Author: James Williams

Adding Seam Allowances

With your draft done, you’ll need to add a few seam allowances to make sure it fits properly. Since this is only going to be a muslin toile for fitting purposes, I typically add seam allowances only at the shoulders and side seams. I’d recommend 3/8″ (actual inches) here, as it gives more room to work with than 1/4″ as well as prevents fraying, while at the same time not being quite as bulky as a full 1/2″.

Now, you do have a choice to make here. You could add the seam allowances directly to your pattern and cut everything out afterwards – this does break apart your original pattern however. Or you can copy the outlines and waist / chest lines to a fresh sheet of paper and add the seam allowances to that so as to preserve your original pattern for future use. It’s up to you and one way isn’t really more difficult than the other – it’s more how you prefer to work.

Use your quilting ruler to add the seam allowances to the shoulder seams and side seams.

Here’s a simplified view of the pattern so far after adding seam allowances at the shoulders and side seams. I’ve also added some vertical lines to indicate the grain of the cloth – just makes it easier to keep track of when cutting everything out.

Along the front edge I added the position of the buttons. These are 3/8″ (graduated or not) inches from the edge. The top button is about 1/2″ from the top, the lowest button is about an inch from the bottom. Then I just spaced the buttons evenly from top to bottom for a total of nine.

Finally, although it’s out of the scope of this course, I added a pocket along the bottom of the front just for reference. It’s about 5 graduated inches long, and roughly follows the waist construction line about 3 – 4″ above that.

Drafting the Front

With the back completed, we can move on to drafting the front of the waistcoat, or forepart.

Begin by drawing another vertical line about 2 – 3 inches away from the back piece – just to give yourself room to work with. Mark the following points from 0 in graduated inches.

  • Mark 0 at the top.
  • 2
  • 4 3/4
  • 7 1/2
  • 10 1/4
  • 19 1/8
  • 20 3/8
  • 22 1/2

Square across from these points as before – some of the lines you may have already drawn if you extended them far enough from the back. Then measure out the following distances.

  • 5 3/4 from 0
  • 10 1/4 from 4 3/4
  • 2 3/4 from 7 1/2
  • 10 5/8 from 10 1/4
  • 1 1/2 from 19 1/8
  • 1 1/4 from 20 3/8
  • 9 1/2 from 22 1/2

Draw in the construction lines connecting the following points to aid in drawing the curves.

  • 5 3/4 to 2 for the shoulder.
  • 2 to 2 3/4 for the front armscye.
  • 2 3/4 to 10 1/4 for the bottom armscye.
  • 10 1/4 through 1 1/2 to 1 1/4 for the side seam.
  • 1 1/4 to 9 1/2 for the waist seam.
  • 9 1/2 through 10 5/8 to 10 1/4 for the center front.
  • 10 1/4 to 5 3/4 for the neck seam.

To find the depth of the curves:

  • Measure 2 1/4 graduated inches from 5 3/4 along the neckline. Square in 1 inch for the curve of the neck.
  • Find the center of 5 3/4 to 2. Square out 1/4 graduated inch.
  • Find the center of 2 to 2 3/4. Square in 3/8 graduated inch.
  • Find the center of 2 3/4 to 10 1/4. Square in 7/8 graduated inch.

Finally, draw in the curves as shown:

  • 5 3/4 to 2 forms the shoulder seam. Should be a shallow curve.
  • 2 through 2 3/4 to 10 1/4 for the armscye. At 2 3/4, the curve should be close to vertical – that will help you with the shape of the curve.
  • 10 1/4 through 1 1/2 to 1 1/4 for the side seam. This forms an ‘S’ curve very similar to the side seam of the back, just in the opposite direction.
  • 9 1/2 to 1 1/4 for the waist seam. I like to first find the midpoint between the two. Then draw in a very shallow ‘S’ curve as shown. It should almost form a right angle with the center front.
  • 9 1/2 through 10 5/8 to 10 1/4 for the center front.
  • 10 1/4 through 1 to 5 3/4 for the neck seam. The curve starts out very shallow at 10 1/4 and deepens after 1. The curve should be just about vertical as it heads into 5 3/4.

