Category: Sewing

Several months passed between my Tailoring Stitches and Techniques class and my Doublets class. Here Claire and Melanie took on five students: an experienced sempstress who works on an Elizabethan farm, a young woman who works on costuming in an opera house, a graduate student who has taken several other School of Historical Dress classes, and a brand new graduate student with no sewing experience whose adviser told her to sign up for this class but who had not at ALL anticipated how much this was a hands-on exercise (despite this, she did lovely work and kept an admirably cheerful spirit throughout). And me.

We had quite some time to get to know each other, spending six long days tight-packed around the table in Jenny’s workroom, all of us stitching together, learning together, confused together. We had time to talk, to tell stories. We talked about our lives and families, our jobs and hobbies, our homes and hassles. Many of us told stories not only about our partners and children, but of our mothers and grandmothers. Stories about sewing, cooking, teaching and more. We ate lunch together around Jenny’s kitchen table, took tea together every time it was offered, and politely shared the melt-in-your mouth homemade shortbread cookies and assorted sweets. When class ended, it almost seemed as if we were friends.

Patterning Doublets: the Toile

One key thing that I knew I’d learn in the doublet class – because in other classes, students had talked about it, and about how difficult it was – was how to design a pattern. This is something I have attempted before, but I was sure I’d have a lot to learn.

I did.

We started with something familiar to me: draping a toile, or muslin, which is also sometimes called a pattern block. (Toile is apparently a British term and muslin the American, but because most of the authors I read for costume information – Sarah Thursfield, Janet Arnold, the Tudor Tailor team – are British, some of the UK terminology is more familiar to me than the US versions.) What this means is taking large pieces of inexpensive fabric, often medium weight unbleached cotton, and pinning it snugly around a person so as to capture their three-dimensional shape. When you remove the pins and lay it out, you have two dimensional pattern pieces.

I won’t try to tell you how to drape a toile – there are books and websites out there that will do a better job. I learned by reading Sarah Thursfield’s Medieval Tailor’s Assistant. Later I took a workshop taught by Drea Callicut in how to fit and pattern a self-supporting linen kirtle (known in Society for Creative Anachronism circles as a Gothic fitted gown, or GFG). She used the instructions created by Charlotte Johnson (How to Pattern a Gothic Fitted Dress). With coaching and practice, I got better.

Since our class lacked a model, we fitted a full size articulated dressmakers dummy. Smooth, pin, pinch, pin, repin, shift, wiggle, pin, mark your pin lines, remove the toile. No need to ask whether he was comfortable, or would he lift that arm, or “oh, I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to prick you!” or “I told you not to look down at me while I’m pinning, it changes the way this drapes on you, please stand up straight like I asked.” He was easy to work with.

We also took his measurements. Later, we had a live model come in for a fitting, and were shown again exactly where on the body to start and end each measurement. I learned a few useful tips:

If you start by fixing something around the person’s waist (his actual waist, not where he’s used to his trousers sitting) – something like a tape measure or a belt – and make sure it doesn’t shift while you’re working, you have a useful baseline for many measurements. You need to measure from under his arm to his waist, and from the nape of his neck to his waist, and maybe even total distance over the shoulder from front waist to back waist. If you have that waist point clearly marked, you’ll be able to take more accurate measurements more quickly.

But you’ll still do a bit of poking hard to find the bone for things like the shoulder point.

When you need to find the nape of the neck, have him tip his head forward. The bone that sticks out is the nape of the neck.

 

The doublet sleeves should be snugly fitted, just like the body. If the gentleman being fitted flexes his arm as pictured below, you can measure the outside and the inside of the arm and get a better idea of how much length you’ll need to keep the finished sleeve from riding up well past his wrist.

 

I feel as if I should be able to point you, the reader, to a useful list of what measurements you need to take, but I cannot think of one. We received a handout from class, but of course the School of Historical Dress holds that copyright, and I cannot post it here. If you know of a book or website with this information, please share!

 

Patterning Doublets: Pattern Drafting

Then came the mind-whirling, amazing, hard to describe stuff. We watched as Claire and Melanie each drafted a pattern, but not in any way I’d ever done it before.

