How to Make Your Own Shirt (or one for someone else!)

  

   Cut it out. The pattern (fig. 1) shows how to cut the basic pieces from 10 feet of authentic width fabric. Most modern linen cloth is twice as wide so you’ll need to work it out a bit, though exact measurements aren’t strictly needed. Match the pieces to you, sleeves to your arm length etc. Solid lines are cuts, dotted ones represent folds

·     Sew in shoulder gussets (fig. 2). Open out the side neck openings and attach a triangular gusset on each side. This will provide strength to the shoulder seams.

·     Roll over the raw neck edges and hem to finish them off. Either sew on a small square patch on the inside at the bottom or add a thread bar strengthened with buttonhole stitch an inch or so up to prevent the neck ripping open.

·     Sew the sleeve gusset (AB) (fig. 3), and then join the sleeve edges together to make the sleeve, leaving the last 3 inches or so open (fig. 4). To do this, match point D to point J, H to B, and E to F, leaving the last few inches unstitched for a cuff opening. If you made the gusset a proper square it will work. Hem and neaten these raw edges as you did on the neck. Do another sleeve.

·     Fix the sleeves to the body: match the top of the sleeve to the top of shoulder, and then sew in using a run and fell seam from the bottom point of the gusset (C) up and around the shoulder, down past the other side of the gusset and continue the side seam to 12 inches or so above the bottom of the shirt. Hopefully when you get back to C, the two halves of the shirt body will join up evenly. Same again for the second sleeve/side.

·     Hem and finish off the remaining parts of the side seams and around the bottom.

·     Measure up the collar length to match your neck measurement, and about four inches or so wide. Fold in half lengthways and sew the ends leaving the bottom part unfinished. This leaves you with a long pocket to contain the remaining raw edges of the shirt.  Gather these raw edges to fit the collar, either simply or if there's lots of linen to gather, use a running stitch with heavy thread to help you gather neatly. Then sew on the collar, stitches going through both sides of the collar and through the shirt body. It will now look like a shirt that will fit a normal person rather than a weird tent.

·     Make 2 cuffs in the same way as the collar and attach one to each sleeve, gathering the fullness of the sleeve into the cuffs.

·     Make eyelet holes on either side of the collar and both cuffs for inserting ties to secure. Or just sew on some nice linen tapes.

·     The shirt is finished. Either give yourself a pat on the back or send me a mail because it hasn’t worked!

·     Linen unravels quickly from the edge if it isn't finished so I would recommend using french or flat felled seams to make the shirt. Google it!

Top Traders

I’ve been asked for a list of suppliers, so here are my recommendations. They are all UK based and most do mail order, though there’s no substitute for handling the goods (as it were) and asking advice. All the traders know their stuff, have done the research and are more than happy to advise. Most listed below have contributed to this blog.

The maxim is “if in doubt, ask”

Fabric

Stuart Peachey

Selection of sadd (natural) coloured authentic fabrics. No broadcloth for soldiers but everything else you’d want. On the expensive side, but if you want to get it absolutely right, Stuart is your man.

http://www.stuart-hmaltd.com/

Bernie the Bolt

Supplies wool and linen at very reasonable prices. Massive selection of stock too. I’ve been to his house. You’ll find him at most musters and fairs, but he also does a fine mail order service.

Tel 01480 453390

Email         berniethebolt3(at)aol(dot)com

Cloth Hall
Lindy Pickard has a good range of authentic wools in 17th century colours.
clothhall(at)talktalk(dot)net
 Tel 01484 512968


Herts Fabrics

Ali has a large variety of authentic fabric and will give advice. Recommended.

http://www.classhistory.co.uk/Herts%20Fabrics/

Time Warp Textiles
Aidan Campbell provides small amounts of authentic textiles. He will also source whole rolls of cloth if you want to equip a whole company, but he also has end of roll remnants for sale. His expertise is mainly pre Norman conquest, but worth a look as he occasionally has other fabrics more suited to 1640s.

http://www.aidan-campbell.co.uk/textiles.htm

Wolfinn Textiles

 Unbleached Belgian linen - extremely good European-grown linen. Not cheap, but also very wide and nice stuff.

http://www.wolfintextiles.co.uk/

Whaley's of Bradford

Great for fine wool and linen and fabrics to be dyed. They are expensive but worth it.

http://www.whaleys-bradford.ltd.uk/

Haberdashery

Christophus

Chris Thomas is highly recommended for all the little bits you need for finishing off, buttons, tapes, thread, beeswax etc. His range of pewter buttons is unrivalled.

