Striped Gloves

Or

A Study in Regrettable Material Choice

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Here they are, my last project of 2018. Sometime in the year I saw this picture on pinterest and was utterly delighted by the idea of striped gloves.

Pair of man's gloves. French, Printed leather, late 18th century.

Then I noticed two 18th century fashion plates that also had striped gloves.

Edit: I have since realized that the gloves in these plates are most likely knitted, since the stripes going around the fingers makes much more sense that way, and this extant pair looks incredibly similar. (I still have seen solid green gloves in fashion plates though, which may have been leather.)

Journal de la mode et du goût, 15th November 1790.

Both pairs of fashion plate gloves are green & black, but one has an alternately coloured version that appears to be striped in buff & black. (It's hard to tell with such tiny hands, it could possibly be orange or brown?)

Journal de la mode et du goût, 25th October 1790.

Source.

 I then decided to make striped gloves for the "Hands and Feet" HSM challenge for September 2018. I made my pattern and did a paint sample but then just didn't make the gloves for some reason.

Since December's theme was "Neglected Challenge" I did the gloves for that challenge instead.

Both of the fashion plate pairs have stripes running across the width of the hand, and the extant gloves have them lengthwise. I decided to make mine lengthwise in black and green. I also considered adding a medallion with a little picture to the back of the hand, like on the extant pair, but decided to save that for a future pair of gloves. I'd do an 18th century dragon on mine instead of a couple of people.

I had a few single leather gloves that I've found on the ground over the years, so I cut one up to get the basic size of my pattern. I cut the fingertips off and taped them further up to get the right length, but other than that the glove mostly fit me.

I traced all the bits, but they were very wonky so I had to straighten them out a lot. They also aren't shaped like 18th century glove pattern pieces, so I changed some things to make them look more like the glove patterns from Diderot's Encyclopédie. Those patterns are from the 1760's, but as far as I can tell the cut of gloves stayed pretty much the same for a very very long time, so they are just fine for 1790.

I did two mockups in leather from an old coat, but I think I still need to adjust the pattern a bit. I tapered the fingertips just a bit too much. I also need to tweak the shape of the thumb slightly.

My final pattern.

And here is where the regrettable material choice comes in! Oh what a fool I was! I should have ordered leather paint, but I did not.
I used my fabric printing ink, and leather is NOT the same as fabric.
I did a couple of samples and discovered that even though it was heat set the ink wore off very easily, but I was somehow not put off by this. I grabbed a bottle of water based varnish off my shelf and painted it over my sample, and it looked okay. I agitated the sample a bit, and ran water over it, and it seemed to hold?
Satisfied with my terrible choice of materials, I foolishly pressed on.

My sample, including a dinosaur to practice for the dragons I didn't add.

I traced my glove pattern out on the back portion of an old leather jacket. I masked the stripes with the narrowest tape I could find in the craft store. (Which happened to be 3mm washi tape that came in packs with several other wider rolls of tape, so I'm going to have to start putting fancy tape in my sketchbooks.)

With all my tape laid down, I painted the green ink over all the pattern areas.

I peeled off the tape, let the ink dry, and heat set it. I put a couple coats of the varnish on.

I cut the pieces out and sewed them all together with a whipstitch, which is left on the outside of the gloves.

Can't pin leather because it leaves permanent holes, so I used paperclips where necessary.

They sewed up pretty quickly, and I thought they looked pretty good, though the varnish made them much too shiny for historical gloves.
When I tried them on I found them stiff and a bit too tight, especially in the fingers. I had cut out my mockup with a couple millimeters of seam allowance, but cut out my gloves with a bit less, and millimeters make a huge difference with gloves.

I figured they'd be fine if I just stretched them out a bit, so I sprayed a tiny bit of water on the inside and wore them for a bit.

They stretched out very well, but the stretching caused the varnish to flake and peel off in a few places. It doesn't really show up in these photos, but there are now quite a few sections where the black stripes look more grey because the varnish has lifted up but not come off entirely. The coat leather is also not as strong as I expected, I've only worn these a few times and there's a bit of splitting happening between two of the fingers, and a small tear happened on the left glove when I pulled it on for these photos.

You can see the tear in the cuff of the glove I'm holding.

So they're pretty bad in terms of materials, and they definitely won't wear well, but at least they look good for a first pair.

What the item is: A pair of man's gloves
What passed challenge are you recreating: September: Hands and Feet
Material: black leather from an old jacket
Pattern: my own, based on the Diderot ones
Year: c. 1790
Notions: Linen thread, fabric ink
How historically accurate is it? Ehh, maybe 60%? The pattern and construction are fine, but the materials were Bad. And they never would have printed green stripes on black leather, it makes so much more sense to print the darker colour on top of the lighter one. (except the linen thread, it's fine)

Hours to complete: 13, not including patterning
First worn: January 1st 2019, but at 2 am so it's only a wee bit late!
Total cost: The only thing I bought was the tape, and I forget how much it was. Not very many dollars. The jacket I got from a clothing swap, and the ink and thread I already had.