This completes the draft itself. Next we’ll add seam allowances and double check the measurements one last time.

Drafting the Back

Before drafting, lay out your paper on the table. You’ll want to have a big enough piece to be able to fit the entire draft.

The draft is started by drafting a vertical line along the left edge – this will become the center back. Mark 0 at the top and then using the graduated measure corresponding to your chest measurement, lay out the following points, measuring from 0.

  • 3 1/2
  • 10 1/4
  • 19 1/8
  • 20 3/8

You can measure from 0 to 20 3/8 and compare that to your back length measurement. As long as it’s within an inch or two, I’d go with what the pattern says. If it’s off by more than that, you may run into issues – let me know your measurements and how far you’re off and I may be able to see what’s going on.

Now square out, or draw a line at a 90 degree angle, from each of those points you just measured out. From 0 and a few of the other points, feel free to extend the lines further as shown (the length doesn’t matter yet) so you can use the same lines for the forepart.

From each of the squared out lines, measure in graduated inches the following lengths. I usually just make a little mark at each of the distances.

  • 2 1/2 from 0
  • 7 1/4 from 3 1/2
  • 10 5/8 from 10 1/4
  • 9 1/4 from 19 1/8
  • 9 1/2 from 20 3/8

Now connect the points you just drew with construction lines as follows. These lines help to determine the curves in the next step.

  • at 2 1/2, square a line upwards 3/8 graduated inches for the neck curve.
  • Connect 2 1/2 to 7 1/4 for the shoulder.
  • At 7 1/4, square down a line to about halfway towards the next line.
  • Connect 7 1/4 to 10 5/8 for the armscye.
  • Connect 10 5/8 to 9 1/4 to 9 1/2 for the side seam.

Next up, we need to add two small construction lines to find the depth of the curves.

  • Find the center of line 7 1/4 to 2 1/4 (remember you raised that 3/8). Square in 1/4 graduated inch.
  • Find the center of line 10 5/8 to 7 1/4. Square in 1 1/2 graduated inches.

Finally, draw in the curves as shown using your preferred method – a French curve, bendable drafting ruler, or free hand.

  • Draw in the neck curve from 2 1/2 to 0.
  • Draw the shoulder seam from 7 1/4 through 1/4 to 2 1/2 with a shallow curve.
  • Draw the armscye from 10 5/8, rather deeply through 1 1/2, becoming vertical as it meets the vertical construction line.
  • Draw the side seam from 10 5/8, beginning about halfway down, curving through 9 1/4 to 9 1/2. It forms a sort of very shallow ‘S’ curve.

And that completes the draft for the back piece. You can compare the draft to your actual measurements as follows to make sure you’re on the right track.

  • 3 1/2 to 7 1/4 should be approximate to half of your back width measurement.
  • 10 1/4 to 10 5/8 should be about half of your chest measurement.
  • 0 to 20 3/8 should be close to your back length measurement.
  • 20 3/8 to 9 1/2 should be half your waist measurement.

If somethings within an inch or two I’d leave it and continue on to see what happens. If there’s a larger discrepancy, please share your measurements and a photo of your pattern in the community and I’ll have a closer look at it for you.

Taking Measurements

The basis of any good pattern depends upon first taking good and accurate measurements. This definitely takes some practice though, so just get as close as you can. And before you take measurements, it’s a good idea to examine the posture and shape of the person your measuring (if it’s yourself, use a camera or mirror if necessary). Does the person stand erect or have a hunch to the back (very common with our phones these days). Or are they thin or more corpulent? With practice you can tell if a pattern looks ‘off’ when compared to what you’ve seen with the posture, saving yourself from making mistakes and having to do an extra fitting.

