Success!
I only got to wear the new doublet for about four hours yesterday, but it was incredibly comfortable. I was easily able to sit, slouch, and bend over without any problems. It was a little warm but the weather at the event was gorgeous, with ample shade and a lot of nice breezes. The main problem I had was worrying about getting it dirty. I'll definitely make another doublet with this design, though not necessarily in the very near future.
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Doublet Finished
Yesterday I attached the skirt and bound the bottom edge of the doublet with a strip of muslin. I had intended to make a separate lacing strip, but the bound doublet edge was wide enough to put lacing holes in so that's what I did. I made the holes to match this old pair of venetians, but I can add more if I need to.
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Sleeves On
I got the sleeves built and attached, made the buttonholes and attached the buttons, and rebuilt an old shirt that had good cuffs and collar but was otherwise too big. The only problem I've found so far is some tightness in the shoulders. Unfortunately, it's impossible to know how the fit will be until everything is put together. You can see some stress wrinkles across the shoulder area, but it's not too bad. I may try putting in an underarm gusset to loosen things up a bit, but I'll wait until I wear it for a while before doing anything drastic. All that's left to do on the doublet is the skirt and the lacing strip, which I should be able to get done by this weekend. I should be able to wear it with an old pair of venetians to give it a good test run.
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Buttons
I finished making the buttons tonight. I made twenty of them. I'm not sure exactly how many I'm going to use yet. I still haven't fully decided on how to close the sleeves, but buttons are sounding better and better to me.
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Linings And Wings
Between last night and today I've put on both shoulder wings and the lining for the body and half of the collar. The wings were constructed as a simple fish shape, folded in half. I put a seam about 3/8" in from the folded edge for the little clipped loopy decoration, and quilted a layer of quilt batting into the rest of the wing. For the belly padding I ended up building up what I wanted out of several layers of quilt batting. at its thickest each pad is only about 5/8" thick. I stitched the layers together enough to hold everything in place and then sewed each pad onto the lining. I decided to use the same red cotton for the lining that I used to flatline the velveteen pieces. This thing is going to be somewhat warm, but it feels very sturdy and there are mo unsightly bulges on the front. After I finish the collar lining, next on the list will be the sleeves, then the skirt, binding the bottom edge, and the lacing strip. Somewhere in there I'll have to do buttons and buttonholes. The buttons are going to be thread covered like the others I've done, except with just a knot of thread at the top instead of another bead. I'm also going to do a few less buttons, to match the portrait.
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Coming Together
The pinking went quickly and easily, and cleaning up the stray threads didn't take much time either. I cut the lining for the body out of the red cotton I plan to use for the lining of the trunk hose. After flatlining all the pieces, I basted the body together and turned under the center front edges. In the pictures the front is pinned and padded with a t-shirt, so it's a little lumpy. All things considered, however, I'm pretty happy with it so far. Pinking takes a lot less time than couching cord, though it is less forgiving of mistakes. I plan to crate pads for the peascod similar to how I did for the black suit, but with a few changes. I'm going to make the pads as entirely separate entities and then attach them to the lining of the doublet. I'm trying to avoid the outline of the padded area that can be seen on the black suit. Also, the pads are going to be asymmetrical. The pad on the buttonhole side is going to stop short of the buttonholes, while the pad on the button side is going to go out past the edge of the doublet so it can fill in the entire area under the buttons. I was not very happy with the dead area under the buttons on the last doublet. Also, I wonder if the black linen wasn't really heavy enough to mask the contours of what was going on under it.
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Collar Quandary
Last night I went to put the collar on. First I tried to be lazy and not flatline it, which turned out to be an unsightly mistake. Also, the rectangular shape that had looked fine on the mockup didn't work very well on the real thing. I changed the front collar pieces to a slightly curved shape. Finally, I wrestled with attaching it using normal techniques, which was a nightmare. I ended up finishing all the edges, butting them together, and whipstitching everything. It turned out much nicer that way.
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Away We Go!
So I did the pinking on the sleeves. I think it turned out pretty well. Here's a closer look at how they turned out. It didn't take very long, and I only had to re-cut a few times when I didn't get all the way through all the layers. I think that if I used a more resilient surface than a pine 2x6 I would get a little cleaner cuts, but I don't want to tear up my chisel. I may see if I can lay my hands on a nice sturdy plastic of some sort, like an old cutting board maybe.
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Back To Basics
I realized this morning why I always do the sleeves last. Without a doublet body to attach them to, there's no way to be sure how long to make the sleeves. Since I don't want to end up with short sleeves like last time, I'm going to hold off on finishing the sleeves until the body is done. There's certainly enough material to work with, but the treatment I'm going to do on the cuffs means I'll only have one shot to get them right. I still haven't decided if I'm going to do hooks or buttons at the cuff, though I'm actually leaning toward hooks.
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And The Winner Is...
I did my test of pinking methods, and was surprised to find that the chisel seemed to work best. The x-acto knife made a really ugly cut -- I never really expected it to work well. I thought the scissors would work the best, but a) it's hard to get exactly the right length cut, b) it's hard to keep the cut straight, and c) when cutting through both the pattern piece and the material it's hard to cut the same length through both. I backed the material with a piece of wood for the chisel test, and it worked wonderfully. I'll still have to deal with some stray threads and velveteen bugs, but it produces perfectly sized, straight cuts exactly where I want them. I just have to make sure the chisel stays sharp, but I don't think it'll be too difficult. In other news, I decided to reshape the sleeve pattern just a bit, giving it a little more rounded shape rather than a simple cone. There's some bagginess at the elbow in the portrait that seems to indicate some more room there than I've allowed for. I also picked up some polyester (yuck!) lining for the sleeves. It's horrible, but no one will ever see it and it'll make the whole thing more comfortable, I hope. I may use the lining for the doublet body too. I'm considering going against my normal method and making the sleeves first. We'll see how that pans out.
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