Overall I guess... they're not.... too terrible? They're not suited to lots of wear but they'd be fine to use occasionally for photos. And in any case, they were a learning experience.

I want to make more gloves! I have ordered some fine goat skin, but before I cut into that I will make a second pair with suede from an old skirt I have. And from now on I will only paint on leather with products specifically made for leather.

I definitely made the thumb hole too big. Will fix that next time!

There, 2018 projects all blogged! Now I can do my year-in-review post.

Update: The cuff area of one of them is now badly torn, so I guess the old jacket leather was also a bad material choice. These are now officially only useful as props. Which will work okay, because you see a lot of men in portraits wearing only one glove and holding the other. Oh well.
I'll make a better pair of striped gloves eventually, with proper leather dye!

Black waistcoat with hidden dinosaurs

Most of you probably don't know this, but I do a lot of really crappy dinosaur drawings. A LOT. My best friend and I have a blog called Shitty Dinosaur Drawings, and I post on it quite often.

Since we did silk painting in surface design class last month, I did a bunch of terrible dinosaurs on a piece of silk satin.

Outlines done in resist with black dye.

Most of my outlines came out a little bit too thick, but at least the dye didn't bleed over them.

The finished fabric, all filled in with more dye and steamed.

It needed to be a lining for something! So I made a waistcoat. It's a plain black dupioni waistcoat, from a 1790's-ish pattern.
There wasn't quite enough dinosatin for a complete lining, so I had to piece a bit of black satin to the tops of the front pieces.

Several dinosaurs lost their faces in the cutting.

It's mostly machine sewn, with the hem and armholes finished off by hand.

I used small aluminum buttons of unknown origin. The plating is wearing off, but they look okay from a distance.

The back is a bright green raw silk from the stash, and since there was already nothing historically accurate about this garment, I added a small appliqué of another silk dinosaur I had drawn earlier on my sample piece.

Sadly, it has some fit issues. It's too narrow in the hips, comparatively baggy in the upper back, and gapes way too much around the armholes. This causes it to ride up and wrinkle in the front, which is very annoying.
It's probably because I foolishly used a pattern from the fashion show that was fitted to one of my models, and didn't alter it enough. Oops. I also didn't interface the front enough, so it's definitely one of my less good waistcoats.
I will hopefully take in the seams at some point to make it fit better.

Hey….. wanna buy some dinosaurs?

Early Sewing Disasters

While decluttering my room recently I found some pretty horrible things. Things from when I began trying to teach myself to sew, which I scarcely remember making. So I figured I should document them here before I cannibalized them for the useful bits.

This first one is a blue waistcoat I made without doing any research into how shawl collars work. Or rather, a waistcoat I mostly made and gave up on when I realized it could never be wearable.

It's the same fabric I used for my sequined waistcoat sleeves, and for this book.

After taking this picture I cut the silk bits off and saved them.

It's interlined in what appears to be part of an old cotton futon covering, and there's no interfacing anywhere but the collar. I didn't get as far as buttonholes. Probably because I tried to sew the collar on and realized it was never, ever going to sit right.
I do still like the embroidery I did on the collar, but I think the print really takes away from it. If I were to make it again I would not use a print. (The print happens to be from my first time screenprinting! Though it's also not up to my standards anymore, since my drawing has improved since I did those octopi.)

I think this "coat" was one of my first sewing attempts ever. (Not counting the tiny hand stitched felt things I did in Elementary school) I have sketches of it from 2011, though no photos of the thing itself in its entirety.

A lot of actual fabric scraps were painstakingly represented here.
Sadly, this looks pretty decent compared to the coat I ended up "making".

 It was basically a blue cotton lab coat with a whole lot of junky fabric scraps sewn onto it.

I stuck a teacup on one of the patch pockets
and I'm pretty sure the teacup fabric was old bedsheets.

 Here's what was left when I found it. The greenish bit with the stripes was from one of the sleeves, and the blocky section is from the back. The squares are from a drapery sample booklet, and the beige scale pattern stuff is from a chair I found in the garbage. Yup. I cut a piece of upholstery fabric off someone's yucky old chair for my yucky coat.
I was a foolish teenager.
(Not that there's anything wrong with getting furniture from the garbage! I have a nice hardwood swivel chair that I salvaged and reupholstered. But this beige scale fabric was very synthetic and gross.)

Garbage fabric that has finally been returned to the garbage.

There was also a pocket made out of a glove that I had stuck on the front of the coat. A knitted cotton glove (the kind you use for handling artifacts and stuff) that I'd felted a layer of green wool over. The thing that amazes me most about this is that I took the time to change the thread colour and buttonholer template so many times for entirely useless buttonholes.

There's a tiny little brown cotton pocket bag in there.

I still want to make something out of scraps, but when that happens I'll do it very differently. I got rid of most of my synthetic scraps, and when I sew my nice natural fibre remnants into something I will sew them together nicely.