There are six general measurements I take to get the basic waistcoat pattern. I generally take these over a dress shirt or a period shirt if you have one. You can also take them over another waistcoat and that will give you a slightly more relaxed fit.

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Chest

Hold the tape around the chest as shown, as high as possible under the arms, and over the fullest part of the chest, holding the tape with the thumb and forefinger of each hand. Draw the tape snug but not tight, and loosen it gently as the client breathes, for the best accuracy. This measurement determines the size of the graduated measure you should use.

Waist

Measure around the natural waist at about the level of the navel. This should be taken rather loose just to give yourself some room to breathe. It’s also helpful to tie a ribbon or string around the waist to aid in taking the measurements to a consistent level.

Length of Back

Measure from the prominent vertebrae just at the bottom of your neck (or the bottom of your shirt collar) to an inch or two below the natural waist, keeping the tape close to the back as you measure.

Width of Back

This is a measurement I borrowed from the coat drafting measurements, and while it’s not used specifically in the draft, it’s a great way to make sure your back width is accurate, especially if you’re a larger chest size. Measure horizontally across the back from arm pit to arm pit. If you have a previous waistcoat that fits you well, you could also measure that — especially helpful if you’re measuring yourself!

Opening

This measurement isn’t strictly necessary for our current project, but it’s a good way to figure out how deep you want to make the opening of the waistcoat. Measure from the back of the neck again, over the shoulder, to the desired location on the center front of the chest.

Front Length

Again not strictly necessary, this measurement is a good way to check the length of the front of your waistcoat. Often if you are not of the ‘proportionate’ size as indicated in the original drafts, you may end up with a shorter or longer waistcoat depending on your size. Measure from the back of the neck again, across the shoulder, and down to one or two inches below the waist at the center front. If you’re using that ribbon, it helps a great deal!

Cutting the Facings

It’s time to cut and prepare the facings for installation. Traditionally, the facings were cut with the collar in one piece to maintain a more seamless look to the finished waistcoat. To accommodate the lack of darts as well, the facings are cut with an additional allowance so that the facings can be manipulated into place. I’ll be demonstrating the ‘quick’ method for getting the pattern pieces, but if you’re using a plaid or more prominent stripe pattern that you want matched, take care in the layout of everything and use more precision as necessary.

Begin by laying out the waistcoat on to a fresh sheet of paper and tracing around the lower side seam, the bottom, the front, the collar, and shoulder seams.

I’m using a pen here so that you can see everything more clearly, but I recommend a pencil so that you don’t accidentally get ink on your waistcoat.

As you’re tracing around the collar and shoulder area, try to hold everything in a neutral position. The pieces will want to distort due to putting the three-dimensional fabric on the flat paper.

Before removing the waistcoat, slide it over slightly and determine the outer edge (including a seam allowance) of and how wide you want the facing to be. I made mine end just before the dart and about two inches from the inside buttons.

Then use a hip curve to draw in the desired shape of the facing on the inner edge. It should meet the shoulder about 1 1/2″ to 2″ from the collar (remember this includes the seam allowance).

The shoulder should meet the facing in as close to a right angle as possible to make the sewing a little easier and the lines more pleasing. Finish the curve as necessary using the hip curve or French curve.

Now draw in the lower facing, about 3″ or so above the bottom of the waistcoat, following the shape of the outline. This does again include a seam allowance on the upper / inside edge, so choose your widths accordingly.

Here’s what I’ve got so far for my facing pattern. You could actually cut this out as one piece if you have enough fabric, but I’ll be constructing mine with the two separate pieces. We’ll add a seam allowance for that in a bit.

Now along the side, bottom, front, collar and shoulder seams, add an additional one inch (or more if you’re not feeling as confident) allowance to the pattern. This will allow us to manipulate the fabric around the shaped areas of the collar and darts.

