The 1642 Tailor

One of those projects we like appeared in the 1642 Tailor inbox recently. “Hi, I’m looking for a hat similar to the one Shaun Dooley wears in ‘The Gunpowder Plot’ together with a cloak”. Now we don’t do hats, but we can make cloaks. It wasn’t particularly a Jacobean cloak, but a Cromwellian one that our client wanted as it turned out, so we looked at some pictures. The first image above showing Mr Cromwell dismissing the Rump Parliament is a Dutch engraving. He’s wearing a cloak rakishly off the shoulder but what drew our eyes was the buttons. A buttoned cloak? Then we looked at the famous image of Mathew Hopkins, the self-styled Witchfinder-Generall and his cloak has buttons too, big ones. We liked this look as we have lots of thread buttons in stock!

The Aston accounts of the famous North West based cavalry regiment has records of cloaks made for the troopers. Looking at these it’s also obvious that buttons were part of a soldier’s cloak at least. The inventory states:

Broadcloth: 3 and a half yards

Big buttons: 24

Long button: 1

There is also no indication that these cloaks were not lined and with 24 big buttons they must have buttoned up the front like Cromwell’s and Hopkin’s did. The long button we think is was toggle and used for holding the cloak at the neck when riding. We still don’t know as there are no clear pictures we could find that shed any light on this.

We also looked at this cloak in the V&A. It’s a fill circle of wool, embroidered and lined with a collar and a thing of beauty. http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O13922/cloak-unknown/ We didn’t go with the embroidery, but we copied the collar and went for a full circle, just because we could.

So here are the photos of the finished cloak. It sits nicely on the shoulder because it’s a full circle of heavy wool. It also needed no henning as the wool is heavily felted and will hold a cut edge without fraying. The buttons enable you to secure it against inclement weather, though we are still not sure about why you would button up the collar. It doesn’t really work as a fold down and if it stands up, you can’t see where you are going. We think they were just decoration.Let us know if you know any different!

In 1994 a bundle of rags was found beneath the attic floorboards of a house in Abingdon. The house is believed to date back to at least the 15th century and has a wealth of historical detail which Rachel, the current tenant was pleased to show me when I visited in June this year. The rags turned out to be what was left of a doublet of a 17th century style and something which on close inspection reveals a wealth of detail of a rare example of a common piece of clothing from our period. Janet Arnold reportedly dated the doublet between 1625 and 1630 when she looked at it and it’s hard to disagree, the sloping waistband would seem to suggest pre 1640 but the waistband and metal eyes post c.1620.

Luckily when I called we were able to remove the perspex cover over the doublet and the north facing picture window enabled me to take some detail shots with my phone. Looking at the doublet as a whole it is obvious that it was made for a small person, possibly (as has been suggested) a 5 or 6 year old boy who had just been breeched and that this was his very first doublet. What is left is 37 cm across and 38 cm long. All that remains is the left front, part of the left sleeve and fragments of the collar. The whole thing is in a very fragile state and it is still heavily soiled from being hidden. It was made from 2:2 twill woven wool and an initial analysis when the doublet was conserved found the presence of the compound indigotin. This indicates that it was originally blue and has faded to brown over the centuries. The buttonholes and some of the visible construction threads still retain a faint blue colour that reinforces the theory.

The doublet’s interlining is all that’s left of the right side and it’s obvious that this was a coarse, tabby weave linen. There’s no evidence of any form of belly stiffening, but the collar was stiffened with layers of paper sewn together. The lining of the doublet was a finer weave linen that can be seen in the photo on the right hand above, centre right edge.

What remains of the left hand sleeve has a shoulder wing which seems to have been doubled over, or made from two layers of the blue wool and seemingly sewn on with the sleeve, though it could possibly have been whipped on afterwards. It’s impossible to see without moving it. There’s no sign of waistband tabs which is an unusual construction. Tabless doublets aren’t shown in portraits as far as I can work out. Maybe the tabs could have been removed neatly at some stage for any number of reasons without leaving any real trace.