I’m used to taking the toile, laying it flat, and smoothing out the inconsistencies between the two halves of the toile. Even if you’re pinning on a very symmetrical person, each half of the toile will have a slightly different shape, and honestly most people are far from symmetrical. Then you add a bit where you want to pad and shape the garment differently than the basic human form – a bit more added in a nice rounded shape in front on the lower torso to make a peascod belly, say.

They took measurements, a huge piece of paper, and a compass. (An enormous beam compass like this one.) Although they looked at the toiles and measured a few parts of them, they didn’t use the shape of the toile as the basis of the pattern. After they drew the X and Y axes, every point they used, every curve, every straight line was created by casting circles from a previous point (or points). Every circle had a radius that related to a fractional part of a yard, or sometime to a fractional portion of some length that had already been plotted onto the pattern. They’d try one curve, decide they didn’t like it, try another. They’d need a point from which to cast a large, shallow curve – and they’d have to find two other possible curves cast from the pattern to create the point they needed.

If this doesn’t make sense, forgive me. I really haven’t wrapped my head around it yet. I need practice, lots of practice, before I will be able to really explain what they wanted us to learn.

Their patterns grew, bit by bit, with curves and points and lines that all had a numerical relationship to one another. Claire and Melanie had different “favorite” curves they preferred, or repeatedly found useful. They had different ways of describing what they did. But their technique was the same: geometrical construction and a whole lot of “that’s the way I think it should look.” Of course, Claire and Melanie have also studied extant garments and looked carefully at cutting diagrams in period tailoring manuals. The patterns they’ve observed in those heavily influence the choices they made as they shaped their patterns.

It was amazing. Mind blowing. And really, really hard to learn to do. Thankfully, we didn’t have to tackle that until the next day.

Please ask questions – it helps me figure out what I still haven’t described.

I’ve taken three related classes at The School of Historical Dress this fall: Tailoring Stitches and Techniques, Doublets, and Hose. Each class day is long, as we often have more material to cover than can fit in several days of a 9-to-6 schedule. Sometimes we leave with homework sewing. Sometimes we rush lunch a little. Often we stay a few minutes later. Or an hour. And always, class ends before we can finish our sewing projects.

This is far from a complaint – I LOVE my time in class. It is just exhausting, consuming, and indicative of how massive a subject historical tailoring really is.

My instructors were Jenny Tiramani, Claire Thornton, and Melanie Braun. These amazing ladies worked together recreating historically accurate clothing for Shakespeare’s Globe and on the V&A books Seventeenth Century Women’s Dress Patterns, Books 1 and 2. They’ve sewn, designed, researched, written, taught, and learned together – and it is clear throughout the classes that they are still questioning, observing, and reevaluating their techniques. Hearing them at work is both fascinating and reassuring: if they debate how something should be done, I can hardly fault myself for being uncertain!

I consider myself a competent seamstress with little knowledge of tailoring techniques. I had attempted some fitted clothing that a tailor would make – gowns, doublets, kirtles – but with only modest success. I had draped toiles and created patterns from that. I had read the little 18th century sewing pamphlet The Workman’s Guide to Tailoring Stitches and Techniques – which made me more certain that I did NOT know how to be a proper tailor.

I still don’t know how to be a proper tailor, but I’ve learned a lot! I will try to share what I have learned, hoping both to cement it in my mind and make it available for others. Please assume that any errors are due to my faulty memory, not the instruction received; class moves so quickly that I simply can’t take adequate notes. I haven’t yet learned to write while sewing.

TAILORING STITCHES AND TECHNIQUES

Who were the tailors?

Tailors likely evolved from the Linen Armorers, a group of people skilled in sewing many layers of fabric to give a precise shape. Tailors, historically, stitched layers of fabrics, interlinings, and padding to create the desired shapes; modern ones do more stretching and shaping the wool to fashion the garment. Tailors were men; women could be seamstresses or embroiderers, but there isn’t evidence of women making outer garments until roughly the 1690s when female mantua-makers appear in the record. Tailors were almost certainly guild members, and likely had a specialized skill set even within the tailoring profession. The most extreme tailoring – peascod bellies and skintight hose, puffy paned breeches and gowns over farthingales – happened in the late Elizabethan and early Jacobean period (1580-1640).

