All my son thinks about are the many Colonial Williamsburg employees who tease him about needing a frock coat to be properly dressed.
On the other hand, cooler weather nears, compelling me to sew a frock coat for my son.
Meanwhile, he has outgrown his Lafayette coat…and everything else in his closet, both 18th century and 21st.
Since a new Lafayette coat is in my near future, I might as well practice on linen so my son can be properly dressed for the arrival of Generals Washington and Rochambeau with their troops for Prelude to Victory next week.
While shopping for fabric the other day, we looked high and low for 100% linen in great colors.
After he chose the green linen, I had a good length cut, then turned my attention to patterns.
Finding a pattern to fit my son
My son may be tall, but his chest is far too small for any of the historical patterns, which start at a whopping 42″.
That means my only resort was a contemporary pattern, like the one that I used for the Lafayette coat last year.
However, my son really, really wanted the extra elements of a historically accurate pattern.
Searching through my computer photo storage for Colonial Williamsburg interpreters in their frock coats, I found the most informative shots were from the mob scene at Charleton’s Coffeehouse!
Mobs provide many angles and movement of fabric!
While analyzing the frockcoats, I realized that tweaking the contemporary pattern would be more time consuming than I had time for.
Then I looked at frock coats in Costume Close-up: Clothing Construction and Pattern 1750-1790, written by Colonial Williamsburg’s Linda Baumgartner.
As I looked at their patterns based on extant pieces in the Colonial Williamsburg collection, I got the idea to take it to the copy store to have the patterns enlarged.
However, the copy stores in Northern Virginia freaked out when I asked, saying they don’t print copyrighted material.
Showing them the copyright page, which explicitly allows copying for personal use only, they still refused.
Three stores later I found one who took the words of the copyright page literally.
Willing to enlarge the book-sized patterns 7x for me, they quoted a whopping price tag of $50! No thank you!
Drafting my own pattern
Crushed, I went to Staples, where I walked around, hoping for inspiration.
To my surprise I discovered the biggest stickie pad on the face of the earth!
Measuring 30×25″, the giant tablet has thin paper graphed into 1″ grids!
Saving me a step in pattern drafting, I bought the giant stickie pad.
I spent all day yesterday drafting my first pattern!
Today I used my new pattern pieces to cut the fabric.
If I’m successful with this, it will open a whole new costume world to me!
COMMENTS FROM MY OLD BLOG
Tony October 4, 2010 at 5:08 PM -Are you and your family just tourists [for lack of a better word] who dress in costumes? or are you affiliated some way with CW? and if per say I had a historically correct costume of my own and wanted to wear it around CW would it be allowed? have you ever been confused with staff? and do you play a persona or just dress up? have a nice day and god bless
