1830s Broadfall Trousers

Broadfall trousers ca. 1840
The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Unlike the modern trousers which have what is called a French fly, broadfall trousers have a flap covering the entire front, which unfastens and lowers to remove them. The trousers in the image to the right are made of cotton, but I've also seen period examples in linen and wool. I'm making mine out of brown wool serge, which will do nicely for cold weather.

I also discovered that broadfall trousers were still in common use for the Navy at least through the sixties, and are still referred to by this site as "nautical pants." (Which, actually, look really cool, and I'd totally wear those as modern casual trousers.)

I don't have a pattern for these - the Kannik's Korner pattern I used for my Regency trousers are for a small fall (or half-fall), and the seat is a little loose for this period, so I decided to draft my own. I also don't have a full-on draft for broadfall trousers, so I drafted some French fly trousers based on an early draft, and then used the directions from the 1947 edition of Tailoring: How to Make and Mend Trousers, Vests, and Coats by The Master Designer in Chicago. Basically, all you do is use the fronts to draft the bearers (which go behind, and fasten the trousers closed at the waist), and then cut the fronts down by two inches.

I layed out the pattern on the cloth, added inlays, and cut it out.

Step one: add crutch reinforcement. Just cross stitched some cotton pocketing in place.

Step two: serge (i.e. whipstitch) the raw edges of the trousers which will be left exposed. This took eight hours. Let me repeat:

This took eight hours.

Yup, a necessary evil. I see why sewing machines have a place in the workroom.

Here's a picture of one of the bearers, with the pocket mouth marked.

I thread-marked all the inlays and the back darts - which are called fish, because of how they are shaped in a flattened oval.

The first step of actual tailoring, now that everything is prepared. Sew up the back fish.

First I basted it in place...

...and sewed it up, and then ironed it flat. I could have cut the fabric out, but I wanted to leave it in case I need to alter it in the future.

Then I closed up the front, to about halfway down the crutch reinforcement. This felt strange, since usually this is where the fly goes. Keep in mind that this portion of the trousers is unchanged from a usual French fly-front, other than being 2" shorter than the waistband, so it just felt weird.

Here's how it looks with the seam pressed open.

Then I made a lining for the fall, from the same trouser fabric. In retrospect since this is a heavier fabric I probably could have made it from cotton or linen, but it'll work this way too. The darker part at the top of the lining is the selvedge.

To define the edge and give support, I basted in a strip of linen, and then linen tape on top of it. Everything got stitched down so none of the stitches show on the front.

Cross stitching on the back of the linen strips, and felling and whip stitching on the linen tape. The back edge of the tape is just sewn to the strips, not to the cloth of the trousers.

Then the seam was turned over onto the tape, and basted down, then cross stitched in place.

The lining was basted in place.

I didn't turn the edge under the lining, so I used a thick felling stitch to keep the raw edges from fraying.

Finally, a row of side stitches was put in around the edge in front. This will eventually get four buttonholes, but I don't have the right colour buttonhole twist right now.

A close-up of the side stitching.

Linen buttons

I had a question based on my last post about how I made the linen buttons. Here's a little example to show how.

I start with a brass ring from Burnley & Trowbridge. They're supposed to be 3/8", but they're actually just a little bit bigger. No problem - just make sure to adjust your buttonholes accordingly. Also, adding the fabric will increase the size as well.

I cut a square of fabric 1" big.

Taking a stitch on each of two sides, draw the sides in. This is three stitches, in a sort of "S" shape to draw the sides in.

Repeat on the other two sides, using the same length of thread.

Now draw in the corners, two at a time as well, and take a few stitches through the whole mass to hold it together.

Backstitch around the inner edge of the button. This is still the same length of thread, which I haven't cut.

The finished button is about 1/2". There are two ways to attach it now. The first is to use the wad of fabric at the back as a shank, and sew through that to attach the button. I think it's more secure to stitch up through the button and make an "X" of stitches in the centre of the button as if it had four holes. There's no way that button's falling off in the wash.

1830s Trowsers, or Drawers

Women and children, avert your eyes. I'm making underwear!

