Leather Jerkin: Finishing up the detail work

Washington Midsummer's Renaissance Faire starts next weekend, and there I will debut the leather jerkin in its entirety. But here are a few teaser shots as I polish off the details.

I forgot to mention in my buttonhole tutorial that buttonhole stitches perform one other function that we're generally unaware of because so much modern clothes are lightweight fabrics: Buttonhole stitches make it easier for the button to pass through. Never is that more apparent than when working with leather. Trust me.

After trying a number of ideas and getting so far as to have to cut stitches on one of them, the epaulets I finally settled on are quite a bit different from those I envisioned.

Crewel World II

In Crewel World part one (click to go there) I talked about a rapier carrier I made a long time ago. The design incised into the leather (shown above) is drawn from a tile in a cathedral somewhere. Sadly, I've long since lost the original picture the design was based upon as it was many years and a couple of computers ago. Nevertheless, the design has been re-cast in whole or in part on a great deal of the garb I've made since then.

Yesterday, I did it again. For the lid of the purse I'm making I brought the design into a more Elizabethan vine motif and coloring while maintaining the original cruciform arrangement of the elements.

The design was drawn onto the green canvas with a stick of graphite (you can still see some of the marks in the photo below) and backstitched over the marks with crewel yarn to give dimension to the embroidery. The backstitching was covered with satin stitch, and buttonhole stitch using linen and wool thread.

I chose a darker background color that the off-white used in the inspiration garment (and other very similar designs scattered through the Elizabethan world). This is because my hand will go into and out of the purse fairly often, making this an item that will be especially prone to getting dirty.

The aforementioned inspiration garment can be found here: http://www.plimoth.org/embroidery-blog/. The folks at Plimoth were re-creating a heavily embroidered late-period jacket entirely by hand. This entailed reconstructing unknown stitches and techniques. I say "were" because the funding for the project has been canceled owing to the current economic troubles. (The embroiders involved have vowed to continue despite the lack of funding, so there's hope.) Follow that link, you will be amazed.

Crewel World

Sorry for the obvious pun.

Since I'm still waiting for The Hotrod to get it's act together, I decided to keep myself from getting either too bored or too wrapped up in any video games by taking up the embroidery needle. Yeah, I called our sewing machine "The Hotrod" I told this was a guy's sewing site.

Anyway, for fun I did a raised satin stitch embroidery at the base of the neck using 1/4 of the tile design I used on my rapier carrier. Why at the base of the neck? No reason. I just thought it echoed the lines of the quilting and would look good there. Also there wouldn't be anything covering it up (baldrics and the like tend to cover the chest).

And - for those who didn't get the pun - this kind of embroidery is known (collectively) as "crewel work".

Mostly, I'm practicing because I plan to do some hand-embroidery on the final noble garment and I haven't done any embroidery in awhile.

It sort of looks like a glyph or
protective ward of some sort, doesn't it?
Speak this glyph and summon Great Cthulhu
from his watery home...

This shot is just to show the orientation.
I don't really plan to do any more, this is sort of a one-off
because I was bored and had a needle and thread handy...

A closeup of the (complete) design as
I incised it in the leather of my rapier carrier.

Oh! And for the record: Not all that long ago I said something to the effect of I avoided hand stitching if it wouldn't be better that way than doing it on the machine... I wanted to make it clear thatI don't think my embroidery is better than what a machine can do. Quite simply put: We don't have an embroidery machine so Scottie gets to practice his stitches.

Great panes...

Disclaimer... If I dug though my old text books from art school I could probably come up with a better name for this feature than 'sleevelet'. But the books aren't in a convenient place at the moment, and I'm too lazy. Not to mention that in the big picture, nomenclature doesn't seem all that important at the moment. If anyone has a 'proper' term for it at their fingertips they can email it to me, but in the meantime I'm going to stick with 'paned sleevelet'



I finished the rows of straight chain stitches on the panes and I've assembled the sleevelets. Below is a pic of the cuff with the panes sewn into it before I turned it and tacked it down. The cuff piece has a arch to it, which is why I clipped the edges prior to turning as you can see.


The dark burgandy layer is the canvas I used to interline the pieces. Yes, I know, I said something heartfelt in a previous post about interfacing being easier than interlining. Keep in mind the other things I said about only using modern conveniences where I can get away with it. In this case I think that modern interfacing would make the lines too stiff and starched-looking. Since an interlining is essentially only attached where the stitches hold it, it can give pieces like the panes and cuff of my sleevelet structure without forcing them to hold thier shape to an almost starched extent.




Trimmed and turned. At the moment it's just pinned together to check the shape and see if adjustments need to be made before there are too many seams to pull.



This is the scrye where it will eventually be joined to the body of the doublet.

Since I've never made a sleeve treatment such as this one, I thought it meet that I should pin and pose, trying out the thing and making 99.9% sure I got it right before I actually sewed it on. The sleeves of the doublet will be laced on, because I prefer that method overall, but in the Moroni painting the jerkin I am copying looks like it's been sewn into the armscrye. This is unusual according to most of my reading, but the painting shows no visible signs of lacing or points holding the sleevelets in place, so neither will this jerkin - or the final one.

Note: I didn't have one of my usual 'renaissance shirts' handy, so I'm wearing a white dress shirt in these photos. It doesn't really matter because at this point I'm just testing the angle. The 'bulky armpit' tests will come later when it's tacked on a little more securely and I can get a real feel for how it will go. The nice thing about panes is that they can be moved to expand or contract around as much or as little thickness of fabric as I am likely to find going through that armhole anytime soon.



At Extension



Front



Shoulder back


Shoulder profile

I'm pleased so far with the similarities with the jerkin in the painting. There is a small issue at the back of the neck, however. It is possible that partially quilting might not work in the long-run. The point where the quilting stops has a pucker that just won't go away. I'm still looking for solutions to this (other than quilting the whole damn thing, of course). Maybe some of that cheap ultra-flexible boning they sell at fabric stores or some broom straw or something... I'm sure I'll figure it out eventually.



No matter how many times you've done this, the course of sewing garb never runs completely smooth.

Quilting addendum...

That which goes without saying is often that which most needs to be said. Or that's the gist of what my wife just said to me after reading last night's post. She rightly pointed out that while adding two inches all around before quilting is well and good, I neglected to mention that after quilting, you trim away a good deal of those extra inches to get your quilted piece back to the correct size for the pattern piece.

I guess she was picturing that oversite on my little blog here starting a wave of John Travolta Saturday Night Fever doublets made from white polyester with huge honkin' quilted butterfly collars.

"You can tell by the way I move and the way I walk,
I'm a renaissance man, and no time to..." Oh, forget it.

So yes, the Tip Of the Day is: Please trim away the excess after you're done quilting. Big collars are scary. Only you can prevent renaissance liesure suits!

Sigh