This class took place over two days, during which we constructed a sampler using techniques found on extant garments from 1400 to 1800:

Materials

One fabulous part of classes with The School of Historical Dress is getting to use the right materials. One frustrating part is trying to figure out the terminology so that I could, if I wanted, buy comparable tools and materials later. Not only are the fabric, thread, and tool terms specialized, but some of them change meanings over time, and some terms are used in the UK but not the US (or vice versa). Struggling to master the tailor’s language reminds me how much I have to learn, and how daunting it is for a beginning sewer to tackle recreating historic clothing.

My sampler outer blue fabric is a wool melton, closely enough woven and felted that the cut edges do not fray. The panel on the left (above) has a linen canvas interlining from top to bottom, with a tightly woven white linen lining on the top half and a shot silk taffeta lining on the bottom. The silk looks green because the warp threads are teal blue and the weft threads golden cream. The right panel has a natural linen canvas interlining stiffened with rabbit hide glue and two layers of undyed wool voltaire pad-stitched over it. We sewed wool and linen with two-ply linen thread, and the silk and buttonholes with silk twist.

Techniques

Before cutting, we traced our pattern pieces with chalk, then tacked the stitch lines with cotton basting thread. I’m not used to tacking anything, but Claire stressed the importance of this technique throughout the class. While doing the sampler (which had nothing but straight edges and right angles) it just didn’t make sense: why did I need to tack my sewing line, if it was 3/8 inch in from the edge? I have enough sewing experience that I can just “see” 3/8 inch, half an inch, and a quarter inch. When we sewed the doublets and hose, THEN the technique made sense. Where exactly does that shoulder come to a point or that side seam end? The chalk lines wear off during the extensive handling the fabric gets before you reach the assembly stage; without the basted seam line, we couldn’t achieve precise fit.

We cut our pieces with 3/8 inch seam allowance. Jenny stresses that we should work in yards and inches because, at least for an English tailor, these were the basic units of measure they used. We delved more deeply into this in later classes, the concept that tailors cut patterns based on halves, quarters, thirds, etc. of a yard (and related measures).

Then we tried out different seams. I cannot begin to teach these adequately here, so if any seem unfamiliar, find a good book that will explain them. Backstitch, half back stitch, and running stitch were quite familiar to me; we used these to assemble our wool panels.

The right-hand panel is joined to the center with a less familiar seam: counter hemming. This works well here because of the strong cut edge of the wool, and creates the flattest join. The right and center panels are overlapped 3/8 inch, and each raw edge is felled. I am fairly certain that my teachers advised me to do the outside seam first, and then finish the inside edge, with the theory being that the first seam would look the neatest. I’m also fairly certain that I forgot and did it the other way around…no way to tell now that it is sewn.

We used a running stitch and a felling stitch on the wool seam allowances, and discussed which direction to sew. Do you sew right to left, or left to right? I’m right handed, and most of the time I sew from right to left, but the tension and shaping in your stitches is slightly different if you fell the opposite way. I tried both, and they both left neat rows, so I think I could happily work either way. The surest way to know which direction an extant garment was sewn is to discover a knot in the thread showing that they started at that point, and that almost never happens.

Speaking of knots, we didn’t use them. We anchored threads by sewing a stitch or so forward, then back. I learned that technique long ago, but I know it is still not what most beginning hand sewers are taught. I highly recommend it; this anchoring technique is stronger and more secure than tying a knot in your thread, especially in loosely woven fabrics. It also saves you the trouble of fiddling with little knots. Although there is evidence that some historical garment seams were sewn with a knotted thread, I agree with my teachers: forward and back anchoring is a more common and better technique.

We used different seams to join the silk. The center seam is prick stitched, meaning I sewed the fabric right sides together, then folded the fabric to one side and top stitched the seam finished about 1/8 inch from the fold with a sort of running stitch that left long stitches underneath and tiny pricks of thread visible on the surface. On the inside, three layers of fabric (both seam allowances and one piece of silk lining) fold to one side, with only a single layer of silk to the other. Works fine on a thin taffeta, probably isn’t the best technique for bulky fabrics. This technique also leaves raw edges on the inside, which would not work if the inside were ever exposed.

Another silk seam is counter hemmed, like the wool. Because the silk frays easily, each edge is folded under and felled on a creased edge. It makes a neat, flat, completely finished seam, with raw edges enclosed on both inside and out.

