Pretty in Pink
I decided that I was happy with the pattern at this point and took it apart. I need to add a little more ease in a couple spots, but I'll mark that on the pattern pieces and just work it in when I cut. I started laying out the pinking patternon one of the front pieces. It looks about right compared to the source picture. I'm not exactly sure how I'm going to do the pinking yet. I figure I can either use a knife, scissors, or a chisel type tool. I'll probably test all of them and see what looks best. Also, after studying the picture some more, I think the sleeve seam is in fact at the back, with the pinking pattern centered at the front of the arm.
category: /tailor | permanent link

Taking The Plunge
I reshaped the sleeve pattern and laid out the pinking pattern on it. I decided to go with my gut instinct and start on the sleeves first. I determined how much allowance I would give for the little loopy bits at the wrist based on the width of my fabric. The cotton velveteen so far is working like a dream. It finally occurred to me as I got the pattern piece pinned to the doubled velveteen that I would be able to do the pinking for both sleeves at the same time if I just left everything pinned together. I got a start on it and it looks like it'll work well. I would finish it tonight but people are trying to sleep right above the sewing room. Tomorrow, tomorrow.
category: /tailor | permanent link

Draping Madness
I got the basic shape done tonight. The waist felt awfully high, but looking at the picture it's about right. The waistline of the doublet is just below elbow level, and the trunk hose will come down to about the fingertips. II still don't know if I'm going to do canions or not (it depends on how much of the orange velveteen I have left over), but there's going to be a lot of leg hanging out down there. As far as the current pattern goes, I want to slope the shoulders another inch or two, and also move the armscye down just a touch. I'll pattern out some sleeves to tack on before I go too crazy to see how it all works. So far the collar feels quite comfy. I need to make sure I leave a lot of seam allowance on the center front so I have somewhere to put buttonholes.
category: /tailor | permanent link

Little By Little
I finally got a chance to get a little more done on the doublet pattern. I sloped the shoulders another inch like I'd planned, and I brought the top of the side seams in a couple inches as well. The body of the doublet fits quite snugly now. I may end up dropping the front of the neck opening a tiny amount, but I'll wait on that until later. I patterned a pair of straight sleeves and got one attached; it feels like it will work just fine. It's quite close, though, so I'm going to have to be careful with my choice of linings. I'm tired of having to wrestle my shirts though doublet sleeves lined in cotton. I didn't widen the armscye as I'd planned, and I'm glad I didn't; the sleeve fit exactly right the very first time. I patterned the sleeve with the seam at the back, though I wonder if I shouldn't put it under the arm. The pinking pattern is going to get pretty ugly around the seam. I was making a pair of unpaned trunk hose for another project recently, and I finally got a set of cartridge pleats that I really liked. There ended up being four layers of quilt batting in the pleats, and they really stand out. I think I'll use the same construction for the tailor trunk hose, and only do cartridge pleats on the foundation layer. That should provide enough shaping on its own so I can do simple gathering on the panes.
category: /tailor | permanent link

Back To The Draping Board
I picked up some muslin the other day so I could experiment with my doublet pattern. I've been slowly evolving the same pattern ever since I made Big Blue, and I had intended to just make a couple more adjustments for this doublet. Unfortunately, I have no idea what happened to my last pattern. The only one I could find was the original Big Blue pattern. With all the talk lately about draping, I decided to just bite the bullet and give it a shot. Since I'm starting with four rectangles and building the pattern from there, I'm not going to have the curved back seams I've grown accustomed to. It may be just as well, since I think the pinking will be easier with just side seams. I don't know how much benefit I get from the old curved seams anyway. I'm basically using the same technique I used on my Flemish doublet, except I'm not avoiding the tailored shape I'm used to. I already had a pretty good idea of how I wanted to have most of the seams end up from past experience. The major change I want to make this time around is to move the neck opening. Up to this point I've used the basic t-tunic technique of putting about 1/4 of the neck opening behind the shoulder seam and 3/4 in front. When I marked the front of my neck, it turned out to be about 2 inches further forward than I usually put it. I've never been happy with the collars on my doublets; I can't keep the collar buttoned and still sit down without choking myself. The entire neck opening ended up just barely forward of the shoulder seam this way. I considered moving the shoulder seam, but I didn't really want to go through that much hassle. I decided instead to square off the back of the neck opening against the shoulder seam and plan to cut the back of the collar as part of the doublet back. I've done collars this way before, but not for a long time. We'll see how it turns out. I wanted to get pictures of this whole process, but the digital camera is unavailable until tonight.
category: /tailor | permanent link

A Bucket O' Mud
My dyeing experiment was a qualified success. I didn't want to go to the trouble of doing a test piece first, so I just hacked off a couple yards of velveteen and went to it. I used a big cast iron dutch oven that I'd acquired some time ago. I didn't really care if the iron affected the chemistry of the dye since I was essentially going to be using an iron oxide pigment anyway. I used a couple ounces of alum and an ounce of cream of tartar as a mordant, though it may not really have been necessary. I decided to do it anyway just in case. I boiled the cloth in the mordant for an hour, then let it sit and cool for another couple hours. After rinsing, the velveteen had taken on a very slight pink hue, though I don't have any idea where it came from. Next I prepared my dye bath. I had procured a couple pounds of freshly excavated clay from a local construction site. I cut the top off a milk jug and mixed the clay with some water until I got a smooth consistency. I used an old piece of window screen and some duct tape to build a strainer to keep the roots and rocks out of the pot. I boiled the cloth in the dye bath for an hour or so, then decided that it probably wasn't going to get any darker. Now came the hard part: rinsing. There was a lot of silt in the pot, and I ended up holding the cloth up in the shower to get it all rinsed out. I wonder if I could have gotten the same color with less actual clay in the dye bath. In the end the color wasn't exactly what I'd hoped for, but I'm still quite happy with it. I was aiming for a dark orange-red, and I got a bright rusty orange color. Considering how much material I had bunched up in the pot, the color was surprisingly even. I also worried that the abrasiveness of the clay particles would damage the material, but it seemed to have no ill effect. All told, I spent about $3 for mordants which I may not have needed, and everything else came out of the ground. I've tried to get the final color right in the pictures. The Pot The Mud Bucket The Strainer The Dye Bath Final Product
category: /tailor | permanent link

Beginnings
I was trying to figure out what to do next, and I decided that I would make use of the cotton velveteen I picked up a while back. I went to the web prowling for an idea. Flipping through 16th century portraits, I came across Moroni's tailor. I've liked this guy since the first time I saw him years and years ago. It's not obvious what his doublet and trunk hose are made of but it could certainly be a velvet of some sort, perhaps left over from some work he'd done for someone else. The doublet is about the same color as the velveteen I've got. I did a little test pinking on it and it looks like it won't fall apart too badly aside from a few velvet pills and stray threads that I should be able to get rid of. I had already decided to practice dyeing on the velveteen, so I needed to figure out how to match the red of the tailor's trunk hose. I contemplated using modern pigments, which would be realtively easy. I also thought about using one of the various period pigments that would require some experimentation and possible expense. However, we in Georgia are blessed with an abundance of orange-red clay that turns anything it touches the same color. I'll experiment with a small strip to see if it actually works, but if it does then I'll have an infinite supply of pigment!
category: /tailor | permanent link