Leather Jerkin: The torso is done

The body of the doublet is essentially done. I have one collar bit to finish and that's it. Now I start on a sleeve treatment and settle on which of the two options I've been toying with for the waist and shoulders.

My favored option is to go with the shoulder and waist treatments on the Museum of London jerkin. Especially after finding this delightful child wearing a similar jerkin at left. I like the fall of the squared-off wings and the waist treatment suits me well, I think.

In the meantime, I have completed the body of the doublet both in sewing and pinking. All that remains is attaching the shoulder and waist treatments and then tacking in the silk lining.

Please excuse the blue jeans. I was so excited to be almost done, I threw it on and ran outside with my lovely and patient photographer to catch a few shots in the sunshine...

Still not entirely convinced that the pinking necessarily makes the leather more pliable as Janet Arnold proposed. Maybe I didn't make enough pinks, but I'm not certain I could pack them in any closer without making the leather unable to hold itself together. But does look cool and what more can one ask?  It also occurs to me that on a hot day, there are worse places to have additional ventilation...

I will add eyelets at the base when I do the skirting to accomodate lacing/pointing on occasion when I 

wear it without a doublet beneath.

Buttons are attached to a thong running up the inside of the doublet, pushed through and laced to the 

shank at approximately 1.25" intervals. This attachment is used on the Museum of London doublet, as 

recorded by Janet Arnold.

The buttons are a pewter reproduction set that I bought on the internet years ago from Tudor Shoppe. 

They are no longer available in this motif. At the time, that was the only place I could find them, but 

since then, there have been many more places popping up that sell repro buttons, including the ladies 

at Tudor Tailor who have an excellent selection. The next ones I buy will be from them if I don't just 

buy some actual 16th century buttons off Ebay and clone them myself.

A better shot of the buttons and button holes.

Stitch demo: Handsewn Button Holes

There are several great demos already for making button holes. There's even a great one for making them in a period fashion by Jennifer Carlson.

But I want to make my own. Why? Because most of the ones I find are either done with thread on fabric (as Ms. Carlson did at the link above) or illustrations.  And that's not optimal for me. Illustrations rarely work to teach me anything and for photos, I need things biggie-sized a bit.

So out comes the plastic canvas and the yarn.

Because I'm me, that's why.

Some simple rules:

• Always work toward the cut. This means that your needle points toward the cut edge of the button hole.
• Use the thumb of your off-hand to hold a loop of the thread down so that the needle always passes in front of it. (see the pictures below)
• Use the warp & weft of the fabric to keep your stitches evenly-aligned. Naturally this is easier with linens and even-weave fabrics and almost impossible with velvet. Do your best.
• Practice practice practice.

Let's get started...

Cut a button hole first. 

With needle threaded, make a small stitch at one end. Either end will do, I prefer working left-to-right.

Poke your needle through the fabric and up through the cut, passing the thread behind the needle.

You will need to keep drawing the thread over like this to maintain tension and keep your knot at the cut edge as shown.

Do this repeatedly, using your off-hand thumb to keep the loop out of the way and to maintain tension on the knots.

When you reach the corner, just turn it around and keep going.

Work your way back across to the original edge of the button hole.

To create a bar along the side (as shown in many extent garments, many documented by Janet Arnold's "Patterns of Fashion") move from your final knot and make a stitch at the end of the first knot you made. Try to only bite as much fabric as you have been to keep things looking tidy.  Work across to the bottom of your stitches.

As you make the last stitch in your bar, pass the needle through the row of stitches to the other end of the button hole.

Work across that side and then tie it off.

Annnnnnnnnd you're done!

Now make a dozen more just like that.

A lot of people who are quite good at sewing gripe that they're not good at making button holes.  I am good at making button holes. Sure, it's monotonous, but what else are you doing with your hands as you watch television? 

Without any statistical basis or scientific investigation I feel that the reason most people aren't good at the finicky things is because they don't practice the finicky things. They say "Oh, I hate doing that" so they avoid doing it.

As with anything, we improve with practice.  If you want to get good at playing an instrument, or drawing, or sculpting, or riding a bike, you have to practice.  So to it is with stitching.

So grab some plastic canvas and sit down to a How I Met Your Mother marathon and make some buttonhold stitches.  You'll be glad you did.

Buttoning Up - Part Two

Part II of an ongoing series of making your own buttons in a period fashion...


Sorry it took so long. On my first try at this, the pictures didn't turn out so well. Getting my little camera to focus on thread is a no-go. SO... for this post I used a larger bead (3/4 inch) and some cheap yarn I had lying around to improve the picture quality.

