Making of a Leather Jerkin - Part 1

For those that don't know me, when I participate in fencing at SCA events, I typically wear a leather jerkin.  Over time, they get a bit gross, brittle, etc. and need to be replaced.  It's well past time for my current one to go, so I started down the path to a new leather jerkin a while ago.  It's been a long, winding process, though, which I'll actually go into here.

First things first, I wanted to be a bit more historically accurate this time around, so I started some research back in Nov. 2016 looking at extant leather garments (after already purchasing the base leather, of course - a white doeskin).  I originally started looking for how they were decorated, but that bloomed into so much more.  Look for a separate blog post on the research itself.  Suffice it to say that for the most part, leather garments when not for military use were treated exactly like any other fabric with regards to decorations.


Then, we needed to make sure we had a current pattern.  We go through sewing phases in our house, which means my most recent pattern was from 2012 and let's just say I've become more prosperous since then.  My wife has typically been the tailor/seamstress in the house, and she'd been interested in the Modern Maker method that had become all the rage, but I said I wanted to be involved, which is a rarity when it comes to sewing.  You can read more about that here, but the short form is that the prototype out of cloth is mostly finished, which means I can move into production of a new jerkin, finally.

Figure 1 - decoration ideas

Last night, we took the first steps on this new journey.  The nice thing is because we've already done a cloth one, the patterning phase is done.  I had decided even prior to the cloth production to use a trim design based off of one from Mistress Isobel (second one down), and drew it out with a little color (Figure 1).  Yes, I have orange trim 😁.  Because this is a fencing jerkin and has to meet SCA protective requirements, I can't slash down the belly like it probably should have.  After doing the cloth doublet with the same trim pattern, there's a consensus between Kate & I that the belly area needs some extra fill, so I need to figure that out.

Figure 2 - Proposed layout on the leather

And now the layout and some decisions.  I've chosen to use the flesh side of the leather as the good side based on the extant garment research, which made layout more challenging (Figure 2) because I had to deal with nap directions.  Normally on leather I would have put things that require extra flexibility near the belly of the skin as there's more stretch there, but with the nap there wasn't a lot of options.

Another decision was around the fact that I am looking at slashing the skirting.  Often on the leather garments the skirting is self lined, so I went looking for a different color leather to back the white.  I settled on the cinnamon colored leather, which are the remnants from the existing jerkin; it's light enough in color to present through the white, and I think it will go ok with the trim.  There were better color options to go with the trim (bright blue - not exactly a historically accurate color), but both other options just were too dark when put behind a small hole in the white.

All told, I think I'm ready to draw and cut out in the next few days, so stay tuned for progress.  I'm also looking to track how long this actually takes, just for my own education.  Oh, and Kate's only allowed to consult - no work from her on this one, so that should be interesting.

Time tonight: 2.5 hours
Total time: 2.5 hours