A Ditto Suit: Frock Coat

I decided fairly quickly that in making my suit, I preferred the look of the coats with stand-and-fall collars. As historically there were a few neckline options, from no collar whatsoever on up, I went with my aesthetic preference for the frock coat style. I was pretty intimidated by this as I looked through the resources I have. I have made a 1940s women's suit using tailoring techniques, but that is the limit of my suiting experience. To take that limited knowledge and use it to draft, fit, and assemble an 18th century suit coat from a gridded image felt overwhelming, even with the 18th century sewing experience I had under my belt already. 

Doing some research in a couple of excellent historical costuming groups on Facebook, I found one name popped up again and again as the frock coat expert: Henry Cooke. Lucky for me, he doesn't only offer classes, but also a pattern, available at The Sign of the Unicorn: Wm. Booth, Draper. A part of me felt like a cheat for purchasing a pattern after making the leap to scaling up my own patterns from books, but as the smallest available size was a 36 chest (which I am not), I was able to assuage my guilt by reminding myself I would still have to do a fair amount of grading on this part of the suit. The pattern comes with a very informative instructional guide and detailed information on the four coats that the pattern was drawn from. I'm glad that I opted to learn from an expert tailor on this one. My one gripe is that some information was lacking here and there: no yardage requirements or list of notions was included, and there were places that instructions seemed to just be missing.

Pattern pieces laid out on my muslin

I only made a few minor changes to the pattern before cutting out my muslin, primarily in the length of the torso. I've got a long torso for a short-to-middling woman, which means I typically add an inch to an inch and a half in length bust and waist when I make myself clothing. For the frock coat, I had to fully remove that same amount of length between bust and waist, which surprised me quite a bit. This was the only alteration I made before cutting out my muslin, as this would be the most difficult of the projected fit issues to alter otherwise. I did think the sleeves would be too wide, but because of the trickiness of armscyes, I cut out the sleeves as-is (after checking on length), and planned to make any modifications after a fitting. Assembling the muslin gave me this:

Front, left side, back views (pardon the v. bad lighting)

I was honestly shocked at how well it fit, particularly across the back and the sleeve length. I often struggle with sleeves being far too long and shoulders feeling tight, but this frock coat pattern had a fantastic fit. The only place I found I needed to make any real alterations was the front closure. Looking at the pattern, it appears that the majority of the width to the torso sits across the front coat pieces. This makes adjusting the size down much simpler. I had debated cutting down the front of the muslin initially, but due to my lack of familiarity with 18th century menswear, decided to wait until I had assembled things. I'm glad I did, because the way I would have altered it vs. the way I actually needed to apply changes were rather different. I love that I learned things every step of the way with this project! After a few quick tweaks, I ended up with a muslin that looked like this:

No real changes to the back, but quite a change to the front.

It's difficult to see here, but I did change the line of the collar and neckline just a bit. I didn't tack it down properly, so things look wild in the photos, but it was sitting well on my mannequin. The frock coat was the last part of the suit I had to fit and alter before I was ready to begin working with my actual fabric, so once I was satisfied with it, the time to start the real thing arrived. I laid out and cut all three parts of the suit in one evening. I had expected it to be a marathon, but even thought there were over 75 total pieces to cut, it didn't take long, probably in part because of the relatively simple shapes of most of the pattern pieces.

I received lots of assistance in cutting out and sorting pieces

The first order of business was to prepare the fronts. This meant putting on a linen facing to both pieces and a button stand to the right piece. The button stand serves as a support for the weight and the strain that is put on the fabric, particularly with metal buttons.

Frock coat fronts, one right side, one wrong side, showing the facing and button stay.

After that, pockets. Because I used a wool stuff, I couldn't leave the edges raw. Seam allowances were pressed under, and a linen interfacing was inserted. I whipstitched the two together, then used a precise backstitch to assemble.

I learned from my mistakes on the waistcoat pockets, and was careful not to make my openings unduly large. I also did a better job executing the curved shape found in 18th century pocket openings. I did end up deviating from the instructions here slightly. Henry Cooke recommends cutting the opening, turning under the edges, and then sandwiching coat front and pocket bag together. Because of the way this wool stuff likes to fray, I did things the more modern way, adding the backstitch and reinforcement after I cut and turned the pockets to the inside.

"Smileys" in place.

Pocket openings cut, turned, and pressed: ready for backstitching.

