Drape, part 2

I have since found some things out about A&S and drape.

I didn’t think that the full canvas would have been cut on the bias- Sator showed me a oage from Whife in which he indicates that it was, in fact, done on occasion, but I get the impression he did not favor it.

Edwin DeBoise, of Steed (who is former A&S cutter) pointed out in a LL post that A&S only cut the chest canvas on the bias, as I suspected.

Bengalstripe posted some photos of the insides of an A&S garment here and it appears that they use linen canvas, not hair canvas. Interesting, but not for me.

Upon reflection, I have changed my mind about the spalla camicia thing. While the purpose is not to reproduce a period A&S coat, it does seem that the spalla camicia was a later invention. I am not sure if the seam should be opened, though, since several photos indicate that it was not, however there was no or little wadding which would have made a rope-type shoulder. the photos posted also clearly show a little padding in the shoulder of the A&S garment, but I am omitting it in mine. I have drafted a nice trim sleeve using my own ever-developing system, and this time I got everything to match nicely in the back and still fit the way I want. Yesterday I was not feeling so good about the coat, feeling that there was just way too much drape. Now that I have a sleeve in, my feelings are changing.

Here we are at the office, I have one sleeve basted in, and placed on a tailor’s dummy which is quite a bit bigger than I so it fills out the coat, but you get an idea of the shape of the coat so far. I am not displeased.

EDIT It looks much better on the dummy than on me. It’s now a little rumpled from having been stuffed into a bag but here are two shots anyway. Feeling a little discouraged right now.

Up until now I had only seen the back in the 3-way mirror and a very distinct vertical fold ran down the back, much as I had expected it to, however I didn’t have a sleeve on it yet. Now that the sleeve is on and I see it full-on thanks to a tripod and a camera, the fold is no longer visible and I see some cleaning I have to do. So is this to do with the angle of vision or the weight of the sleeve or both? The back now looks clean (well, not clean, but not drapy)- can this be also a result of the weight of the cloth? It is a good 3/4″ than I normally cut my back, which is twice the drape allowance given in Regal’s. I am starting to think it is possible to conceal a great amount of drape in the back without it looking too messy. Definitely worth more thought.

The front in this photo makes me look about 20 pounds heavier than I am. Again, maybe camera angle and the fact that it is not finished. Note the high position of the breast welt- I had to bring the chest dart higher than I normally would because the fullness of the chest seemed to sag much too low. This is probably a feature of the style and maybe I should have left it as is, but I did not like it. What seemed like a huge amount of drape before I had sleeves on is again, not so apparent, but again, probably camera angle.