Now on a fresh piece of paper, trace out the lower facing along the outer edge (with the 1″ we just added). I drew in the original seam line with a dashed line for clarity, though no need to do that really.

I also marked the top and front edges, since it’s easy to get this piece mixed up. Then, I added a 3/4″ seam allowance along the front edge, double the usual seam allowance. It occurred to me just now that I probably could have used a 3/8″ seam here, since we included the seam allowance on the main facing piece, but the extra allowance won’t hurt anything.

Cut out both facing pieces.

Now trace the facings on to your fabric. I kept the original grain lines for the alignment, but you could also feel free to experiment with this to get different stripe alignment on the collar area.

The lower facing could be cut on the grain as well, but I rotated it in order to save fabric, a common practice during the period.

And then cut out the facings as usual. Here’s what mine looks like so far.

Stay Taping the Forepart

Before installing the facings, I like to reinforce the edges with linen stay tape. This gives a firmer and crisper edge to the waistcoat and prevents the seams from rolling out of position over time.

Begin by marking out the seam allowances (3/8″) along the bottom edge using a ruler and chalk or pencil.

Continue marking along the front edge and around the collar.

Trace all the way to the center back of the collar.

Carefully trim away the seam allowance from the canvas only, being careful not to cut into the fabric underneath.

Be extra careful near the fold of the roll line – it’s so easy to accidentally cut through to the right side. I accidentally made a very small snip through the silk, but luckily caught it in time before too much damage was done.

Lay the stay tape along the edge of the collar, just barely overlapping into the seam allowance. Begin basting about an inch above the shoulder, keeping the end of the tape free to finish up later.

Continue basting the stay tape to the waistcoat through all layers, along the collar.

About an inch above the roll line, take a stitch in place to lock the stay tape in place.

As you continue basting across the roll line, allow a little excess stay tape with each stitch. This excess is needed so that when the collar is folded in place, there will be enough slack in the tape to allow it to fold nicely without pulling back away from the body. Make one more stitch about one inch below the roll line to lock everything in place again.

Continue basting the stay tape to the forepart along the front edge. When you get about two inches from the bottom edge, make yet another stitch to lock everything in place. From here to the corner, hold the stay tape a little tight as compared to the forepart. This will draw the corner of the waistcoat inwards a little, helping it to stay in place when worn.

When you get to the lower front corner, take another stitch in place to lock everything, keeping about 1/2″ from the corner itself to give yourself room to work with. Then at a 45 degree angle, cut the stay tape almost but not quite all the way through. The end of the cut should ideally be right over the corner of the canvas underneath.

Now fold the stay tape in place along the lower edge.

Clip the overlapping section of stay tape at the same angle.

When done, you should have a nice crisp miter that won’t leave any extra bulk in the area. This one came out pretty nicely, but as I like to say, it ‘miter’ been better.

Make another stitch in place, and again hold the tape tight to the forepart for another inch or two along the bottom edge.

Continue basting until you get to the side seam.

Trim the excess flush with the side seam.

Here’s the forepart so far after basting on the stay tape.

Beginning at the top of the collar, one inch above the shoulder line, begin stitching down the stay tape along the outer edge using a bit of a felling stitch. The stitches are about 3/8″ to 1/2″ apart, and the needle enters at a slight diagonal, catching only a couple of threads on the right side. You can also use a cross stitch, shown at the end of this lesson.

Stitch along the front outside edge, past the roll line.

And continue down along the center front and waist line.

Then repeat the process, this time on the inside edge of the stay tape, and catching only the stay tape and canvas with each stitch, as these are in a more visible location looking from the right side.

Again, end the stitching about 1″ above the shoulder line. This entire area needs to be free to work with later on.

As an alternative, you could also cross stitch the stay tape to the forepart. The results are the same, but I do find this stitch is better at distributing any fullness, for example, around the roll line. It’s up to you which version you choose.

Finally, remove the basting stitches – they’re so much easier to remove now than later if you forget.