 

After securing the pocket openings and sewing the pocket bags together, I hit a snag. In scaling down the jacket, I hadn't even thought about the need to scale down the pocket flaps, and they took up the entire width of the frock coat fronts. The photo below doesn't do justice to how cartoonishly large they looked before cutting them down. 

It was a little inconvenient to do, but in the end, scaling the pocket flaps down was the right choice. As much as I love the bold pockets of the era, this move helped the silhouette of the coat look as it should on my smaller frame. After this, I was able to attach the linings to the fronts, sew the backs together, and attach the linings to those as well. 

Coat from the inside with everything basted together.

After realizing I forgot to make sure everything lined up on my waistcoat, I was extra careful when attaching the pieces of the coat together, leveling out the hem so it would flow nicely after pleating. I should have done the pleating at this point, but I was a bit intimidated, so I moved on to fairly familiar territory with the sleeves.

Sleeves and cuffs

Sleeves and cuffs, along with their linings, came together quickly. The way they attach is pretty similar to modern construction of a sleeve with an attached cuff, which was nice. After the high drama of the breeches, the familiarity of construction techniques on the frock coat was encouraging. I forgot to take any photos of this step, but I was able to go from first stitch to fully set in to the armscyes over the weekend.

Doing a quick fitting to make sure cuff length and sleeve placement work.

After attaching the sleeves, I used a spaced backstitch to fully join fabric and lining all around the edges of the coat. This part went (as many steps have) much quicker than I had expected, and I was able to accomplish this finishing element in a day.

When putting the collar together, I did a bit of guessing. As I mentioned at the beginning of the post, there were places that the instructions didn't give much information. This was one of them. There are a couple of different collar styles, and the instructions only explain how to do one of them, but don't indicate which one. I used these and my own sewing knowledge to assemble what I hope is a correct collar. It looks all right, but I know it wouldn't stand up to a close critique by an expert. Thankfully, if and when I'm able to learn what improvements need made, it will be a simple enough process to remove and replace this part of the coat.

Assembled, sleeves, collar, and all!

 Pleating is supposed to happen earlier in the process. However, this being my first time making an 18th century frock coat, I didn't feel like I was able to picture how things should lay when they were completed when I still just had pieces of coat. I really don't know if I pleated it right: like with the collar, the instructions were sparse to nonexistent. I used the markings given on the pattern pieces and looked at what images I could find online to lay the pleats of my coat. I'm not confident that it's entirely correct, but I do know it's not wildly off base.

Pre-pressed pleats

Finally, all that was left was again buttons and buttonholes. The buttonholes should have come before assembly of the garment, but like with the pleating of the skirts of the coat, I didn't want to put that colossal amount of work in and then have something go horribly wrong. The struggles with my breeches left me feeling a little burned in this regard. I found that when making the buttons for the frock coat, the larger size was less fiddly than the tiny waistcoat buttons, and therefore less aggravating. The pattern called for twelve buttons here: ten for the front of the coat, and two to sit above the pleats. However, as I had scaled down the coat, eight on the front of the coat was sufficient. This cuff style, as per the pattern and some similar extant coats, does not require buttons. I did tack down the cuffs in a couple of places to secure them, however. 

As I mentioned in the other posts about the breeches and waistcoat, I put a pause on this project for just over 12 months. I finished breeches and waistcoat, then turned to the frock coat. This called for closed-worked, non-functional buttonholes, a real relief after the disastrous waistcoat buttonholes. While these were the largest, there were only eight, the fewest number of buttonholes and buttons of any piece of the ensemble. I used Neal Hurst's YouTube videos as a guide to do these, as this was yet another new skill to me.

Pre-pressed buttonholes: not perfect, but pretty decent for my first suit.

 

The buttons were one to match each buttonhole, and then one above each side vent at the back of the coat. With these on, I was finally finished. The big project was done. I had expected to be elated at the end of this, but in all honesty, it just felt like I'd ticked another item off of the sewing to-do list. Perhaps it was because I'd put off completing it for so long, and perhaps it was the frustration of the waistcoat buttonholes lingering on. Being a fairly driven person, knowing that I put this down for so long just because I didn't feel like working on it does sour the finished product in a way. There was so much that I learned working on this, though, and things to improve if I ever make another. My sewing and drafting skills have grown because of this project, and that's undeniable. I am still looking forward to getting photos of the whole ensemble, of course. I can't wait to share those here when I do!