The collar is a mess, but you can see the linen lining and the layers of paper that were used for stiffening. Possibly they were glued together to make a kind of pasteboard. This was a relatively common method and collars (ie the stiffening) could be bought as easily as buttons. Check out too the running stitches on the collar in natural thread. Not all tailor’s work was neat, especially where it would be hidden.

The 18 buttonholes down the front are worked in linen thread and are quite small compared to the buttons. There are four buttons left, each one about 8mm in diameter, worked in linen thread over a fabric or possibly a carved wooden core. They look like they have always been linen coloured, but I can find no analytical evidence for any dye stuffs such was found  in the wool. It’s also debatable whether they are made of silk or linen. Someone with a microscope needs to go back and double check. There is also an iron eye sewn to a fragmentary piece of linen waistband for joining to the waistband of a pair of breeches which places the date of the doublet post c 1620.

Thanks to Rachel for showing me around her house and to Oxford Preservation Trust for arranging the visit. This doublet is a real treasure. Luckily it is in good hands.

It would be a slight understatement to say I’ve been eagerly anticipating this book, having invested in Mathew’s Kickstarter appeal back in 2015and I must say right now that I’m not disappointed with what I’ve seen in the digital copy I was sent last week.

The first book in the Modern Maker series was a set of instructions for making the pattern for and constructing a man’s doublet from the late 1500s. It was a game-changer in pattern making and it’s never been far from my worktable since I bought a copy. This, much larger volume promises to open out Mathew’s bara system (see below) to much more, from Men’s doublets and breeches to coats and women’s clothes of many types.

Mathew has taken three tailor’s manuals from the period in the title and worked through all the clothing types with an obsession. The tailor’s manuals in the early modern period are basically how to lay the various patterns out on the fabric with a few cursory remarks. The master tailor using the book would know what to do with the pieces so needed no further instruction. What this author has done is to recreate each piece and from those reconstructions produce individual pattern drafts that make sense of the old drawings. There are additional notes where needed for places where the fabric needs to be manipulated or stretched and where extra pieces, stiffening, interlining need to go. In fact Matthew has gone even further and using his system (with the extra instructions in the introductory chapters) it is possible to produce patterns that will fit just about any shape and size of human you can imagine.

The bara system that in outlined in the book is a period method for sizing patterns that relies on a series of proportionate tapes that are drawn up for the individual client and then used with the patterns to draw up the pieces required. In the Modern Maker 1, Mathew showed us how make the tapes and use the system for a doublet. Now the scope has been expanded, so that with this book you can make doublets, breeches, coats, women’s doublets, petticoats, bodies, cloaks etc etc. There is even a hood pattern on page 101 that can be folded to look very much like a proto-montero. We joined in the facebook discussions when Mathew was trying to figure this out! The pattern instructions have been clarified and the drawings make it clear exactly what you need to do to bring these old patterns alive.

I heartily recommend this book, which I understand should (at the time of writing) be available in print next week. This is Mathew’s magnum opus and brings together all his thoughts and philosophy on period tailoring. My only beef as a 1640 tailor is that there are precious few patterns that can be used straight off the page without some alteration for my period. That is (as far as I’m concerned) a minor charge and one which (just perhaps) will be rectified as the series develops. I will keep my copy close by my side for the foreseeable future.

Bravo Mathew Gnagy!!

Recently I was allowed access to the foot colour in the National Army Museum store in Stevenage. It was educational and as you will see I was inspired to have  go and make one from scratch which opened up some of the secrets of the 1640s tailors who were asked to make flags for the armies of the Civil War.

4th Captain’s Colour Sir John Gell’s Regiment of Foot c1646

 This is the catalogue entry from the museum website about Gell:

Sir John Gell was High Sheriff of Derbyshire when he was commissioned as Colonel to raise a Parliamentarian regiment during the English Civil War (1642-1651). His regiment took part in several engagements including the sieges of Chester and Lichfield and the battle of Hopton Heath.