Here’s the forepart so far after installing the stay tape.

Tacking the Pockets

To complete the installation of the canvas, we’ll again turn back to the pockets, which we left unfinished at the ends. We’ll now trim the ends, turn them under, and tack them down through all layers, including the canvas, which will give them additional strength and prevent the canvas from shifting during wear.

Begin by trimming the raw ends of the pocket welt down to about 1/4″ or 3/8″, either square across or more of an angle if you want more of a ‘boat’ shape to your pocket ends.

Fold the raw edge under, forming the shape you want, and pressing firmly with your fingers against the table.

Depending on the angle of your pocket, you may have a little excess fabric poking above the top of the welt. You’ll have to push this under the welt with your fingernail as you fell the top edge.

Along the top of the welt, about 1/4″ from the end, form 4 – 5 felling stitches in place, going through all layers. You may need to make this a prick stitch – that is, passing the needle all the way through to the underside, in order to get through all of the layers. This is the point of the pocket that takes the most stress, so the additional stitches in place are necessary.

Continue felling along the top edge of the pocket towards the end, through all layers.

Then continue felling down along the end of the pocket itself, taking as small a stitch as you can into the welt to minimize the stitching that’s visible. It’s a bit tricky in silk, but it can be done.

Here’s the end of my pocket after felling.

Now pass the needle and thread to a point about 1/4″ from the end of the pocket, and along the bottom edge. Make your first stitch by passing the needle to the right side of the waistcoat.

Now pass the needle back into the fabric through all layers, immediately to the side of the first half of the stitch. This is what’s called a side stitch, and due to the way the stitch is formed, is very strong, perfect for this situation.

The stitch should be very small – almost invisible. The one I made here is a little large. Now, draw a line visually with your mind from that first stitch to the original group of overcasting stitches you made. Continue sewing in as straight a line as possible back towards those stitches.

I was kind of disappointed with how these came out, while they look good, I was not concentrating on aiming for those original felling stitches and shifted a little off towards the end of the pocket rather than keeping parallel to it. Alas …

Finish off the pocket from the wrong side with a few stitches in place.

Repeat for the other end of the pocket, though you’ll probably be working in the opposite direction – just takes a little getting used to. So here I started from the bottom of the pocket on the outside edge, worked my way up, and across the top, making the felling stitches in place to tack it down, and then side stitching down the pocket.

Here’s one of the completed pockets, continue with the remaining pockets.

Collar Roll Line

With the canvas installed, we can move on to finalizing the position of the roll line. Take your collar pattern and align it on the collar canvas as closely as possible. Slide it down about 1/4″ to expose the linen underneath and make a mark at the top of the collar along the roll line.

Then mark the roll line at the bottom edge of the collar pattern. This point most likely won’t align with the final roll line position due to the dart, but it’s useful to see the amount of adjustment.

Finally, pull back the canvas to find the location of the bottom of the roll line, which should have been marked on the forepart.

Mark the bottom of the roll line as closely as possible. I usually just do this by eye but you could make a tailor’s tack through all layers from the right side to find the location that way.

Now start marking in the final position of the roll line. In the original draft, it’s indicated as a straight line from top to bottom, but I find that doesn’t actually work so well in practice, and a bit of nuance is needed in the positioning.

At the top end of the collar, keep the roll line parallel to the lower neck edge (closest to the top of the photo) for the first 3 inches or so, to about level with the shoulder.

Then ever so slightly shift the ruler so it aligns with the bottom mark, and draw in the rest of the roll line.

Here’s the roll line all marked out, you can see the slight angle we put in. When the waistcoat is worn, this will help everything stay closer to the neck.

Keeping everything flat and aligned between the layers, baste a row of straight stitches about 1/4″ away from the inside of the roll line.

It occurred to me afterwards that it might be easier to just baste directly down the center of the roll line, that way the layers will stay together even better without much effort on your part.