We attached two pieces of wool to the bottom hem. One is pleated on with three rows of large, even gathering stitches, the other, cut on a curve, is eased on with two rows of much smaller gathering stitches.

On to the techniques that a tailor, but not a seamstress, used! We tried quilting through a layer of wool slither (or roving, the loose woolly stuff that is combed and ready for spinning) and quilting through multiple layers of woven wool cloth – both techniques used from medieval times. We quilted channels and stuffed them with the wool slither, creating the thicker, firmer lining necessary for Elizabethan clothing forms. We pad-stitched two layers of wool onto glue-stiffened linen, attempting to set a gentle curve into our right hand panel. Others were more successful at this than I was.

After sewing linings and interlinings to the wool, we raced to complete closures. Cloth-covered pasteboard buttons were no problem for me, and cloth buttons were familiar. Thread covered buttons would have been new to me, but they gave us each one instead of teaching us to make them. (A tailor probably would have bought the buttons, anyway, from someone who specialized in such.) Eyelets I know well how to complete, and I’m solid on making a buttonhole using blanket stitch, but I never had learned how to make a proper buttonhole stitch. And at almost 6 p.m. on the second day of class, I was too tired to master it. I tried, I got some of the stitches right, but I didn’t get them all right. Perhaps it would have been easier if I hadn’t been trying to learn how to make a buttonhole stitch while also learning how to make a long 18th century buttonhole, the sort where the silk lining is sewn down separately and only the outer fabric and interlining are caught in each stitch.

My sampler is incomplete, and I fear I no longer remember which techniques were to be applied to which sections, so it will probably remain that way. Still it is an interesting and (thanks to the handout with all the names of techniques and materials used) useful reference. I look forward to practicing the less familiar portions of the project while sewing my family new historical clothing.

I wanted to write about the two most recent classes I took (making and setting Elizabethan ruffs, and historical tailoring stitches and techniques) but I have learned entirely too much to create a coherent description of my experiences. Instead I’ll try to capture three important things I’ve learned by taking classes at the School of Historical Dress with Jenny Tiramani and four other highly skilled and knowledgeable teachers.

FIRST: Use the correct materials. You cannot achieve realistic-looking results without using the correct fabrics, and your process will be rather more difficult if you lack the necessary tools. If an item was made out of a crisp silk material, you probably won’t be able to get the same shape and drape if you substitute linen, wool, velvet, or a softer or thinner silk. If the original garment was slashed using a pinking tool, you cannot easily use modern pinking shears or an X-acto knife to get the same result. (Of course some substitutions, such as using cotton thread instead of linen, will have minimal effect on a project.)

SECOND: Think about who would have made the item. Use materials and techniques that they would have used. Seamstresses used certain stitches, tailors an overlapping but not identical set, and neither did the work of the embroiderers, lace makers, or laundresses. Don’t confuse the techniques of one profession for those of another.

Tailors worked with pattern books, measurements, and curved shapes to make form-fitting outer garments; seamstresses primarily cut and pieced rectilinear and triangular shapes to make linen undergarments and accessories such as ruffs. Seamstresses sewed ruffs but laundresses starched and set them, which required an entirely different skill set. If you try to use a tailor’s curved lines and body-fitting techniques to create a linen shirt, you will probably not produce a realistic historical garment. If you use a seamstress’s rectangular construction to recreate a doublet or gown, you will not achieve a period silhouette. Don’t look at the tiny stitches on a linen shirt and assume that professional tailors always sewed seams as tightly, but also don’t look at the large and sloppy stitches on some tailor-made garments and assume that your linens will hold up if assembled as quickly.

THIRD: Before making guesses about techniques, be sure that you know what the extant garments can tell you about the methods appropriate both to the time period and garment type. Jenny asks me this question again and again, reminding me that the techniques I have relied on most heavily (looking at artwork in books and reconstructing shaped garments by pattern draping on the body) will not show me how to construct historically accurate clothing. I try to describe to her how limiting it is to be an amateur researcher based in America nowhere near any museums with extant clothing from before 1600. However, with the ever-growing number of quality books published about historical clothing, she is right to point out that many resources are available, if we only look hard enough. Art alone will not give us accurate clothing designs. Archaeological textiles and grave goods often lack certain important details and provide an incomplete picture (for example, often the linen fibers have disintegrated, leaving only silk and wool). Whenever I wonder “how did they do this?” I need to always remember to look for information about surviving garments.

