So I had a pattern, and now it was time to cut into the main fabric. It's a olive wool twill and I cut them out on the bias. When cutting the pattern I realised that it must be way larger than I though. My husband is generally medium sized, and I still couldn't get the pattern to totally fit on the 3 m of fabric that I had.
I didn't document this process a lot, but I pinned the hose together, and then I repinned them until they were tight. In total I could cut away around 10 cm of fabric before they were snug. I don't really have an ambition to make totally historically accurate hose, so I then used the machine to tack them together. And that was good, because when we fitted the tacked together hose they were actually too tight. So I made a new seam and unripped the old one.
Before making the final seam I had the husband squat down and do a lot of movements to make sure that they were snug, but not too snug. I did make the final seam by hand. A handsewn seam made with linen is weaker than a machine sewn seam with modern sewing thread, and I wanted the seam and not the fabric to rip if it turned out that they were too tight.
For the waistband I sewed a folded piece of the wool to the top of the hose, but I also strengthened the waistband with a piece of heavy cotton. The hose were held together with a piece of tape that is threaded through the waistband.
By now I was a bit stressed to finish the hose, but I made a codpiece according to
this tutorial.
The tutorial said that it should be stuffed really well, but lets just say that my husband laughed a lot when I pinned it on. I didn't have time to attach it permanently, so I sewed it on at the bottom and used safety pins for the top. I will definitely remake this, because the flaps that attach to the hose are too small, and yes it might be a bit too large in other dimensions as well.
In hindsight it was a good thing that it wasn't permanently attached when we went to the feast. Because when my husband sat down, the hose ripped. At first I thought it was only the seams around the codpiece and crotch area, and I was glad that I had chosen to handsew them, but it also turned out that the fabric had ripped as well. Apparently they must have been too tight, even if we had tried them on so many times.
