight, and I had to adjust that after I had cut all the pieces out.

I should also say that I was too sloppy with this pattern, the armscye ended up way too large. In order to take it in I had to lift take away a lot of excess fabric at the shoulder. With my limited amount of fabric that meant that I lost several cm that I would have loved to have added to the overall length, it also meant that the front piece got a bit too tight over the chest. I really shouldn't cut out patterns and do sewing when my blood sugar is on the edge of dropping to low. I get unconcentrated and irritated, and also take bad decisions, like continuing even if you feel that you should take a break and eat something.

Anyway. Before I started to sew the pieces together I finshed the side pleat on each piece. I've always been a bit confused on how to make the pleats, but this is what I did.

I start with cutting into the bodice. Just a straight cut at the waistline.

I then fold the excess fabric under the cut, this creates the pleat.

I sew the cut in the bodice together, catching the pleated fabric as well, I sewed the seam with backstitches and then I whipstitched the edge to give it more protection.

This is what the pleat looks like when it's finished. Then I just sewed the side seam as usual.

I sewed two layers of fabric as separate pieces, so in the end I had two identical jackets, a pink and a black one.

To be continued...