15th Century Doublet Project - Parte ye Fourthe

When we last met, I was working on sleeves.  I'm happy to say the sleeves turned out pretty sharp (at least in my opinion).

Now I just have to attach them to the Doublet Body.  That means pleating.

I'm happy to report it went better than I'd thought!  I'm even more tickled to report that I managed to do it without resort to Kass except for, "Looky, sweetie, how I'm doing this!  I R SMRT."

See, I watched her pinning down some pleats recently - they were skirt pleats, but pleats nonetheless.  I figured the same concept would work in this application.

It starts with one pin. I lined up the top of the sleeve puff with the shoulder seam and pinned it in place. 

Then I placed another pin at the bottom of the puff at the underarm, corresponding with the Body side seam. 

From there it was a matter of pulling pleats, placing pins between each one, so the pleats were evenly spaced.  See right.

Eventually, I went through the whole **** cushion of pins. I tried to place a pleat every inch or so on each side of the Body shoulder seam.

At the end I had all the pleats evenly distributed (or as close as satisfied me), ready to sew a strong seam to hold the Sleeve on. See left and right.

Ignore the white Sleeve lining linen; I ran out of the natural stuff because I didn't cut all that wisely.  I may or may not replace it eventually; we need to order more of the natural linen in that weight for other projects (which you'll see right here in the Reconstructing History Blog!). 

I wanted the seam to be really strong, so I sewed a back-stitch all the way round.  I have a history of putting a lot of pressure on seams and blowing them out, and I do NOT want that happening here. At left is a photo of the Sleeve attached.  I'm sorry you can't really see the pleats better; they look a lot nicer than the photo indicates. 

Once the Sleeves were sewn on, I could start attaching the lining.  That's the topic for tomorrow - lining the Doublet! 

'Til then, keep your powder dry! 

Bob