As previously noted here and elsewhere, the easiest way to 'button up' is to go to your friendly neighborhood cloth retailer and peruse the button aisle. A multitude of perfectly-acceptable metal and wood buttons are available for the purchasing.

The problem lies in that this embarrassment of riches open to the modern costumer is not necessarily reflective of what the period tailor had to work with. Portraits indicate that even among the hoity and the toity metal buttons weren't the most common application. Only the most notorious clothes horses like Leicester seemed to go for the jems and fine metals. Metal buttons are found by metal detectors in Europe all the time, so they weren't rare, but many of them have been cast to resemble the threadworked variety, which I find noteworthy. Also, threadwork or cloth buttons make up the bulk of the buttons I see in the paintings and on the extent period garments examined by Janet Arnold and others in the available texts.

There are three basic styles of threaded bead-buttons I can find readily-available documentation for and I'll focus on those. There are hundreds of possible permutations of this style of button and they're in use through the victorian era. Today I will work a 'corded' design, a 'faceted' design, and a 'basketweave' design here and leave the rest to your imaginations...

Historical Notes:
In Janet Arnold's "Patterns of Fashion 1560-1620" are several images of buttons worked in thread (usually silk) over a wooden core. Based solely on her documentation it appears that the basketweave seems to be the most popular into the early 1600's, often done at an angle to give the weave a more diamond look rather than squares. Following that, I'd say the faceted design is next, and I've only found a couple of examples of the 'corded' look.

The core-shape of course dictates the final shape of the button, and they seem to have been primarily spherical with a couple of flat ones here and there. A quick survey of period paintings will confirm this.

Getting Started...
Each button we'll be talking about begins the same way. Select a bead of appropriate size and thread that will match or contrast with your garment as suits the effect you're trying to achieve. On period garments, the sizes seem to run the gamut from 1" on down.


Take your bead and run your thread through the center hole several times, laying nice flat cords longitudinally around the circumference of your sphere as shown below...


Each design is determined by how you then weave the chord through this base layer. The more wraps, the smoother the final product will be and the longer the design will take to complete. If you wrap it enough and weave carefully it is possible to have your final results be - essentially - as fine as the cloth your will be sewing them to. I never do this, as I believe that the texture of the button adds to the final garment. If I wanted cloth buttons I'd use cloth to cover the bead and save myself some time and handcramps.

The Corded Design
I'm not sure if there's a better term out there for this style, "ridged" perhaps? I call it the 'corded' design because the final button looks like it has corded ridges radiating longitudinally around it.

Start by determining how many ridges you want on your button and lay that many longitudinal cords. Too many and the button will look solid. Too few and it will look unfinished. I find 6-7 to be optimal, but do however many suits you.

Lay each stitch underneath the longitudinal cords...


And comeback around and loop back so you can pass under the same cord, laying the stitch 'south' of the previous one to keep them laying flat without gaps...


Repeat over and over again until the bead is covered and finish...






The 'Faceted' Design...
I call this the faceted design because the finished buttons (when you're using finer threads than the yarn I'm using here anyway) look like they're faceted due to the cords laid underneath drawing the overlaid threads taut to break up the spherical symmetry of the button.

Begin just as noted above. The more cords you lay, the smoother and less faceted the finished product, so keep in mind just how smooth an appearance you want to achieve ere you begin...

Instead of going under each longitudinal cord, go over it and pass your needle back under as shown...

Over...


And pull it tight...
Draw tight so that the loop is hidden from view as you move on to the next cord, hiding the 'cording' I mentioned in the previous button under the layers of thread.


Finish as shown below.

The Basketweave Design...
This is the button that takes the longest of all of them in my experience, simply because you're laying more stitches. Janet Arnold documents these with any number of strands from one to six in each course of the weave so you can do as you see fit.

When you start you want to almost completely cover the button with the longitudinal threads (see left).

I also find that this design goes faster and more smoothly if I'm working with a doubled thread, but you need to be careful not to twist the strands as you're weaving them. Simply hold them flat in place with your thumbnail as you pull each stitch tight and that will help immensely in the quality of the final product.

NOTE: you will want to make an odd-number of longitudinal cords for your weaving or you won't get an even weave when you get to the next part. Just trust me on this one...

The rest is simple, if tedious. Weave the doubled-thread through the longitudinal threads, forming a basketweave pattern as you go. Each weave will be two threads wide if you're working with doubled thread as I am here, and I find you can go as high as six before you start to lose the pattern altogether.

Weave...Weave...

And finish as noted below.

Repeat as often as you desire or for as long as your hands hold out. Twenty-thirty is average, especially for English attire, which is notoriously button-happy.