christophus(at)aol(dot)com

01752789629


Nick Jones
Nick also sells authentic pewter buttons from his website. The buttons are researched and field tested.
http://www.pewterbuttons.co.uk/default.html

Gina B

Gina hand makes all kinds of ties and passamentarie (thread woven) buttons. Her stuff is very nicely made and her service is excellent.

http://et-tu.com/gina-b/catalog/index.php

Made Up Clothes

Peggys Necessities

Sundrie apparel for soldiers and goodwives of the middling sort. (their description). The clothes are also very good and well researched.

http://www.peggysnecessities.co.uk/

White Rabbit Lynens
Alice makes and researchs clothes from all periods, but her 17th century shirts and smocks are superbly made.
http://www.white-rabbit-lynens.co.uk/

Sally Pointer

Sally supplies a large variety of knitted hats and patterns for making your own.

http://www.sallypointer.com/shop/

Historical Caps

Very decent and affordable knitted and felted headgear: labourers' caps, Monmouths, statute caps etc.  Gloria hand dyes and knits everything herself.

http://www.historicalcaps.net/

Kirstie Buckland.

Also makes top quality knitted hats of many periods.

http://www.qualitycaps.co.uk/pages/contact-us.asp

Dyers

Mulberry dyer does a period dying service. If you source the fabric they can dye it to any period colour you like using authentic methods. Also supplies linen thread and embroidery silks and wools.

http://www.mulberrydyer.co.uk/

Shoes

Sarah Juniper is the best historical shoe and bootmaker around. Her shoes are well made and well researched. Not cheap but they will last for years!

http://www.sarahjuniper.co.uk/

Christophus

Chris Thomas also makes top quality shoes, boots and startuppes.

christophus(at)aol(dot)com

01752789629

Foxblade Trading

Tod Booth is also a good contact for serviceable latchet shoes and boots.

http://www.foxblade.co.uk/

Leather Stuff and Miscellaneous

Karl Robinson is recommended for leather bags, belts and accessories. His work is of the highest quality

http://www.karlrobinson.co.uk/

Christophus (see above) also makes leather items to order: Authentic buffcoats, baldrics, belts, footwear, pouches, hats etc.

christophus(at)aol(dot)com

Foxblade Trading

Tod Booth is knowledgable and supplies most of your 17th century leather needs.

http://www.foxblade.co.uk/

Tod's Stuff

Not to be confused with Foxblade trading, Tod’s Stuff supplies all the bits and bobs you might need, cases, belts as well as knives and other Living History accoutrements.

http://www.todsstuff.co.uk/index.htm

Six of One

Belle and Richard at produce some of the most astonishingly beautiful bits and pieces you've ever seen.

http://www.6of1.biz/

Tom Aldwinckle
Leather bottles handmade to order.
tomwinkle2(at)aol(dot)com

17th Century Women's Dress Patterns

I've got to recommend this book, it's becoming my bible. It's a kind of follow on to the Janet Arnold series of books, but has built on those publications and has become something much better.

The book sets out to show several actual extant garments in the V&A Museum in much closer detail than you could ever see should you go and look at them in the cases. Each garment is described and shown in detail with photographs. In many cases there is an attached portrait from the period showing the garment or something very similar being worn. Following on you get a detailed pattern, cutting out guide and step by step illustrated guide to the making of the item in question. If it was decorated, you get close ups of the embroidery or lace and more details of the stitches used or a pattern of the lace edging or insert. A few examples also have been x-rayed to show internal construction detail, such as boning on the silk bodice on the front cover.

The clothes are all from the approximate date range 1600-1630, so the styles are early for our period, but you can take a lot from this book, especially from the introduction which shows the typical tools used and all the stitches needed for making the garments. They range from waistcoats and bodices through to jackets, a mantle, shift, caps and accessories. There are even patterns for embroidered gloves.

If you are interested in how clothes were made in the 17th century, you really need to see this book. The best part is that this is book 1.  Men's patterns coming soon? I hope so.