The directions for these are again straight out of the Workwoman's Guide. They fit just fine except that the waistband is a little short - there's a big gap in the back. It laces to fit so I suppose it's not really a problem, but it might be nice to eventually fit a new waistband so I don't have so much space in back.

As with most of the directions, these are measured in nails, and start with squares and rectangles. The first diagram shows how to turn a folded rectangle of fabric into the shape it needs to be. I did this by measuring and putting a pin at each of the relevant points. I then folded the fabric between the two pins - for instance, to get the angled line at BG (Fig 20) I put a pin at B, one at G, and folded the fabric between the two pinned points. After making a crease I then cut along the crease. Easy as pie.

One thing to note is that this section of the Workwoman's Guide describes these undergarments as either "trowsers" or "drawers." They seem to be somewhat interchangeable, except that the descriptions tend to call the ones for women and children trowsers, and the ones for men drawers. I'm not sure if that's standard or if it's just what the author felt like doing.

Below you can see the beginning of the shape taking place. I measured wrong and ended up with fabric just a little too narrow, so I added little corners onto the two points. Not a problem at all with the finished drawers:

The triangular piece is added on separately, and only attaches to the back half of each side. This is before I've cut the addition to size, and I'm simply lining up the angle:

And here I've attached it with a flat felled seam (all of the seams are 1/8" flat felled seams):

You can see now the two legs sewn together, and the two triangular extensions attached:

Finished! Seriously, these were pretty easy to put together so I don't have a lot of in-progress photos. Any open hem (the front fly area and the back gusset, for instance) are finished in a rolled hem. The bottoms of the legs have tape sewn into them for the linen drawstrings. I wove the back lacing on a lucet.

This is the gap in the back. It might show off a nice plumber's crack, but at least they'll stay on my waist. As you can see the backs are gathered into the waistband, so if I do re-work the waistband I'll have the spare fabric to make it longer.

A close-up of the linen buttons. The directions said to use "metal buttons" so I used 3/8" brass rings and covered them in linen. The front fly doesn't get any closure, but the overlap is enough to keep it shut. I hope.

1830s Shirt: Part 2

I'd just like to make a quick note about thread. For this linen shirt I'm using linen thread (60/2 weight). I have 8 needles that I thread up at a time, which gives me an hour or so of sewing. Yeah, I'm slow, but that also includes matching up seam lines and things. I cut 8 threads, each about two feet long. I don't really measure, but line them up from the edge of the table to one of the lines of the boards. Once I've cut them, I wax each thread with the lump of beeswax you see below. I gather the threads and fold them in a piece of paper, and then iron the paper on about the wool setting. Not too hot, but enough to melt the wax into the thread. That makes the thread stronger, and keeps it from knotting up too much as I sew.

Then I thread each needle and stick it in my pincushion, ready to sew.

Here I'm preparing the sleeve for gathering. At first I was using white basting thread, but found it difficult to see the first row of stitching so I could match it with the second row.

So I switched to blue basting thread. Much easier.

Here's the cuff, all set in. For the record, the above pictures are of the sleeve head, not the cuff.

Check out that 1/8" flat felled seam - yeah!

Finally, to finish the shirt I sewed in the bosom piece, also called the lining in The Workwoman's Guide. This piece was measured to exactly fit the sleeve hole, and when I fell stitch the fabric tends to creep. Because in my mind this is "just a shirt" and not a "tailoring" project I didn't take time to baste the lining in place before sewing it. So the ends didn't match up. No problem, I just folded over the bit of exposed seam at the bottom of the sleeve gusset and flat felled it.

Finished shirt! This falls to my knees, which the directions call for.

Since I already made my Regency shirt in a similar style, I called this one #2. You can see the embroidery in the above photo as an out-of-focus red smudge at the left hip gusset.

The collar and cuffs got buttons and buttonholes. The directions don't call for any particular kind of button, so I chose bone.

Now, as for differences between this shirt using the directions from The Workwoman's Guide, and the Kannik's Korner pattern. They are very very very similar. I believe one of the sources for the Kannik's Korner pattern was an earlier edition of The Workwoman's Guide. The neck gussets in this version are single-sided, unlike the ones in the Kannik's Korner pattern. That means it leaves some exposed seams at the underside, which I cross-stitched as you can see below. This may become a problem, and I might have to insert a second gusset later if I notice it fraying. This is the only exposed seam on the shirt.

