18th Century Sleeve Links (Video)

 A short little video about sleeve links.

Here's a link to my sleeve buttons pinterest board.

There's a huge number of sleeve buttons on finds.org.uk, and a lot on the Museum of London website too. On scribd.com there are two documents with pictures of more 18th century sleeve links, and 18th century notebook also has a page of them.

Places that sell reproduction sleeve buttons include Sign of the Gray Horse, Najecki Reproductions, Goosebay Workshops, and Wm. Booth Draper. At The Easter Door has some too, but I can't see any indication on the website of how to actually buy them.

Edit: I've more recently learned that you can find vintage cufflinks that work for 18th century too!
The kind with the stiff attached posts aren't any use, but the "chain link" kinds have either a little chain or a bar with two loops, so they work just like the 18th century ones. 

Here are the two pairs I've got so far. The black ones were $15 on etsy and the gold ones were $3 at a thrift store. The gold ones aren't great for 18th century but the black ones are octagons, which is good. 

A quick google images search for "chain link cufflinks" shows quite a lot of oval and octagon ones that look plenty appropriate for 18th century! The important features are that they're linked at each end, and that the little decorative bits are the same on either end instead of having one fancy thingy and one plain bar.

I'll be keeping an eye open for them from now on at thrift stores and estate sales! I've heard that vintage cufflinks are one of those things that you can get for really good prices because not many people use them anymore.

Here are all the images used in the video:

A Boy Drawing by Nicolas Bernard Lépicié.

Fleetwood Hesketh by Joseph Wright of Derby, 1769.

Portrait of Jacques Dumont Le Romain Playing the Guitar by Maurice-Quentin de la Tour.

Industry and Idleness (panel 7) by William Hogarth, 1747.

Portrait of Deborah Glen, c. 1730's.

Portrait of Elizabeth "Betje" Van Dyck Vosburg, c. 1725.

Portrait of Louis-Francois Roubiliac by Adrien Carpentiers, 1762

An Experiment on a Bird in an Air Pump by Joseph Wright of Derby, 1768 (detail).

The rest of these are all archaeological finds from Portable Antiquities Scheme, so I'll just leave links to the individual object pages, which have a bunch more information.

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Sage Green Linen Shirt

I've made another everyday shirt! 

There's nothing much to say about the construction, it's made in mostly the same way as the shirt in this post. All the long seams are by machine, and there's hand finishing at the cuff, collar, and front slit.

I did the buttonholes by hand, and made Dorset wheel buttons in light green DMC cotton pearl. I've decided I don't really like having the sewn on buttons on these narrow cuffs, they don't sit as nicely as the 18th century ones that close with sleeve links.

The fabric is Summer Breeze linen in "Sage" from Pure Linen Envy and it's lovely! It's nice and soft and such a good weight for shirts. I got some more of the same weight in white, because I really need to make more historical shirts too.

I like this shirt very much! Sage green is one of my favourite colours, and it goes so well with my brown waistcoat and pants.

This waistcoat really doesn't fit well anymore, alas.

I also got a couple metres of the same weight linen in dark red, light grey, and another shade of green, and I look forward to making shirts out of them too!

A pair of light green linen shirts

This winter I made a couple more everyday shirts, both in a pale green linen I bought at my local Fabricville several years ago. They're similar but not identical.

I won't go over the construction in too much detail, since I have a whole other post about that, but I did a few things differently from my usual shirts for these ones.

I don't normally do wide shoulder reinforcements on the inside of my shirts, but I did for one of these.

Shoulder reinforcement from the inside.
I like the way it fits so nicely around the neck gusset.

I also had never done basting on previous shirts, but I did for these ones and it made it so much easier. 

I basted the neck & hem gussets and the shoulder strips before sewing them on, basted the cuffs & collar before hand finishing the inside edge, basted the hems before hemming, and the seam allowances before felling. So much less fuss than doing it with all those pins in the way, and I think it makes the finished product turn out neater!

Sewing down the shoulder reinforcement,
which I had basted first.

I wasn't in the mood to machine sew when I started these, so a lot of the sewing is by hand. 

Front slit reinforcement, also basted first.

The second shirt has no wide shoulder reinforcement, only the narrow binding inside to finish the seam allowance, like I usually do. And I decided to add decorative stitching to the openings in a contrasting dark red cotton pearl.

The sample I did for the decorative stitching.

Having done a sample and finding that doing decorative stitching on just the thin folded edge of the cuffs and collar would distort it, I sewed a sort of tuck on the inside of those edges, so there would be an extra couple of layers inside on the top edge of the collar and the long edges of the cuffs.

Sewing the little inside ridge for sturdiness.

Attaching the collar.

I did blanket stitches all around the edges of the collar and cuff openings, and then did a stab stitch through the ends of all of them, to make them little squares. I sewed the buttonholes in the same contrasting red thread, and used it for the Dorset wheel buttons too.

Some finished pictures of the plain shirt:

Front slit reinforcement, backlit.

Front slit reinforcement as seen from the outside.

Collar.

Cuff.

Underarm gusset.

Shoulder as seen from the inside.

Hem gussets at the bottom of the side seams.

And of the less plain shirt:

Front slit reinforcement as seen from the inside.

Collar.

Cuff.

Cuff slit. I did a little bar tack at the end.

Collar again.

I made a little cap out of some of the leftover linen, same as the one in the previous post. It came out a little bit too tight.

Overall I'm pleased with these shirts, but I think the linen I used is a bit too heavy for ones cut this full. The shirttails are awfully bulky when tucked in. I noticed this when I finished the first one, and made the second 10 cm shorter, but it's still a lot of material.

I think both shirts look very nice with my brown cotton trousers, and my brown wool waistcoat. I also really like how the decorated one looks with this dark red cravat.

A number of my everyday shirts are getting pretty worn out, so it's good to have a couple of new ones. I still need to make more though!