Coifs and Cross Cloths

Unless you were rich and had someone to dress your hair fashionably, as a woman in the 1640s it was normal to cover your head, possibly with a hat but almost always with linen, even if you wore a hat on top. There were probably thousands of ways to achieve this, from a simple knotted piece of cloth to a lace edged cap, in fact images show a variety of weird and wonderful concoctions, although surviving examples are few and far between, especially from this period. Several earlier decorated coifs survive in museums but as we get close to the 1640s there aren’t as many, possibly because embroidery became less fashionable and a plain cap could be recycled more easily. Even if it was lace edged you could remove that and you were left with a useful rag. This picture, Visiting Grandmother by the le Nain brothers has a row of four female heads of varying ages wearing different coverings and illustrates perfectly how different fashions would have been worn simultaneously. The girl left, has a shaped coif, possibly over a flappy-eared coif, Grandmother has an old-fashioned fitted coif showing its pointed flaps by her ears but seems to be wearing a cap over her coif, the baby is wearing a close-fitting coif, tied on and the mother, right, is wearing a cap of the kind which is typically 1640s 

However, comparing contemporary images with what survives in museums we can produce at least a few reasonably accurate reproductions. This one for example is in the costume collection at the Museum of Manchester. Most of the actual examples like this one are made from a flat piece of linen cut to a recognisable shape, hemmed and fitted with a drawstring along one edge. The side edges would be whipped together and hey presto you have a coif to cover your head. The new book on Women’s Dress Patterns from the V&A has a particularly nice example from just before our period. However this now presents a few problems, there are flappy bits around your ears that seem a bit odd, the coif can tend to slip around and not be particularly comfortable and what do you do with the strings?

Perhaps part of the answer comes when you notice that many coifs are exhibited with triangular forehead cloths that are obviously embroidered to match. Also several coifs come up in wills and inventories in connection with cloths or “crosse cloths”. It’s obvious that these cloths were worn somehow in conjunction with the coif and that in just wearing the coif without the crossecloth you are missing something. Extreme Costuming has an interesting article about fitting a coif and forehead cloth that is very interesting, if a bit too early for 1640s but to summarise it seems that the triangular cloth can be secured using the tapes around a bun (if you have enough hair). That’s what the strings are for and that the coif will then sit comfortably on top without slipping. It still doesn’t solve the flappy ears, but if you look at pictures from the period, they all had that problem! It doesn’t help if you don’t have enough hair to make a bun at the back of your head either!

Various images seem to show that the cloth could be worn under or over the coif and also with the point facing forwards and backwards. Maybe there was some significance to the different orientations, perhaps different fashions. Sadly we just don’t know. In fact the fashion suggestion is not too far fetched. A theory has been advanced that he coif was such a small easily made item that it could have been remade several times, maybe to copy some rich lady that may have passed through from London. Maybe this explains why there are so many different shapes and patterns in the surviving pictures.

So, we have one actual coif, even if it’s a bit early that can be worn for 1640s, it would be perfect for the older, less fashionable woman. There are more contemporary styles, as I’ve mentioned before. It does seem that a more shaped cap was beginning to come in by the 1640s. There is a nice example in the V&A of such a cap and a portrait of Hester Tradescant wearing one from 1645. I took the photo on the right during a visit to the museum. The cap is dated  1600-25 but does look later.

Other easily made versions include this Dutch example from 1650s, which could be constructed from a rectangular piece of linen hemmed with a drawstring at the back. Pull the drawstring tight and you have a covering that will sit nicely on your head with a turn back front to frame your face, possibly pinned to your hair.

I did say that there were some weird examples. We still don't know what this woman is wearing on her head, or why. It's not the only one in the woodcuts either!

The Shirt off Your Back (part two)

In the seventeenth century, shirts were made of unbleached linen, the fabric varying from coarse canvas to fine weave, and ranged from brown to off white in colour, although unbleached linen could take on a grey or even greenish tinge. The finest shirts could be almost white, the fabric was generally bleached by being left out in the sun, but the white of the 1640s was nowhere as bright as the 21st century brilliant white achieved by modern detergents and their additives that counteract the natural yellowing of fabrics that have been worn for a while. The haymaker on the right shows that it was the fashion to take off your coat and work in your shirt if it was a hot day. Notice the detail on his collar and neck opening.

They were cut square and long, with front and back usually made of a single piece of fabric, gathered into a narrow neckband. Gathers can be simple for a plain shirt or of extremely fine cartridge pleating for a high status one. The image on the left courtesy of Manchester Gallery of Costume is a surviving shirt from our period. It's described in more detail in another post below.

As you can see, they were generally long enough to reach mid thigh or even knee length. This rather saucy image from A Letter To Mr Marriot 1652 (Mr Mariott was a famous lawyer and notorious glutton of the time) shows the length of the shirt because his breeches are around his ankles. The side seams would be left open for about 12 inches to allow the shirt to fit comfortably down the legs when worn under a pair breeches.