The roll line after basting.

Now crease the collar along the roll line with your fingers, as closely as you can to the marked line.

Press carefully and firmly over a tailor’s ham, as the collar and roll line have a good deal of shaping built in thanks to the dart.

Here’s the entire forepart so far after pressing the roll line.

Now starting about an inch from the bottom of the roll line, begin overcasting the folded edge, being sure to catch all of the layers with each stitch. Keep the stitches between 1/8″ and 1/4″ apart.

The stitching is started an inch from the bottom so that we can open the collar back up and do a bit more work around the edges of the waistcoat.

I started with three or four stitches in place.

Since I had basted to the edge of the collar, I found my stitches were missing the silk layer underneath, so I opened up the collar and press the silk into the crease with the finger of my left hand while I made the stitch.

It’s a good idea to check every once in a while to make sure you’re catching every layer.

Continue sewing towards the center back of the collar in the same manner.

End the stitching about 1 1/2″ to 2″ from the back of the collar. We need this free so we can join the collar halves together with a seam later on.

And here’s the completed roll line and collar after stitching.

From Photograph to Pattern

Working on the John Wilkes Booth photograph itself, I found that adjusting the contrast did not really help at all with this particular image, so I went into Inkscape for the following. Inkscape is more of an illustration program and allows you to draw what is known as vector lines, lines that maintain their resolution and crispness no matter how far you zoom in.

I’ll use Inkscape to help me lay out proportions and various angles as necessary. The main tool you’ll want to use is called the pen tool, and allows you to draw straight and curved lines with extreme accuracy. Using Inkscape is a little outside the scope of this tutorial, but if you search Youtube or elsewhere there are plenty of good tutorials.

First, I tried to lay out the proportions of the body as best I could. It’s a well-known principle of anatomy that the human body is 7 1/2 to 8 heads tall, so I drew a horizontal line at both the top and bottom of his head. Then I duplicated the lines and shifted them downwards so that the upper duplicated line overlapped the lower original line at the bottom of the head, and repeated the process down the body. It doesn’t quite work due to the perspective of the photo and angle of his feet, but it should be plenty close enough for our purposes.

John Wilkes Booth was 5’8″ tall. So by dividing that by 7 1/2, that should give us the approximate distance between each of the lines. 68 / 7.5 = 9.06. 9 inches is definitely close enough.

We can divide that 9″ head measurement in half for the half head measurement of 4.5″. I made a square with the square tool the size of that half a head, and as long as I don’t accidentally change the size, that square is equal to 4.5″ in both directions. Now I can go and place that square anywhere on the photo and it will give me a fairly accurate sense of size. You could subdivide that square if you wanted to but it’s not really necessary for this coat.

Going over the coat now, I can make the following observations. The bottom of the coat ends at a point two or three inches above the knee (that odd line indicates the height of the knee as best as I can tell from the wrinkles and aligns with the anatomical placement. I know that length for a coat is generally what was fashionable for the time period, and most patterns end up around that length as well.

The center front of the coat looks relatively straight, but may have a slight flair out at the bottom of the skirt and another very slight round to the chest. This would be determined more on your own particular body shape and size though – what looks good on John Wilkes Booth may not work for you.

Bottom front is rounded, look like the curve starts three or four inches from where the point would be. The bottom edge looks relatively straight, but has a curved appearance from the angle of the photo.

Still referencing the same image, I can see no sign of a waist seam along the front, and in addition there is a hip pocket, telling me that this is a paletot rather than a frock coat. Frocks typically did not have waist pockets – that’s more of a modern interpretation / ‘steampunk’ fad.

The pocket itself looks to be a 1/4 of a head high, or 2 1/4″ inches. However, that seems a little small to my eye (have to develop that rock of eye!) and I suspect that the pocket is more like 3″ in height. Will have to experiment with that to see what looks best. Alas, there’s no way to tell how wide the pocket is as his arm is covering most of it, so I’ll go with what I can find from period drafts.