Gell became disaffected with the political direction taken by the Parliamentary regime after the king’s surrender in 1646. A further cause of disillusionment was Parliament’s reluctance to compensate him for losses he incurred in fighting the war. In 1646 his regiment was disbanded and he was relieved of all appointments. Gell moved to London where he made contact with Royalist agents but in 1650 he was found guilty of knowing of a royalist plot and not revealing it to the authorities. Imprisoned in the Tower of London, Gell was released in 1653 on grounds of ill health. He was pardoned by King Charles II at the Restoration in 1660 and given an appointment at court.

This foot colour is the best provenanced of the three in the museum, having been in the keeping of the descendants of Sir John Gell in Newnham in Northamptonshire it can be connected with some certainty to Gell’s regiment from the Civil War. It was framed and kept behind glass where Andrew Polkey examined it for his research into the war in Derbyshire and Stephen Ede Borrett for his book ‘Ensignes of the Civil Wars’. Andrew’s comments formed the larger part of a description in ECW Flags and Colours by Les Prince and Stuart Peachey. In 1994 it was purchased by the National Army Museum and passed into their collection. Recently it was taken for conservation work to the Museum’s workshops in Woolwich. It has now been returned to the stores in Stevenage where I was allowed to view and photograph it. I had read the piece in Les’ and Stephen’s books, but because the previous inspections upon which the descriptions were based were limited I wanted to look at it for myself.

The museum entry says:

“4^TH Captain’s colour. Gell’s Regiment of Infantry, C.1650. Double sided silk colour with a gold silk ground and five blue stars inset, running diagonally from the lower right corner of St. George’s Cross at the top left to the lower right corner (as viewed). The pole sleeve is lined with linen fabric.”

The width of the colour is 1990mm. It is 1915mm tall at the pole sleeve and 1870mm at the fly. The body of the flag is cut from three sections of yellow silk hand-stitched together with run and fell seams. The upper portion above the horizontal seam is 800mm wide and the lower section 1050mm. The lower section is one single piece whilst the upper section is made in two pieces of yellow silk, one under the canton and the larger piece (to the right hand side in the photo) joined with a vertical seam that runs from the top right hand corner of the canton to the centre seam.

The silk on the St George’s canton, (especially the white quarters) has degraded over the years but it’s still possible to see how it went together. It’s obvious now, (though it wasn’t when framed) that the vertical of the St George’s cross isn’t one complete strip as the top and lower arms don’t quite line up. I think that I’ve now (having made a canton) worked out the sequence of construction for the St George in the corner. The canton was made up as a complete section and formed the basis for the rest of the colour. All the seams are run and fell to protect the cut edges of the silk, the practical problem here is that a run and fell seam has a finite width across both sides so if you aren’t careful lining up the pieces, the reverse side can look pretty rubbish (I found that out by trial and error). The two top vertical red pieces were sewn to a flanking cream square and the lower two were also sewn to another one, making sure that the two seams were identically aligned. Then these two sections were sewn to the horizontal red stripe to complete the cross.

The finished canton doesn’t overlay the flag, but is set into the body in the following way: It was sewn to the yellow silk section below it and this complete piece was sewn to the yellow top left hand quarter of the colour. The top and bottom halves were then joined by sewing together with another run and fell seam. In this way, all the seams are straight and there were no tricky corners to sew round. The entire flag was then hemmed on three sides with what looks like a thin cord inset within the hem to give it more body and hopefully keep it from immediately fraying in the wind.

Following this, in a diagonal line from the corner of the canton were sewn a row of five blue stars. This denotes that the colour is the flag of a fourth (or possibly fifth) captain’s company. This also may explain why the flag has survived. Quite often any junior colours like this one wouldn’t have been used if the regiment was under strength. The stars are made of blue silk sewn into star shaped holes cut into the ground of the flag. I suspect the shapes were tacked on to the flag and whipped down around the edges before the silk was turned over and the yellow silk cut away. Then the yellow edges on the reverse were whipped over to hold them in place and to stop them fraying.