The sleeves would also be cut square and gathered to a narrow cuff, which may be secured by ties, small buttons or a t-bar (like a fabric cuff link) if it's posh. The sleeve is then sewn square onto the side of the shirt with gussets under the arms to provide some ease when you put it on over your head. There should also be smaller triangular gussets where the collar meets the shoulder seam, to give extra strength and prevent tearing. Photos of a shirt made by Tricia Webb.

At the front there should be a simple straight hemmed front opening large enough to let you put it on over your head. This opening was secured by a pair of ties, sewn to the collar or passing through a single sewn eyelet on each side at the neck.

 Here is a nice repro pair of posh ties by Gina B

The shirt as such would not have any more than a small standing collar of perhaps an inch and a half wide. To this a falling band may be tacked on. Shirts were not generally made with integral collars in our period. For common soldiers a small band can be used, just large enough to cover the standing collar on the coat. There are no images showing soldiers wearing knotted cloths or tied stocks for our period. A small plain collar seems to have been the fashion for just about everyone.

This is one I made earlier, with a posh vicar's collar attached:

Here are a set of sleeves made up for a copy of a blackwork embroidery shirt in the Warwickshire Museum. Note the construction and the gussets. The picture comes from a blog that tells the story of how it was made. Well worth a look.

Smocks (not shifts)

The basic item of underclothing for a woman in the seventeenth century the smock was a long T-shaped garment, made of linen with sleeves and reached down to below the knees. As with most linen garments of our period, the only surviving examples are of the best quality cloth and are highly embroidered. However, it’s probably safe to assume that the pattern was basically the same for everyone. The purpose was probably the same too, to protect the outergarments that would tend not to be washed as often from body oils and perspiration. Picture left from A Juniper Lecture by John Taylor 1635.

The extant smocks from the first third of the seventeenth century mostly have a standing collar, a single slit neck opening and long full sleeves. Sadly there are none exactly datable to the 1640s, but these examples are a good guide to what was worn.  This one in the V&A, picture from Drea Leed of Elizabethan Costuming is a nice one dated 1630 with a standard pattern and embroidered over the upper body. Much like a man’s shirt, they would be cut from a standard width of linen, anything from 30 to 36 inches wide. There is usually, like this example, a square gusset under the arms, but unlike a shirt there are either long triangular gores inserted in the sides or a looser cut to make the garment fuller and as such easier to walk around in. The V&A example also has a gusset inserted either side of the collar to provide strength.

 A few really high status smocks have lower necklines that are gathered and tightly stitched onto a narrow neck band (not with a drawstring). This clears the neckline for an off the shoulder look, but these are really ornate with acres of fabric requiring such finely detailed needlework that they should be only considered the preserve of someone of serious wealth, not a common serving girl or army follower. All the museum examples have lines of embroidery, very similar to those on surviving men’s shirts which is no surprise really as both garments, in fact anything made of linen, was considered women’s work. This image, from the Bath Museum of Costume, also photographed by Drea shows a woman's smock from 1610, and a man's shirt from the late 1500s. The smock is on the right. Below is a detail of the decoration.

Smocks were worn both day and night,high class people may have had a separate night smock to change into, but it can be safely assumed that most common folk slept in the smock they wore during the day.

Detail from Come Buy A Mousetrap. Pamphlet by Humphrey Crouch 1647

Picture on the right shows a plain (in the sense of undecorated) reproduction smock from Angela of Peggy's Necessities.

Startuppes

Following a discussion that started over a picture from a 1640s publication showing a ballad seller, I asked a few experts their opinion of long shoes or startups that had no ties. Several images have appeared to suggest that this may have been the norm for agricultural workers and as such for any soldiers who may have come from the fields and worn their own shoes.

The informed opinion is that perhaps there were a number of this kind of shoe around but that it was not the norm as to wear something like this just for walking (rather than riding) would quickly prove very uncomfortable, and as such would not be at all practical for farm work or soldiery.

In fact the discussion threw up this quote from a poem published before our period but none the less informative:

‘A payre of startuppes had he on his feet,that laced were to the small of the legge,

Homely they were and mete,and in there soles fulle many a woden pegge’

From The Debate Between Pride and Lowliness, published in 1577.

This guy from Thirty and Two Extremes of These Times, published in 1647 appears to have fastenings on his boots and a nice coat over what looks like a doublet, though why the illustrator has drawn his left hand the wrong way round, I have no idea!