Intro to Tailoring
taught by Lady Simona della Luna (Star.Maddox@gmail.com) at King’s College 2014
Who Does What
Modern professional sewing has a variety of job titles. A custom clothier makes different types of garments, one at a time, for individual customers. A dressmaker designs and makes women’s clothing, a pattern maker creates the patterns for the various garment pieces, and a seamstress operates a sewing machine to construct clothing patterned by others. In a modern custom tailoring workshop, a tailor creates custom menswear jackets and trousers. A cutter might advise and measure the client to create the pattern, or only cut out the fabric, or all this work might also be done by the tailor. Within each of these various jobs, workers might be ranked by relative skill and experience - a person might be an apprentice cutter, or a journeyman dressmaker, or a master tailor.
For further discussion of tailoring vs dressmaking, see the following article:
http://www.cutterandtailor.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=832
Tailoring Manuals and Sources
Some tailoring manuals are known, and more are being made available online as libraries discover them and costumers request their availability. While there is virtue in getting as close to the original as possible, they do come with some caveats. Use caution with regard to measurements - the same unit-of-measurement name could mean different things in different places at the same time, or at different times in the same place. The patterns in Alcega’s drafting book have offsets, extra-wide seam allowances to allow for fitting. If you try to stitch them up using a consistent seam allowance in all areas, you won’t get good results. Many medieval tailoring manuals call for the use of piecing, or using non-shaping seams to assemble a pattern piece to achieve a more economical use of the available cloth, even on garments meant for nobility. An examination of surviving garments shows that the nap and pattern of the fabric were also considered to be “negotiable” - many garments have a section or two where the nap or pattern are turned upside down.
1640 Martin de Anduxar
1618 Francois de la Rocha de Burguen
1589 Juan de Alcega
1588 Diego de Freyle
Modern books are more reliable about measurements and seam allowances, but then you’re relying on a secondary source, which introduces its own possibilities for bias and error. Never the less, they can be a valuable resource and an excellent beginning. The medieval manuals presume that the reader is already a trained tailor, while the modern books tend to give a more approachable explanation.
The Tudor Tailor, by Ninya Mikhaila and Jane Malcolm-Davies
The Patterns of Fashion series, by Janet Arnold
The Modern Maker: Volume 1 – Men’s Doublets (once it’s published), by Mathew Gnagy
Seams
Common seams used in tailoring include basting stitches (either temporary or permanent), running and back stitch for assembly, prick stitch, blanket and buttonhole stitch, and pad stitching or chain stitch for shaping. Heather Rose Jones’s website Archaeological Sewing is helpful: http://heatherrosejones.com/archaeologicalsewing/silk.html
Needles
Tailors use a short, fat needle. Mathew’s favorite brand is Lance, and he recommends a size 4, 5, or 6. In the workshop we used a 5 for most things, and a 6 for stitching through multiple layers of silk.
Dressmakers often use very thin needles to pull very thin (often silk) thread. Tailors are sort of the opposite. They use the largest needle that works with the fabric, and use relatively large thread. Using too small a needle for the thread causes problems because the needle doesn’t push a large enough hole in the fabric, and the thread gets squished as it’s drawn through the fabric. This causes the twist of the thread to bunch up on itself, resulting in snarled, tangled thread.
Needle sizing is based on the wire used to make them. Wire size is named based on how many times the wire has been pulled through a draw plate to make it thinner - size 1 wire has been pulled through one time and is still quite fat. Size 9 wire has been dawn through nine times and is tiny and thin. In the historic manufacturing process, the wires were all made in their various thicknesses, then sent to a cutter who chopped them up into various sizes - “shorts,” “betweens” that tailors use, and “longs” (also called “sharps”) that dressmakers use. These cut-up bits of wire were then given to a sorter who separated them out, and then along for sharpening, making the eye, and so on.
Thimble
A tailor’s thimble has an open top and nice, deep divots. To check the fit, put it on the table wide end up and stick your middle finger in. Your fingertip should be able to touch the table, and the thimble should stay on when you lift your finger. You’ll be pushing the needle with the side of the finger, in a position that, without the thimble in place, would shove the eye of the needle into the join of the side of your nail and the cuticle, right near where hangnails tend to happen.
In some tailor shops they use a thread to tie the thimble onto the finger and force the middle finger to stay in the correctly bent position. Some students in the workshop did this, but it wasn’t a thing we covered.