The pole sleeve was the made from the same yellow silk as the flag, lined with plain weave linen and attached to the colour. It’s 50mm wide at the widest point, and could take a pole roughly 3cm in diameter. The colour also had a matching silk cord with tassels attached. It has been associated with the flag for a long time so may be safely attributed, but it wasn’t available for me to view

The colour has been stabilized by the museum and covered with a fine net to prevent any further degradation of the silk. Some fine dust was removed with a fine sable brush and this brightened it up generally. The white silk, (and to a lesser extent the red) in the St George canton has degraded badly but this has been enclosed in conservation net and the whole colour now fixed to a padded board for future display. As I understand it is to be displayed at the Chelsea Museum in rotation with another flag a blue and white pile wavy foot colour, also possibly from the civil war.

Since I visited the museum I’ve been commissioned to make a gyrony colour, 2nd Captain’s company of Sir John Owen’s regiment, possibly Capt Brinknir’s company. This picture was what I had to use, but I could begin to see how it would go together.

The canton in the corner I could do, having seen the Gell’s flag. The gyrony sections I thought would also be a doddle. How wrong could I be? It all started off well, that canton went nicely, it even lined up on both sides. and I managed to complex seam with the angle that joins the canton with the red section below it to the white silk piece that completes one quarter.

I laid out the silk pieces just to check all was well and took a deep breath before I carried on.

Then I hit the wall! Having made up the three other quarters I started to join the whole thing together and realised that the offset nature of the run and fell seams make it really tricky to align both sides of the flag. One side was quite respectable but the other….Suffice to say I didn’t take any photos! Notice here that the colour takes up most of the living room when laid out.

The drawing board was needed! I took a week off, then made a small replica and played with various alignments of seam, red over white, white over red etc. Why hadn’t I done this earlier! It was now coming together. If you are really interested I can draw you a picture of the seams and how they align, but to cut a long story short I was beaming all over my stupid face when I got to this stage. So glad it was only a 2nd captain’s flag that was ordered, but maybe I’d be up to the challenge of more sections?

It just needed hemming around some thicker interior thread, like the Gell’s colour and a pole sleeve adding. I had even sourced a silk cord and tassel to match the one in the illustration.

So here is the finished article ready to rumble.

More reading, (though with less accurate descriptions of this colour) can be found in:

English Civil War Flags and Colours by Les Prince & Stuart Peachey 1991

Ensignes of the English Civil War by Stephen Ede-Borrett 1997

The new book from the V&A, 17th-Century Men’s Dress Patterns has been anticipated since the series started with 17th Century Women’s Dress Patterns. The wait has been well worth it, as the authors have learned from the previous volumes and produced this state of the art publication about early 17th century men’s clothes. I had a conversation a few years ago with a museum curator about the first women’s dress pattern book and she told me it was ‘re-enactor porn’. This has taken it to another level.

The book has been produced by a collection of authors from the School of Historical Dress and Susan North from the V&A. Each author has inspected and put together a pattern for at least one of the items in the book, four doublets, a pair of breeches, a cloak, a pickadil, a hat, a cap and liner, embroidered mittens, a sword girdle and a pair of linen hose. The introduction and photos of stitches set you up with the background and techniques used for the clothes and then pitch you headlong into the world of the 17th century tailor. I particularly like the diagrams on page 11 where the different methods of fixing each of the four doublets to the matching breeches are shown so you can compare the different systems and track the development of the hook and eye system that we use at the 1642 Tailor. In the following pages you are introduced to all the tailoring techniques used for this complex garment. This is not a book of fancy dress, it’s proper stuff. If you want to make a real stiffened, interlined, fitted garment that will transport you back to the 17th century, dive in.