Take medicinal herb or alchemic concoction of choice to deal with the hand cramps this inevitably produces.

To Finish the Buttons (all)...
Once each button is completely covered with your thread, you're going to find that the hole at the center of the bead is still visible unless you've pulled your stitches tight enough to force the hole closed. As far as I can tell from looking at Janet Arnold, this was usually attended to by tying a big knot and pulling it down tight to fill or cover the hole...

Start by passing the needle back through the hold from bottom to top. There are several fancy knots you can use and at this point I'll refer you to every embroidery and knot book in the world so you can boggle at the sheer number of options available to you.

For the simplest solution, simply wrap your thread around the needle three or four times as shown...


Then pull tight, keeping the knot where you want it by using your thumbnail to hold it in place as you tighten...


Pass the needle back through the hole and snug down so that your knot is either in the hole, flush with the surface, or (if big enough) sitting atop the surface like you see in some buttons pictured in Janet Arnold.


And another finished example...


For the basketweave design, I like the look better if you just pull the weave snug enough to cover the hole, but the knot looks fine too.

Sometimes people use another bead to finish the button. Passing the thread through the bead and pulling it tight instead of making a knot. Aside from the fact that I've not seen any period examples of this yet, I simply prefer the knotted finish anyway. I have tried the beaded solution and played around with it quite a bit out of curiosity and simply don't find any of my results compelling. I've also toyed with the idea of schwanking these up a bit using metal jewelry findings and such, but nothing yet has really looked right to me. If you use a bead of a contrasting color, however, it gives you a really neat effect so I leave it to your own aesthetics...


Worked in finer threads, the final is more impressive than the yarn-covered ones in the tutorial. It's even enough to impress my notoriously finicky marionette...

Buttoning Up - Part One

There are three methods of making your own period buttons that I am going to discuss.

1. Soft Buttons made from fabric scraps
2. Thread-covered buttons with a wooden core
3. Buttons fashioned from beads

I rather like the idea of making soft buttons. As I mentioned previously, Alcega and other renaissance tailor's books go to some length to show you how to lay out your pattern to utilize as much of the yardage as possible. Some of these layouts have pieces lying with, across and diagonal to the grain of the fabric. While I cannot imagine going to quite that great a length, in threads that unraveled from the edges of the cloth! On this project I have taken every opportunity to reduce waste, reuse scraps, and recycle even the little end bits of thread left over from hemming and gathering. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle... a very sixteenth century idea wedged into a twenty-first century framework.

Of all the buttons I've experimented with, this is by far the easiest to master and the quickest to make. All it takes is a little practice (which is a lie, I fooled around with this for quite awhile before I consistently got spheres) some basic stitches and scraps of your "fashion" fabric!

Please note: There are many places to learn to do this. Tudor Tailor has some instructions, as does the fantastic Renaissance Tailor website. Both are illustrated and both contributed in some fashion to me learning how to do this prior to posting this tutorial here. I'm putting this up not because it's never been done elsewhere, but because no one I've found has done this with actual step-by-step photos and even though illustrations are helpful, I've always found it more comforting undertaking something new to see it laid out in actual pictures. Keep in mind that I'm a trained illustrator when you read that. So here we go...

One
If you're using a light fabric such as the linen I used on this doublet or even a light woolen, cut the fabric into squares approximately one inch wide. The Tudor Tailor advises using the bottom of a thread spool as a guide, but considering that there no longer seems to be a standard size for this, I came up with the dimension of one inch as making a finished size and firmness that I'm happy with.

NOTE: when using a heavier fabric, such as canvas or even a wool flannel for this, you might want to nip off the edges and make a circle as shown below or it'll be too bulky later when the time comes to stuff it.

Two
Using a piece of thread roughly a foot long (you want a little extra) run a circle of stitches around the center of the square as shown above. Keep the stitches as even as possible and keep in mind that you're going to be using these to gather the fabric into a ball, so don't make them too tight or they'll do you little good when the time comes.



ThreeDraw up the gathering stitches until the square looks like a little bag. Don't pull it tight, though until you...

Four
...stuff the corners and edges inside. Then draw it as tight as you can without tearing or distorting the fabric. (I imagine great care would be needed if working with silk) Take the remaining tail of thread and sew some stay stitches into the resulting ball to keep it in a ball shape.

Five
Working from the bottom (the wrinkly bit) sew back and forth across the axis of the ball three times, leaving the stitches loose, forming a loop which will be used to secure the button to your garment. Gather the three into a single strand and go over them using a button hole stitch as shown below.

Six
Repeat as often as necessary and sew them on...