Edit: I was reading the photo incorrectly, it does indeed look more like 3 to 3 1/2″ in height.

It looks like the coat has four buttons, the top one being hidden in the roll of the lapel. I’ve seen photos of Booth wearing a very similar coat with five buttons and yet another with only three, so there’s room for artistic expression here.

There does appear to be a breast pocket (with a handkerchief sticking out) but the style can’t be determined from this photo – most likely a common welt pocket.

Finally, the coat is trimmed with silk, I’m not going to try measuring that, but I’m going to guess it’s about 3/8″ wide in this particular version. That width can be determined more by your preference and skill though, as well as the thickness of the materials you are working with.

The sleeve also has a row of silk trim, I’m going to say about 5 1/2″ to 6″ above the bottom of the sleeve, and about the level of the top of the pocket. I rotated the square to help better determine the height. This too will be determined more by the individual wearer and what suits his build, but this is a good starting point.

That’s about all of the information I was able to glean from this photograph. However, there are several other photographs around showing Booth wearing what I thought were the same coat, though they turned out to be just slightly different. Turning to one of those now:

Looking a little closer at the chest area, I can note a few other details.

The breast pocket is clearly a welted pocket, looks to be on the narrower side, maybe 1/2″ to 5/8″ in height.

The trim along the front and collar edges is definitely a bit thinner, I’d guess 3/16″ to 1/4″ in width.

You can make out some tell tale signs of the ‘crooked cut’ of the shoulder, so common during the 19th century, with the gentle folds of fabric at the front of the shoulder going into the bottom of the armscye.

The sleevehead is finely set into the armscye, probably shrunk into place to fit even better. Contrast that to the gentleman in the white coat in the previous lesson with his waterfall sleeves.

Self-covered buttons complete the coat, there appear to be three in this version if you look at the complete photograph. The buttons look to be set back quite a distance from the center front of the coat, maybe 1 1/2″. This was probably to give him room to ‘expand’, and the buttonhole that’s visible is closer to the edge of the coat, about 1/2″ away. I’m wondering if this offset of the buttons will throw off the positioning of the lapels – will have to experiment.

Finally, back in Inkscape, the final thing I like to do is copy the angles on to cleaner lines to compare with my draft later on. The perspective of the photo is close enough to straight on that I can simply figure out these angles without too much distortion, though it won’t be perfect.

First, I drew a line along the center front of the coat, extending a bit just for more area to reference from. Then I drew the bottom edge of the lapel and then the top.

I then changed the paper size to 8 1/2″ x 11″ under File > Document Properties and deleted the photo from the open document, leaving me with just the three reference lines. I also scaled up the pattern to make it large enough to work with – the exact size doesn’t really matter as that will be determined more by your coat pattern, we’re really just after the angles here.

Finally, print out the pattern and set it aside for when you begin drafting the coat.

Extracting Details from Period Photography

Now that we’ve chosen a photograph to work from, it’s time to get into the details and see what information we can extract from said image. I’ll be using two programs for my work, both of which are completely free and perfectly adequate. The first is the GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP), used for editing images and in our case, gaining more information from them. The second program is called Inkscape, and rather than being used to edit the images, I use the program for diagramming (all the patterns on this website) and figuring out different angles, as I’ll demonstrate later. So feel free to download and install either of those if you want to follow along or delve into your own photographs.

For the examples in this tutorial, I’ll be using this image from the Library of Congress. As you can see, the JPEG version, while nice, does not give us very much detail. Looks like the gentleman on the right has a nice suit but that’s about all I can see. The two on the left appear to be officers of some sort.

Size Manipulation

To get more information from the photo, we need to download the TIFF version. Be aware that it’s a very large file at 87.5mb, so it’s possible you’ll freeze up your computer if it’s older or lacks enough memory. Open the file in GIMP.