Working with Jenny and the other teachers at the School of Historical Dress has been one of the most fabulous unanticipated benefits of living in London. I have asked so many questions, questioned so many of my sewing habits, improved so many of my techniques, eagerly jotted the names of so many quirky suppliers, and added so many odd tools to my sewing wishlist. Pity my poor husband; Christmas shopping this year is not going to be simple.

While in England I’ve sewn very little; I haven’t even constructed clothing I cut out before we moved. Partially, I’m busy. Partially, we’re not going to events and so my family doesn’t need new clothing. Partially, I’m still thinking about what I want to sew and how I want to sew it.

Even my biggest project — the circa 1500 gable style English woman’s bonnet — hasn’t been touched with a needle. Although I’ve measured many effigies and taken more photos than I know what to do with, I haven’t tried to construct a hat. (Not even a cardboard and tape mock-up…I really should at least do that.) I have supplies: thread, buckram, linen, wool, velvet, wire. I have wheat starch, should I gain the confidence to try starching something myself. If I need supplies, I’m in LONDON, for goodness sake — I can get what I need. But I’m still not sewing.

Why?

I think it is because I’m learning too fast for my scissors, much less my needle, to keep up. I am haunted by the familiar disappointment of cutting out a garment and then being sure that I either patterned, fit, or stitched it wrong — a realization that usually arrives before it is finished enough to wear. I will eventually design, cut, and sew again — but for now, I’m learning in my mind, not with my fingers.

I have seen effigies and tombs, over fifty of them dated between 1485 and 1555, many including figures of weepers on the sides of the tomb. Each figure gave me one more chance to see how the hat and veil might sit, even how they might be adapted for a young child. Each helped cement in my mind how the outer gown fashion changed, and how to properly accessorize. The carvings of children are more useful than one might imagine, because their simplified veil-less headgear lets you see what sits underneath the adult bonnet. Sometimes they wear a different style from their parent, confirming that two fashions overlap.

I have seen paintings, up close where I could finally see the details that require a high-resolution image to see on a screen. Sometimes the play of light over the three-dimensional surface of the painting clues you into important bumps and lines that you don’t notice even in a good printed or digital image. The difference between the black veil and the black background appears. The tiny dots on the collar stand out, and then you have a clue where to put the button closure. Even when the work of art is one that I have stared at for years, seeing it in person gives me a chance to see it differently.

I have seen, even handled, extant 15th and 16th century fabrics. There are pieces on display at the V&A and the Globe Theatre, and the School of Historical Dress is making its own collection. I don’t approach these samples with any solid research question, but the more fabrics and patterns I see, including the bits mended or cut or re-purposed or faded, the better my concept of historical fabrics grows. Hopefully my ability to shop for modern facsimiles will improve through this experience.

I have seen excellently-researched modern interpretations of sixteenth century clothing. I went to the Tudor Child exhibit, fondled their fabric samples, studied the costume next to the painting that inspired it. I sat down in front of the boy’s school gown (the only garment there I was ever likely to try to produce for my own children) and stared at it. Sitting made it easier to just let go of the hurried pace of life and allow myself just to contemplate the object at hand. I can’t say that I had any ah-hah! moment about fit or materials or construction, but I suspect that when I look at the pattern, it will seem more familiar and less daunting.

The recreation groups, both professional and amateur, seem to have fairly good clothing. I appreciate what I see done well — like so much nice wool, in fine colors! and silk gowns actually made of silk! — and bite my tongue about the less than accurate aspects, like the entire camp of women all wearing identically patterned (first problem) short sleeved gowns with princess seams (second problem), and not one of them with a proper hood on for being outdoors (third problem). Seeing whole companies in clothing of a consistent era makes my heart sing; the SCA will never, ever look anything like this.

I have gone to talks that blew my mind, met incredible authors and researchers and bloggers and enthusiasts like myself. Seeing a presentation about the underclothes found at Lengenburg castle? Wonderful! Spending the next day in the company of Beatrice Nutz? Fabulous. She has a wicked sense of humor, loves to spin, and gave me an “archaeologist’s point of view” on the recreated goods at the Reenactor Market. One that really stuck with me is that the excavated pins she has seen had wire wrapped heads of just two twists, and the ones for sale at the market were usually wrapped three times. Minor detail? Yeah! But I love it.