This picture (above) lifted from the Amazon preview gives a flavour of the detailed photos you get  of all the clothes. I know that this red grosgrain silk doublet has been a favourite of Jenny Tiramani’s for a long time and she has pulled out all the stops, with close up photos, x-rays, detailed pattern layout and a superbly drawn construction sequence. There are even diagrams of the braid used and some photos of the half scale reconstruction Jenny made to test the techniques. If I was being picky, I would like an indication of which points each doublet would have been tried for size on the wearer. All the constructions just assume the pattern was spot on to start with. Below, (from another Amazon image) are some more photos and x-rays of a pair of silk breeches made for Sir Rowland Cotton.

If you don’t have this book, save up your pennies and get a copy (or nick it off a friend). It will open your eyes to how hard the tailors worked to make these clothes. They weren’t just thrown together on a machine, but finessed, sculpted, shaped and finished off by real expert craftsmen. As has this book. It’s a tad pricey at £35 from the museum, but there are all sorts of places where you can get it cheaper.

I can’t wait for book 4!

Just some old grey wool? Maybe not. The subject of russet wool is a tricky one, sometimes russet refers to a colour and sometimes it’s the kind of fabric. The trouble being that research hasn’t exactly revealed what the fabric was, and most people think of it in terms of colour, a kind of natural brown, slightly red shade that we are all familiar with. What we do know about russet in the mid part of the seventeenth century is that it was a lightish weight wool fabric, most often used for coats and breeches. Stuart Peachey in Vol 3 of Clothing of the Common People lists seventeen garments in records, including waistcoats, men’s pettycoats, coats, breeches, women’s pettycoats, waistcoats, cloaks etc. It would seem to be a popular fabric for clothes of the common people. In fact the famous quote by Cromwell is indicative:

“I had rather have a plain, russet-coated Captain, that knows what he fights for, and loves what he knows, than that you call a Gentleman and is nothing else.” (On the passing of the revolutionary Grand Remonstrance of November 1641)

We have tried to replicate as far as possible the make up of a seventeenth century russet fabric here. though there is still some discussion as to its particular make up. Stuart P (whose book is recommended) lists several quotes that suggest russet was basically a plain woollen cloth, undyed and left as whatever colour the sheep’s fleece was. There are suggestions that several shades of grey could have been possible candidates, as well as a lightish blue and possibly black. We have taken our inspiration from a tailor’s bill I was shown that lists the many kinds of grey cloth available in a Chester draper’s shop in 1642/3. Titmouse grey, iron grey, mouse grey, grime grey, lead grey etc. We went for two shades, a dark shade which I have named (in honour of Mr Cromwell) Ironside Grey  and a pale, the 1642 Tailor Titmouse Grey.

The next consideration was the weave. It’s unclear whether russet was a plain, (tabby) weave or a twill. most sources are unclear and different people have made different choices. Tudor Tailor have plumped for a twill cloth for their ‘sheep colour‘ wool fabric which is very similar, so we were almost persuaded. Stuart says “possibly plain”. I looked at the fabric on a (possibly) mid seventeenth century coat in Colchester Museum. It’s a plain weave, milled to take a cut edge and napped on one side. It makes sense if you are making coats to have a fabric that will hold an edge without really fraying, so in the end, after all the deliberation, that’s what we went for.

The wool was commissioned from a mill in Yorkshire, in the Happy Valley of TV fame and I’m happy to say it arrived this morning. It’s plain weave, (each with a different colour grey thread in the warp and weft to give it a motley look), 150cm wide, milled and napped, and a good weight for coats, breeches women’s waistcoats, hodden grey soldier’s coats, etc, etc. For those of a more techjnical bent, it’s 400 grams per square metre or 20 oz/yd in weight. It is 100% pure new wool and has been given a raised and cropped finish. The yarns are both s twist: sett 11 epi and 9 ppi. We will be using it to make our own things, but enough is available to sell on at £22 per metre. Samples or more substantial lengths can be ordered from the 1642 Tailor.