With the file opened, glancing down towards the bottom right, we can see that the image has been zoomed out to 12.5%, meaning we can zoom in quite a bit without losing any of the details.

I was able to zoom in to 200% without losing too much information – more than that and you start to see pixelation, though that will depend on the particular image you’re editing.

If you want to save a particular part of the image, you can also crop to that section with the crop tool. I’ll often crop the section I need, undo with control+z and crop another section as necessary.

Simply select the area you want with the crop too and adjust as necessary. When you’re happy with the crop, press enter to crop the photo.

This gives us an image we can more easily share with others or save for our own use. There may be times when you want to crop the image right away, and others where you’ll want to do other manipulations before cropping, so it really comes down to preference and your particular photograph.

Author’s note: I really feel like a nut case using words such as ‘zoom’ and ‘pixelated’…

Adjusting the Contrast

There may be areas of the image where even with zooming in, you will not be able to make out the details due to the image being too dark (or too light in some cases), as is the case for the officer in this photograph. By adjusting the contrast, we may be able to recover some of those details if the image is of high enough quality.

I like to adjust the contrast using the curves tool – while it’s the most complicated way, it’s also the most powerful, and isn’t that difficult to use for our simple needs. Begin by going to Colors -> Curves in the main menu.

This opens the Curves dialogue. Briefly, the graph along the bottom is showing us just where the dark and light values are appearing in the photograph. As you can see, most of the image is on the darker side, so we’ll need to adjust that.

Click on the diagonal line near the darker part of the graph to form a point.

Then begin to drag that point upwards, adjusting as necessary until you can bring out the detail you are looking for (as possible of course). Here we can begin to see some of the details of the collar and lapels coming out.

I went a little further and now you can really start to see the details in his coat. Any further than that and I found I was starting to lose more information than I gained.

Now you’ll want to be careful with this, as while I was getting detail from this officer’s coat, I was losing detail from the gentleman to his right wearing the lighter coat, and especially with the women on the steps. So this might be a case where I’d crop each section of the image as necessary and then do the adjustments for the contrast.

There are times when you might go the opposite direction with the contrast, particularly on lighter clothing where bringing out the faint shadows might help you determine how a piece was cut or how it drapes over the body. For example, by drastically lowering the contrast (the rest of the image is pretty much black at this point) I was able to bring out some details in this woman’s sleeve, which might help me determine how much fabric was used here.

As you can see, the men have practically disappeared with this setting.

Picking Out the Details

Those are the main techniques I use for manipulating the historical photographs. Now I’ll go briefly through the photograph and show you what I was able to gain from the image.

Starting with the gentleman on the right, I was first struck by his unique breast pocket. Rather than the usual welt pocket, it appears to have a jetted pocket with rather bold diagonal stay stitching on each end. His larger size made the sleeves a lot bigger, and it appears that his tailor struggled to get the sleeve set correctly, leading to more of a ‘waterfall’ affect on the sleeve head.

The bottom of the waistcoat has a nice curve to it, and I’d estimate the topstitching to be about 3/8″ to 1/2″ from the edge.

I’m not an expert on military uniforms, so these are just some quick observations. The officer in the middle appears to have a stand up military collar along with an interesting cravat and cravat pin. Also noted are the velvet cuffs on the sleeves.

This officer on the right is my favorite, with how much detail I was able to bring out. We can see now that he was a lieutenant, and appears to be wearing a sack coat with I’m going to say four buttons (can’t see the lowest one). He’s got a welted breast pocket, a thin cravat, and a military style waistcoat. We can also make out the lines around the lapels, collar, and gorge line which are very helpful in drafting the coat as I’ll show in the next section.

There are of course more things you can learn from this entire image but I’ll leave that as an exercise for the reader. My next step if I were to recreate one of these officer’s coat would be to look up the specific regulations for that particular coat and then match each detail in the description to the photograph as I drafted my pattern.