One student had a metal adjustable open-sided thimble, like can be found in some quilting sections. If you can’t find a tailor’s thimble, Mathew said this might work as long as you rotate it slightly to protect the appropriate area of the finger. We had a lot of trouble finding tailor’s thimbles in Austin, but apparently there’s $1 each at Fabrique in Dallas (though they don’t seem to do online sales). I have relatively narrow fingers and wear a size 6 ring on my ring finger. I needed a size 8 thimble in the brand that came from Fabrique. This may correspond to a 16mm size, but there’s so much variation between suppliers that it’s hard to say without trying them on.
Thread
While research on historic sewing thread weights and types does exist, I have not made a study of it. Because of practical availability, I have focused on modern thread.
Different types of thread are used at different points in the construction process. Unlike wire, thread gets larger with larger numbers. Unless otherwise specified, all of the thread in the chart below is cotton or poly/cotton blend.
Silk thread is rated on a different scale than cottons. The silk twist we used in the workshop would have been T 80 on the cotton scale. If silk twist is unavailable, a good substitute is DMC Cebelia #30 cotton crochet thread. It comes in a wide variety of colors, and if you want you can boil it and dye it. Use a contrasting color for a nice design element. The silk twist used in embroidery is a little heavier than modern sewing silk twist, but it actually looks a little closer to the surviving medieval examples. Eterna Silk online is one supplier.
Linen thread is also rated on a completely different scale, using weaver’s measurements. Use a 40/2 linen thread as equivalent to a T 60 cotton thread for construction seams and 60/2 linen thread for basting. The number before the slash is the size of the thread itself (like wire, larger numbers mean smaller thread), and the number after the slash is the number of plies that are twisted together to make the thread.
Fabric
Often in recreating historic clothing we are advised to use upholstery weight fabric. But in both the surviving historic clothing, and in modern-made tailored clothing, the weight of the finished item comes from the combination of a thin silk or linen lining, a linen canvas interlining, and the outer fabric, which might be wool, linen or silk. Building up the layers from separate fabrics allows the tailor to sculpt and shape the clothing in a way that would not be possible with a single layer of heavier fabric.
Pre-treat your fabric using whatever cleaning method you intend to use on the finished garment, whether you plan to hand wash it with water, or to use an improvised dry cleaning method of a spray bottle of vodka.
Posture
Some tasks, like stretch-basting the silk onto the canvas for the women’s doublet, must be done on the table. But the vast majority of the sewing must be done in your lap. Very early pictures of tailors show them sitting on a bench or chair with one leg crossed over the other, with a knee slightly up to rest the work on (this is the posture we used). Be sure to switch which leg is crossed every forty minutes or so, or your foot will fall asleep. Later they’re shown using a small footstool as well, like a classical guitarist. Later still, tailoring shops would have a sort of little stage right up against the front windows to make the most of the available light. Tailors would sit on the floor cross-legged, in the position we call “Indian-style,” but that the rest of the world calls “tailor-style.”
Additional Sewing Tools
In January 2014 I attended an all-weekend doublet-tailoring workshop in Dallas, taught by professional tailor and costumer Mathew Gnagy. He has made an effort to assemble a sewing kit that would have been appropriate to a tailor employed in the workshop of Juan de Alcega or one of the other medieval sewing masters. I made notes of the various tools he prefers to work with. For another costumer’s approach to building a medieval sewing kit, see http://coblaith.net/PeriodPresents/SewingKit/
The drafting tools were larger, and kept separate from the sewing kit. In addition to the tailor’s chalk (described below), there was also a metal Fairgate brand 12” armhole curve, a metal Fairgate brand right angle ruler (measuring up to 8” on one leg and up to 16” on the other), and a clear plastic ruler that measured about 2” by 20” or so, with a full grid of lines on the body of the ruler. The one he was using had black markings, but he recommended also having one with red markings for better visibility if you’re working on black fabric. He also used a calculator to check his math and a normal measuring tape to take body measurements.
