Costume Store - 18th Century Breeches

Started the breeches from today onwards. I was given my garment, pattern and fabric, which is a cream cashmere with white cotton lining. The breeches are traditional 18th Century style with the buttoned flap opening at the front, buttoned knee bands and two pockets, one coin one in the waistband and one hand pocket. Dexter explained we had three weeks to make this garment in and that now we are meant to be more independent with our learning and problem solving. He will still teach us and assist us on timetabled sessions however he did say with our pockets in these garments we are going to be given hand outs then decide for ourselves what we should do.

During the rest of the session we cut out our lining pieces and and marked all the patterns. I was working with Naomi who is going to make the waistcoat to match the breeches I'm making. As we are both using the same fabrics we worked together and cut our pieces out economically. This is something I have already learnt with costume - always avoid wastage! It became a bit more tricky with our top fabric as we have stripes. This meant we had to cut our pattern pieces out individually rather than on the fold. Dexter suggested to us to use an Iron when pinning the pieces out to help keep the fabric really flat and pristine. I have never cut out anything in stripes before so this was really interesting. He advised us to draw a line on our lining along the straight of grain and then match this  to one of the stripes in the top fabric pattern with pins. This was a brilliant tip and proved to be successful. The smoothing of the iron removed any air bubbles. I will use this technique now whenever working with any pattern pieces from now on! Gold information!

All I need to do is flat and mark tack my pattern pieces. I shall complete this for next session.

Breeches Front

CF Opening

Coin Pocket

Hand Pocket

Knee-band Opening