Making of a Leather Jerkin - Part 3

In The Modern Maker book, Gnagy describes only a single type of skirting: a one or two piece skirt for the whole circumference of the waist.  I'm not a huge fan of this and wanted a more traditional tab for the leather jerkin.  We went to another great newish resource, 17th-Century Men's Dress Patterns, to help us get the proportions right.  We drew up a new tab pattern and an separate pattern for the two front tabs (actually we drew up two different ones for the front and decided which one we liked better).  I also wanted a paper pattern for the short sleeve, which was a simple trace of the existing sleeve, just cut off at about 9".

Figure 1 - Tabs and short sleeves

With new patterns in hand, 2 short sleeves, 6 tabs, and 2 front tabs were cut out of the good leather.  In addition, I cut out body, back, sleeve, and collar linings of a white linen; this stuff multiplies in our house, so I honestly have no idea what weight it is or where it came from, but it's not as fine as what we used on the blue cloth doublet.  Lastly, I cut out lining for the tabs from a cinnamon colored leather that had leftover from my previous leather fencing jerkin.  Look for something interesting coming with the tabs.  We'll see if I want to add the linen lining to the tabs later or not.

Figure 2 - Tab interlining layout

Figure 3 - Tab interlinings cut out

Note that I've chosen not to do any interlining or shaping layers on this jerkin.  That is a conscious choice for a couple of reasons.  First, even on the cloth doublet it's hot.  I live in NC and regularly fence in 90+ degree weather, and I just don't need to add heat stroke to my list of chronic injuries.  Second, I think the leather itself will hold the shape well enough, but only time will tell.

This marks the completion of all of the primary cutting.  There may be some minor additions, like a waist lacing strip, extra collar stiffening, etc., but nothing major.  Now on to sewing.

Time: 5 hours 47 minutes (across several days)

Total time: 11 hours 22 minutes

Making of a Leather Jerkin - Part 2

Figure 1 - Fronts, backs, necks, & epilets

Well, real life got in the way, but I'm back to making a jerkin. If you'll remember from Part 1, we had an initial layout of parts.  Unfortunately, even with the picture it had been long enough that layout had to be redone, plus I suspect we had forgotten we wanted lengthen the back pieces by an inch from the original pattern to provide slightly better protection for fencing.  Once the layout was done, I traced and cut out the jerkin fronts, backs, collars, and epilets.  It was a gruelling 3+ hours of crawling around the floor (no permanent work area in our house) with plenty of back and knee aches slowing things down.

Figure 2 - Traced layout

Side note: Tracing on leather provided an interesting new challenge.  Typical fabric marking items (chalk/chalk pencils) don't work very well on leather without a whole lot of work and a high potential of causing the "fabric" to move on you.  When I've traced on leather in the past, I've just used a sharpie (permanent marker) but I've also been tracing on the bad side of the leather.  Also remember that I'm using the flesh side of the leather as my good side; this is normally where modern tanneries put markings, as they assume it's going to be on the back of whatever is made.  Because of using the flesh side as good and having to avoid the markings, I would be tracing on the good side, and I didn't really want to use a permanent marker in case I slipped.  Child's washable markers to the rescue - see having kids does have its advantages ;).

Going back and reading my previous post, I realize that I haven't listed the materials I'm using.  The good "fabric" in this case is a Nappone Bone colored deer skin purchased from Zack White Leather; they're relatively local (less than an hour away), and I can walk in and choose my leather, which I really enjoy doing.  For cutting, I use a pretty boring pair of leather sheers that I've had forever.  I don't have the surface, skill, or time to use a traditional moon knife or other period equivalent (although I do own one).  And of course, an orange Crayola washable marker for tracing patterns :).  More on the materials as they come up.

Time tonight: 3 hours 5 minutes
Total time: 5 hours 35 minutes

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

Doublet Materials

I wanted to write a post about the materials used in our Modern Maker doublet, partly for my benefit to remember what all we used, but also for others so they might know what's out there.  So on to the cloth we go.

The fabrics were all purchased from www.fabrics-store.com.  The outside is their IL019 Blue Bonnet (5.3 oz.).  This is a pretty common weight of linen in our house; it breathes well, and holds up to the abuses I tend to put on my clothes (mostly fencing).  For interlining we used their IL095 Natural canvas weight (10.2 oz.).  This is the heaviest weight linen fabrics-store sells, but I think it's the first time we've used it.  The fabric really, really wrinkles and doesn't want to go flat again, no matter how much it's ironed.  I'm not sure we would choose this fabric again because of that.  We might try one of their 8 oz. canvas weight linens instead of the 10 oz. or source from another supplier.  Lastly for the lining we used their IL020 Bleached Linen (3.5 oz.).  This is a lighter weight than a lot of linens we use, and for me it was a little frustrating to deal with it, but I think that was more my inexperience and indelicateness more than the fault of the fabric.  There's also a smattering of black silk for facings & edgings as well as some wool used for shaping that was from leftover stock in the house.

That's all the fabrics, but what about everything else?  We used a Dark Azure (7330) Gutermann 50 weight all cotton thread bought at a local big name fabric store for anything requiring a match to the outer fabric, and we used pretty much an entire 110 yard spool.  For basting and any other uses of white we used whatever generic white we had around the house - I suspect it was Coates poly.  It was the same for applying the black trim, whatever we had in the house.  The buttonholes were done in a black silk buttonhole twist that we had around, but we had to buy a second package.  Eyelets on the sleeves were done in a lighter blue silk buttonhole twist that was also laying around the house.  Eyelets on the doublet around the waist and sleeves we used a crocheting cotton thread that was also around the house.

Lastly we have the trim & buttons.  We utilized a 9mm wide black cotton herringbone twill.  I think it turned out well for the pattern we chose.  For buttons, we used a lovely cast pewter button from the Tudor Tailor's Etsy shop.  The one we used doesn't seem to be appearing in their shop right now, so I don't know if it's just out of stock or they're not producing anymore (which would be a shame).  They do still have their other buttons though, so there is hope.  There are a total of 22 buttons sewn on right now, but room for 2-3 more.

That wraps up the list of materials we used on the doublet.  I'd love to hear what favorite sources other people use.

New Doublet

Kate posted a general post about the new doublet/jerkin we've been working on for quite some time, but I'd like to add my own thoughts here.  This doublet constitutes the most amount of non-leather based sewing I've ever done.  I was guided by my ever loving wife through all of it, and she still did a large chunk of the work, but I think we both learned a lot.

This doublet is intended as a prototype, actually.  The goal is for a new leather doublet that I can use for fencing.  More on that will come later.