My first actual attempt at patterning & sewing a coat is another thing I don't have a picture of, but I do have the sketches from around that time! I've gotten much better at drawing since I did these...

I made it when I knew absolutely nothing about patterning, and I did NO research, so of course the seam placement was awful. My sketchbook includes a drawing of the terrible, terrible pattern pieces. 

Apparently I thought it was also important that I draw all the buttons, but put them in a row in the upper left corner.

I got the general shape of the fitted sleeve ok I guess,
but the top part of them is still quite wrong.

I made the pattern by cutting up the aforementioned scrap-covered lab coat along whatever lines I felt like and then tracing the pieces. I apparently had not heard that 18th century coats only have one set of side seams placed very far back, and that nearly every kind of coat ever has a back seam.

I sewed it up in a horrendous polyester drapery fabric, which was thick and scratchy and frayed a huge amount. It had nice looking black & gold stripes though. This was also before I had gotten it through my head that linings should be at least somewhat slippery in things with fitted sleeves. So it was lined in a very thin brown plain weave cotton. It also had no interfacing anywhere.

I was a lot worse at painting then too.

I don't know what happened to the coat. I'm pretty sure I never finished it. I assume I must have cut it up to use the lining fabric for something else, because all I found was the outer part of the collar.

At least I got the stripes more or less centred.

Update: I found it! It was in a box of horrible fabric and scraps that I'd forgotten I had! The lining was missing, and it still had the collar, so that other collar must have been a failed first attempt.

Look at all that fraying!

I should have tried it on, but didn't think to, and it is thrown out now. It really was an incredibly disgusting fabric.

Those back seams... ugh, no.

I can recall 3 early attempts at making cotton shirts, only one of which I finished.
The back, sleeves, and ruffles are made of a fine cotton, while the rest appeared to have been made out of yellowed and slightly flannely old sheets. The cuffs are tremendously bulky. I'm pretty sure the collar and cuffs were interlined with more futon cover fabric. I hadn't yet learned that late 18th century shirts didn't have any sort of interfacing. Or that they have narrow cuffs.

It didn't match at all in colour, or weave quality.
And why did I put the nice cotton piece on the back??

I cut off and kept the nicer pieces of cotton, and the buttons.

I think this purple waistcoat was the second one I ever made. (The first was a big shiny brown thing made of 3 different drapery fabrics, which I don't have any pictures of.)

 I found a sketch and a whole lot of notes with this one! I haven't cut this up yet, but I do want to re-use the fabric for something because I really like it. It's a thick cotton with a woven spiral pattern, and it's lined with what I presume is rayon, salvaged from the lining of an old coat.
Once again, it isn't interfaced. The back is the same fabric as the front, and I made 2 rows of buttonholes because I didn't know how to do double breasted stuff. The brass buttons are all the same size, but are 3 different designs because I didn't have enough of any one.

I think the biggest problem with this one is the pattern. Especially the lapels.

I wore it quite a lot in my late teens, along with the horrible sheet shirt,
and thought myself very smartly dressed at the time.

 These stays are from a bit before I started this sewing blog, and they're okay enough to be wearable, but not great. I used a Butterick pattern and even though I lowered the back by a considerable amount it's still too high. They're boned with strips cut off of some sheet of plastic that Papa had in his workroom, and it doesn't hold its shape well at all.
I also stab stitched the entire binding on, which cause my fingers a great deal of pain and left very visible stitches. Nowadays I do bias binding with a very small slipstitch or whipstitch.
Edit: And now I know that they cut their binding on the cross or straight grain in the 18th century, because bias is wasteful, and also I was a fool for waiting so long to learn to use a thimble.
I eventually gave these stays to a small theatre company.

Also, note the wonky spacing of the eyelets.
The pattern didn't have them all the way to the bottom, so I added more later.

 This waistcoat was slightly better than the others, but still terrible in terms of materials. Especially the "interfacing".

I have since given it away at a clothing swap.

I'm including a picture from this post because I don't have any better pictures of my first shirt, which was also the first garment I ever made. It was for a grade 11 sewing class. I did well on the assignment, but it was not a good shirt. It was made of silk (NO! Bad bad bad shirt material!), made from a commercial pattern (Circular ruffles! 2 piece collar! THE HORROR! And such a wasteful pattern compared to historical ones.), and the edges of the ruffles were serged. I think it wore out pretty quickly, which is precisely why you do not make 18th century shirts out of silk.

At least there's nothing wrong with the red cravat thing.

(Edit: Oh no wait I found it! I do still have that shirt! I must get better photos and do another one of these posts sometime, because this was written 4 years ago and I've improved even more.)

And there you have it! The sorry results of me trying to sew without any sort of instruction! I cringe at them now, but everyone has to start somewhere. I've improved so much since these projects and am always learning new things.
Have you got any early sewing horror stories? Might you be persuaded to post about them? (If so, please leave a link in the comments so I can see them!)