We get asked for doublets at the 1642 Tailor more than any other garment, so I thought I’d write a short piece explaining what exactly went into a doublet in the Early Modern period and why we might just charge more than you would expect.

As you can see from the above fellow (we only know he was a gentleman, not his name) who appeared briefly for sale by an art collector the doublet is a tailored garment, close fitting and generally has lots of buttons. What you can’t see is the internal workings, the padding, the stiffening, the little tricks they used to stuff themselves into their doublets and the girdlestead that holds his breeches up. It’s not a simple thing like a coat which at the most would have two layers and some shoulder padding, at the least only one layer. It’s not a lightweight jacket. I’ve picked up original doublets in museums. They have a weight and a presence that is difficult to reproduce in a hurry. You can’t just run one up on a sewing machine.

For a start I would guess that his tabs at the bottom are three layers like a doublet I saw at the Museum of London. The outer silk, the inner lining (possibly silk, or maybe fine linen) and an inner layer of a thickish wool. In the picture below you can see the outer layer wrapped around the wool and at the top of the tab a little bit of the silk lining remaining on the left hand side. This can’t be done on a machine, it has to be whipped on by hand. Spot also the girdlestead (this gets sewn to the doublet together with the tabs for strength) and the little linen tab that takes a cord to go across the belly to the corresponding tab on the right hand side. It takes the strain off of the buttons at the lower end for the more generously proportioned gentleman.

The girdlestead is a hangover from the medieval doublet and hose when the two were tied together with laces and points. By the 1640s the it was a doubled strip of coarse linen with metal eyes fixed to it to take the hooks on the breeches waistband.

To make up the doublet, you begin with the canvas interlining, stretching and shaping to fit the customer and pad stitching in the wool padding across the shoulders. This forms the skeleton of the doublet, a structure that will be entirely hidden when the doublet is made, but vital to the fit of the garment. This is nicely detailed and properly explained  in The Modern Maker Vol 1 by Mathew Gnagy, a recommended text for anyone who wants to make their own doublet. The canvas interlining also carries the belly pieces (and the girdlestead) that work as a male corset, flattening the outline slightly. By 1640 these were relatively small, but very rigid, stiffened with whalebone. The picture below shows clearly the outline of the belly piece and another clear view of a belly tab, fixed through the lining to the stiffening and interlining.

Because the interlining is coarse canvas, the buttonholes can’t be cut through this, so a buttonstand is constructed with a flap for the buttons separate to the lining. See below how the stand overlaps the buttonholes so that when the doublet is buttoned the two stiffened halves meet under the buttons. Note also the neatness (or otherwise) of the inside of the buttonholes in this quite high status example.

The buttons are (in all examples I’ve examined in museums) thread wrapped. This may not necessarily have been the case in the 1640s, metal buttons do turn up in archaeological finds, but we try where possible to use reproduction threaded ones, like these silk ones on a recent doublet we made for a client. They’re not cheap, but they are correct. You also need loads, 20 was the lower end of the average number of buttons on a ‘posh’ doublet.

The collar needs to stand up proud. This is stiffened with a collar piece of layers of coarse linen, pad stitched to hold them stiff and curved. This photo shows clearly the layers used to make the collar on this poor degraded doublet.

The collar is also too thick for buttonholes, so the trick is to make finger-loop braid and use this to make loops for the buttons. The braid is secured on the inside and loops pulled through holes in the top layer. You make the holes with a bodkin.

I’ve not even touched the sleeves. They weren’t as stiffened and built as the body, but they were often made in three layers and curved so that the arms were held in a particular way. Often the cuffs were secured with four or five matching buttons and buttonholes. The sleeve linings are also set separately, the lining of the body secured to the armhole before the sleeve lining is whipped in otherwise the whole thing won’t hang nicely when it’s worn.