Mathew’s sewing kit was kept in a rectangular canvas cloth. To pack it up, he folded in the bottom and top edges (which had nearly a full overlap over each other), tucked in one end, and the just rolled it up with all the tools inside. He then tied it in place with a bit of twill tape that wrapped around a couple of times. His gigantic cutting shears were kept separately. He does not use a rotary cutting wheel, both because it isn’t appropriate to the time period, and because it offers much less accuracy and precision in the work. Inside this kit was pretty much the standard collection of tools that would have been in use by a tailor in the time of Alçega (1589) or de Burguen (1618).
A tailor’s roll is just a long rectangular piece of scrap wool, about four inches wide, that’s folded with its raw edges in and then rolled into a bundle an inch and a half diameter, with another smaller strip of wool stitched to the outside like a napkin ring. It’s traditionally thing first thing made by an apprentice in the line of the master tailor he trained under. You stick your needles into one end, and pins into the other. When doing a fitting, you can hold the tailor’s roll in your left hand to keep the pins easily available. He doesn’t like the wrist pincushions; they’re too slow to use.
He has four pairs of snips, two each of two different kinds. There are the black spring-action ones that default to open position, and the silver-colored ones that look like surgical scissors, with one blade blunt-ended and the other pointy.
There is a wooden-handled stiletto, with a plastic guard on the tip so it doesn’t stab through the canvas kit bundle. This looks very similar to the tool sold in craft stores that’s called a “tailor’s awl” - properly speaking, a stiletto has a pointy tip and spreads toward the base, while an awl is straight-sided. This is used to make eyelet holes.
A metal pinking knife doubles as a buttonhole cutter. There is no need for pounding with a mallet - surviving pinking blades and buttonhole cutters from this time period do not show the wear marks that would result from mallet use. Instead, the blade is kept very sharp, and simple hand pressure is enough to click it through the multiple layers of fabric. If Mathew is cutting a large number of buttonholes or pinks in a day he may protect his hand with a leather palm (just plain leather, not the sailor’s palm that also has an inset thimble). When using it for pinking, if he wants the cut edges to “bloom” (fray and look fluffy) more quickly he uses the blade in a slashing motion, rather than the straight-down click-through used for buttonholes.
A large round cake of brown-colored beeswax (a disk maybe 2” diameter and 1” high) is used for waxing thread, although Mathew said that more commonly he skips the wax and instead uses an iron on the thread before sewing if he needs to set the twist and make it behave better. For the silk buttonhole twist, he used the iron a bit like a curling iron, with lots of steam, and pulled the thread through under the iron while the iron was pressed against the ironing board.
A smooth, hard, non-marking stone is useful for smoothing down creases in linen.
A small wooden box with a sliding lid (about the size to hold business cards) holds a collection of razor blades still wrapped in their individual cardboard sleeves.
A 3” tall, hand-turned wooden bobbin with a hollow center serves as a needle case. The top is sealed with a small cork. Thread for sewing historically would be kept wrapped on the bobbin, but his is empty right now.
A small leather thimble is included, though it’s mostly used for lace-making.
Waxed tailor’s chalk (a rectangular, flat, white piece) is used to mark out the pattern shapes on the cloth. It’s slightly greasy, and sometimes he’ll use regular chalkboard chalk if he’s concerned it might not completely come out of a light-colored silk. Before using the chalk he used one edge of the surgical scissors style snips to sharpen the long edge to a good writing angle. There are also chalk sharpeners available, but he doesn’t bother with them.
There were several lengths of bone casing (like twill tape, but very non-stretchy). These were each marked as individual measuring tapes. One was marked out with the measuring units used by Alçega, giving a full bara and each of the smaller increments (dedos, etc.), labeled as shown in the pattern book. Another tape was marked out with Mathew’s own measurements. Largest to smallest (everything using a common zero line) they were: chest, waist, sleeve length, high point of shoulder to waist, neck length / front width / back waist length (these are all the same number), shoulder, and a pretty mark next to the zero line. There were no numbers used, just the lines and the abbreviations to say what they were for. This was useful for tailors who might be skilled workmen, but illiterate and innumerate.
Buttonholes
Buttonholes are beyond the scope of this class, but are a frequent area of concern. The following three websites all have good discussion of the topic.
Pad Stitching
The photos above were taken as I made my brown doublet.They show the pad stitching at the collar, as wells as the underside of the prick stitching along the seam allowances.
The Sempstress website has a really good tutorial on pad stitching, with lots of pictures. The rest of the site has all sorts of fun sewing goodies as well. http://www.sempstress.org/skill/pad-stitching/
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