You can see the difference in collar height. Kannik's Korner pattern on the right.

The bosom lining in this pattern is much wider (again, Kannik's Korner on the right). I can see why it's referred to as a lining in The Workwoman's Guide.

Sorry I switched sides. This time the Kannik's Korner pattern is on the left. In that pattern the ends of the shirt match front and back. In The Workwoman's Guide the front is one nail shorter than the back.

Those are the only real differences! The directions in The Workwoman's Guide are in a different order than the sewing directions from the Kannik's Korner pattern, but it doesn't really matter which you use. I referred to the Kannik's Korner directions from time to time because they're written more clearly, but they're basically the same.

Next time, drawers....

1830s Shirt: Part 1

I've taken the directions for this shirt directly from The workwoman's guide: containing instructions to the inexperienced in cutting out and completing those articles of wearing apparel, &c. which are ususally made at home : also, explanations on upholstery, straw-platting, bonnet-making, knitting, &c. That's quite a mouthful for a title! I'll just call it The Workwoman's Guide from now on. This book was published in London in 1838. One thing to mention given that it's an English book: the terms "muslin" and "calico". These terms are exactly the opposite of what they are in American English, for some reason. In the U.S. muslin is a coarser, cheap fabric, and calico is a tightly-woven cotton, often with a small repeating print. In England, calico is the coarser, cheap fabric, and muslin is a tightly-woven cotton, often with a small repeating print. Just something to keep in mind, because The Workwoman's Guide refers to these fabrics.

The directions for shirts begin on page 138, <linked here>.

I've used the measurements for the "man's larger size" on page 139. If you look at the measurements you'll see Yds. and nls. Nls? Yes, there's a new unit of measurement here: nails. Apparently this was a unit of measurement for fabric, and it goes as follows: 4 nails = 1 quarter. 4 quarters = 1 yard. 5 quarters = 1 English ell, and 6 quarters = 1 French ell. Of course the French have to be different. :) That means that 1 nail = 2.25 inches. Simple, right? Well, since all of the measurements from The Workwoman's Guide are given in nails, I figured that instead of converting all the time I would just make a tape measure in nails. My tape is one ell (English) long.

 Okay, back to the shirt. This pattern is very similar to the Kannik's Korner 1790-1830 shirt that I made before, but I wanted to make one according to the directions in The Workwoman's Guide this time. Some of the measurements are very similar, and some are a bit different, and I'll make a comparison when I've finished this shirt.

According to The Workwoman's Guide "Shirts for labouring men are generally made of the stout linen called shirting-linen." I chose a 5.3 oz linen from Fabrics-store.com. Since all the pieces are rectangles or squares, I drew threads to make sure I cut in straight lines.

Modern fabric comes in widths much larger than period fabric, so even though the directions called for using fabric exactly 14 nails wide, I had to cut mine to size. However, given the width of the fabric I was able to get all of my pieces cut from exactly 2 yds, 2 nls of length.

One thing I couldn't find in the pattern list was wrist gussets, which are mentioned in the directions for making up the shirts. Since I think wrist gussets would probably just get in the way anyway, I didn't worry about them.

One thing I found with this shirt that was the same as the Kannik's Korner shirt I made was that the length of the shoulder straps is longer than necessary. I'm guessing that this is just so you can sew them on long and then trim them to the exact length which is better than having them too short:

Here I've gathered the very wide shirt body (18 nails, plus about 1 nail added with the neck gussets) into the collar (8 nails).

With the collar folded down this is starting to look like a shirt!

I've begun to prepare the cuffs for sewing. In order to stitch in a straight line I've drawn threads as guides. You can see the border threads for seams, as well as guides for topstitching.

That's all I've got so far. Stay tuned for more!

Creating an Impression: An 1830s Outfit, Part 2

In the last post I introduced my visual mentor for this project, William Sidney Mount. Once again, I'm just going to be concentrating on his paintings from the mid-1830s, all of which depict "regular" folk, instead of the fashionable sort.