So, think about what you want before you order a doublet. It’s not just a funny-shaped coat-ey thing, it is a significant garment, an investment in the clothing of the period. It will take you over when you put it on. It will hold your stomach in, your head erect and your arms in a particular curve. You will know you are wearing it and it will take you back to the seventeenth century. And don’t be surprised that we don’t have a standard price. Every single doublet we make is a labour of love and completely different to every other one we’ve made.

I went last night to my local World Of Cine to see The Witch, a film set in 17th Century New England about a family who set out to make a life outside of the local town on their own and eventually find that their faith isn’t enough to sustain them in the face of nature and poor harvests. The director Robert Eggars put in a considerable amount of research before filming to set the story, dialogue and the people directly in the period. It shows in spades in this atmospheric and spooky tale.

What struck me though were the costumes, designed by Linda Muir. Apart from some dodgy linen in the opening reel where the family part company with their local church, the clothes are pretty spot on and obviously hand made. I guess it was a luxury for the dressers, only having five principal actors who wear the same clothes throughout but the things worn by the two adults and the five children who make up the family were excellent, looked well worn and obviously personal to the characters. Linda also researched the period as intensively as the director, reading every one of Stuart Peachey’s new series of books as well as trawling the web for sources. You can read an interview here where she talks about the process. Note the part about the website that explains how to dress your hair with linen tapes. I think I might know which one that is.

Special mention to Caleb’s coat in the picture at the top and William’s doublet. I loved that you could see the stitching on both garments, and the welted seams on the father’s (played with passion by Ralph “Finchy” Ineson) doublet are a feature that I will definitely copy sometime soon. Thomasin, the elder daughter wears a simple cloak out of doors that has clearly been pieced using authentic widths of fabric.

Hats or coifs were worn throughout by the characters apart from a few notable exceptions, which is excellent as the lack of headgear a major bugbear of mine in period films. It is obvious that the advice on the reenactor’s website was followed in the dressing of the female character’s hair. The next picture shows clearly the handsewn doublet worn by the son Caleb. You can see the prick-stitching along the sleeve keeping the internal seam allowances down. I’m not 100% convinced by the sleeve caps which feature in all the clothes worn by the principals. I’ve not seen this style before, but it is plausible. His monmouth, or labourer’s cap is tucked in his belt.

If I was being picky I would mention the buttons were generally a tad disappointing and that Thomasin should have worn a kerchief over her shoulders like her mother, but had this been the case I wouldn’t have been able to see the gusset on the shoulder of her smock (bad Black Phillip for calling it a shift) or the hand braided ties on the collar.

It’s a good film with a great sense of the period.  Go and see it, the clothes are excellent and look hand made and well worn. What I would say is that if you are upset by animals copping it, even if they are acting it might not be the film for you.

Still from “The Witch” via Parts and Labor

I’m so pleased with the way this cap turned out that I may keep it for myself, though I would reluctantly let it go to a good home and a 60cm head! The embroidery was performed at Araaish Designs in Mumbai following a pattern that I sent to them together with a piece of antique linen and a skein of silk from Mulberry Dyer.

This was the pattern I used. If you look closely you will note that I’ve lowered the crown somewhat. High crowned caps do appear in pictures but as the vast majority of surviving caps are of this lower crown style. I modified the original, removing a couple of the lower pomegranates and substituting strawberries instead. I chose the upper of the two borders for the turn-back edge.

This is the embroidery flat on the linen as it arrived from India.  As you may imagine I couldn’t wait to put it together, but I had some other orders to finish first. The lower border is embroidered on the reverse so that it is right side out when folded in place.

I finally managed to put the cap together with a gathered liner and you can see the result at the top. Here are a few more details of the lovely needlework that the guys in Mumbai managed. I think it is nothing short of magicical, almost a masterpiece.

A few snaps of the large coat from the last post actually being worn in the wild. Keen eyed viewers will spot the blue jump coat which is also part of the impression designed for the Aston’s Dragoones and which we designed and made for them. It’s good to see our clothes come to life, though a little patina of mud and horse muck will improve the look even more!