This past weekend I attended my second MEDATS conference, where the first speaker got everyone talking excitedly about the patterned hose she reconstructed with sprang. (I have a how-to book in the mail already.) Eventually these ideas and articles would filter across the ocean, but here I am getting them sooner, often getting them straight from the source, and sometimes getting chances to touch and turn and experience the experimental recreations, giving me a tactile knowledge that photos just fail to capture.

I think the biggest game-changer for me has been taking a class with Jenny Tiramani. Although I asked, and she answered, as many questions as I could formulate over those two days in her house, I am still processing the larger questions that she planted in my mind. I’m starting to look at sewing and patterning differently, and when I can figure out how to explain what I mean, I’ll blog about that, too!

So while I sit, and think, and see more and hear more and read more, I am fermenting. There are some interesting and potent ingredients in this batch, and I have high hopes about the outcome, but we shall have to wait and see. Not every brew is fit to drink, not every pattern fit to wear, not every theory correct once tested. Let’s see how this project turns out. But for now, don’t rush me. I’m fermenting.

The weekend of March 2-3 I took a course sponsored by the School of Historical Dress: Historical Stitching and Decorative Techniques on Leather 1400 -1600, taught by Karl Robinson. The class was small, just six students, and over the two days I made a belt, man’s purse, woman’s purse, and some samples showing  stitching techniques used on leather jerkins. This was an introductory course, although our progress was made easier by the uniformly high skill set of the participants. So many factors played into making this weekend fantastic that I hardly know which to describe first.

We met at Sands Films, a company that supplies historic costumes to films. We spent most of our days in their Laundry (virtual tour here) where they dye. This company is serious about its historic costumes. They keep a research picture library that is open to the public; although I walked through, I never had time to pull any of the folios off shelves. Currently the library also has an exhibit of embroidery done for them by a recently deceased gentleman. Truly magnificent stuff.

The tutor for the class was a member of the Tudor Group, which looks like the sort of reenactment organization I’d want to belong to if I were staying in London. Serious about their authenticity. It pleased me that although many classmates had professional standing, titles or academic degrees that laid out clearly their skill set and qualifications, our teacher came to his skill through his hobby. Like me. He’d once wanted a leather item that he couldn’t afford to buy…someone showed him a thing or two…and now he sews and sells his own leather goods.

The social aspects of the class were fun; intelligent peers are a real plus. I also greatly enjoyed the company and commentary of Jenny Tirimani, who as a director of the School of Historical Dress was constantly hovering around the class, seeing how it was going (this is the first time this class has been offered — the school is just getting started). Our hosts at Sands Films outdid themselves in the hospitality department. We were regularly offered tea and biscuits, were served lovely soups and breads and puddings both days, and were given a tour of the studios after classes ended Sunday.

I liked getting to see the assorted artifacts offered. Both Jenny and Karl have collections of antique metal things — purse hangers, decorative studs, buckles, and the like — that have been found and are freely available for purchase. These aren’t incredible, belongs-in-a-museum pieces, but still…I am so unaccustomed to being around truly old things, the idea of owning such treasures is a tiny bit frightening. But the thrill of finding them calls to me. If I weren’t so busy, I’d pay attention to the tides on the Thames and try a bit of mudlarking myself.

Jenny also shared some reconstructed leather clothing she’d made or commissioned for the theater. Fantastic stuff. The leather hosen particularly caught my eye…wouldn’t that be perfect for rapier armor?

The most important lesson I took home, though, is the answer to why I don’t sew leather. Simple! I don’t own the right tools. Give me the custom commissioned knives, the cutting mats, the clamp that goes between my knees and is such a fantastic third hand, the leather needles, the different awls and punches, the special conditioning blend for softening the leather, the proper vegetable tanned leather itself — give me those things, and I’ll sew you something. Give me those things and some time to practice, and I might even make something nice. For now, though, I’ll buy my shoes and belts, and thank the artisans who make them for the time, frustration, and sore fingers that they’re saving me.