I'm taking all of my images from the page on Mount at The Athenaeum.

First of all, instead of putting all the full images up on this page, let me link to the ones I'll be examining:

Long Island Farmer Husking Corn, 1833-1834
The Breakdown, 1835
The Sportsman's Last Visit, 1835
Bargaining for a Horse, 1835
Courtship, 1836
Farmers Nooning, 1836
The Long Story, 1837
Raffling for the Goose, 1837
The Painter's Triumph, 1838

For a full outfit, I'll need a shirt, trousers, waistcoat, cravat, coat, hat, shoes, and topcoat. Let's start taking a look at what is shown.

Shirt

All white, except for the red shirt in The Painter's Triumph. I'll be making one based on the directions in The Workwoman's Guide (the Guide also has directions on how to make men's drawers, which I'll also use). The Guide suggests that "Shirts for labouring men are generally made of the stout linen called shirting-linen.... Shirts for men of lighter occupations are sometimes of calico, with linen collars and wristbands. Blue checks, unbleached, and striped calicoes, or prints, are used for that purpose." So for my shirt I'm going to use stout plain white linen. The pattern will be similar to the Regency shirt I have already made.

Trousers

These seem to come in four colours: buff, brown, grey, and black, some plain and some with pinstripes. Almost all of the examples in the paintings are fall-front trousers, also similar to the Regency trousers I've made. There are a few exceptions: the eponymous Sportsman is wearing fly-fronts, and it looks as though the Long Island Farmer and the Painter are both wearing trousers with enough pleats in the front to think they are Cossack trousers (which also have fly-fronts). I'm going to go with the fall-front trousers, because even at the time W. D. F. Vincent's Cutter's Practical Guide was published in the 1890s it indicates that working class trousers still fastened in the whole fall style.

Waistcoat

One interesting thing I noticed is that a good proportion of the backs of the waistcoats shown are red. Even the grey-backed one in Farmer's Nooning looks as though it is lined in red where the lining shows at the bottom and armscye. They tie to fit, instead of buckling, and most are single-breasted notch-collared. The range of colours is greater, but most are brown or black, then some buff and cream, and one red (that Sportsman is throwing things off, with his red double-breasted waistcoat).

Cravat

Red is the dominating colour here, with black a close second. White and yellow also appear. Some have tied the ends into a bow, and some leave them hanging loose. The Long Island Farmer wears a small cravat, with very short ends.

Coat

It seems, through these paintings, that when you're not hot enough to wear no coat at all, you're so cold that you wear a heavy coat with a fur or fleece collar. Seriously, these look like some warm coats. Of course, some are probably topcoats. Black or buff frock coats seem to be the norm, with black cutaway coats being worn by the fancier gentleman in the Sportsman's Last Visit (poor Sportsman looks like he's not fancy enough to get the girl), the Painter, and the fellow who looks like he's having trouble staying upright in his chair in The Breakdown. The cut looks similar to my linen frock coat, but these are definitely all wool.

Hat

I'm enamoured of the battered and bashed top hats in these paintings. Even though there are other hats depicted (there's a good range of hats in the Raffle) I'm going to do a top hat and beat the heck out of it.

Shoes

All black leather, the best picture is from Farmers Nooning. A low boot, very similar to a modern dress boot. I'm not sure what I'll do here to be the most period correct. I know there are shoes for reenactors out there, but I might also get away with a modern boot.

Topcoat

Like I said before, it looks as though there are a lot of topcoats here. There's also a cloak or two, or perhaps an Ulster with a cape.Fur or fleece collars makes them warmer, and the one in The Long Story nicely shows the pad stitching under the collar. Most of the coats are buff, with a brown double-breasted coat with frogs in Raffling for the Goose (along with a red-lined green cloak or Ulster). The coat in Courtship has nice contrast piping on it, and there's a dark cloak in The Long Story. I'll probably go with a buff wool topcoat with fleece on the collar.

Well! That was a lot of words without too many pictures on my part, but I hope you had fun referring to the paintings while I rambled on. Next post will have me actually making something, I promise!