I like to have a lot of coats in winter, so that my coat can contribute to my outfit rather than hiding it. Two years ago (or so) I made myself this black coat out of an old coat I already had:

The old coat was a classic long black men's dress coat - I'm not sure how to describe the style, but you'd know if you saw it. The wool is lovely and thick and good quality (I got the coat second-hand; I forget if I bought it or if it was a Free Thing.). However the neckline made an inconveniently deep V for someone of my stature - I can only assume the coat's intended wearer was over 6 feet. And of course the skirt of the coat was straight up and down, so as my taste in skirts expanded sideways the coat couldn't keep up. So I made it over into this shorter coat, which is in the style of an 1860s coat with full sleeves and wide mid-thigh length skirts. It was recognized as probably 1860s by a stranger in a restaurant once so I guess it's not half bad.

Now because I was making one shaped garment out of another, there was a need for quite a bit of piecing, especially in the sleeves. In order to perserve as much width as possible, I pieced by zigzagging the abbutted edges of the fabric together, with a bit of hem tape behind to support it. But, while this wool is thick, it is not felt, so there are a number of places along the piecing lines that are trying to come apart.

I do not much like this state of affairs! Having worn the coat for some years now, I am quite sure there's enough space in there to make proper seams instead of weird zigzag nonsense. Unfortunately, that means I need to take the coat pretty much all to pieces and put it back together again...

The quilting demo was a success! Everything went smoothly, the public liked us, and we had fun (which is kind of the most important part, to me). Here's a play by play, and pictures!

Before we left for the event I gathered all the clothing so I could figure out if we had enough underwear and that sort of thing. Some skirts got tucked up and I spent kind of a long time color-coordinating the aprons and the dresses so it wouldn't look too matchy-matchy

I prepared the quilt itself by laying out the backing, the batting and the top, basting them together with like 6 inch stitches, and rolling them onto two poles. For batting I used what I had at hand, which was loose polyester fiberfill. I sort of pulled it apart and convinced it to lie in an inch-thick layer throughout the quilt (and I guess I didn't actually take pictures of the process). I figured, on the one hand loose batting is historically more accurate, and then on the other hand the top and backing are both polyester (because that's the fabric I had lying around) so it won't hurt anything to put polyester on the inside too.

The quilting pattern that I decided on was a simple square type design: stitch-in-the-ditch on both the horizontal and vertical seams and then bisect those squares horizontally and vertically.

The whole roll situation on the quilt was my make-do solution to not having a real quilting frame. I stitched the short ends of the quilt (with huuuuge stitches, of course) to the poles and rolled them both inward, so that the poles themselves stuck out on the ends and could be balanced on something. Then we'd roll the quilt out just a little bit and quilt from the middle towards the ends (so if things were going to shift it would be as even as possible). I have this thought that such systems were used "back in the day" and that the poles would be balanced on sawhorses. Of course, really legit quilting bees used a full sized frame that could have the whole quilt out at once, but that was out of the question given space concerns, and the fact that there would be only 3 quilters instead of 10+.

I didn't have any sawhorses (at least, not any historical looking ones) so we set up the quilt poles between two ladder-back chairs. The chairs are not really historical but not horrendous eyesores either. On one side of this arrangement we put a bench, and I had planned to sit us all three on the bench, but it turned out to be a better arrangement if I sat around the other side on a stool.

Look at us, we look so good! I only made one brand-new dress for this event, which is the maroon one I'm wearing. The others just needed a bit of new underwear and some hem tucks. I loooove putting my clothes on other people with different body types. Like, clearly we're different shapes, and we fill the clothes differently, but we all look super good and period!

I did some hair research for this reenactment, because obviously my friends have short hair and I didn't want to do it wrong. Turns out, if one has got short hair in the 1860s, it should be center parted and tucked behind the ears. Super simple! And besides the usual "cut my hair to sell" and "cut my hair because I'm an invalid", apparently there was a bit of a fad for young but eligible ladies to wear short hair. I couldn't exactly confirm that fact - it was explained by youthful exuberance, or perhaps it was southern ladies sympathizing with the soldiers, or it was those crazy transcendentalists with their nutty ideas about relative equality of the sexes.

As a teaching tool I made a little sort of quilt sampler, which is the loose pinwheel block visible above. Its just one block with batting and backing, quilted and bound. I batted it with a little bit of loose wool that I had around (which is not sufficently processed to qualify as roving, I don't think). I left one corner of the block open to show people the components of the "quilt sandwich". And I quilted the four quarters of the sampler in different designs, sort of just for fun. Its sort of visible in that picture on the left, due to the bright light.

Although there were a fair few people around because of the "holiday", and because the Old Manse was hosting a concert that afternoon, we still weren't as popular with the passerby as I had anticipated. I think a lot of that was because what we were doing seemed obvious and familiar to people, so they didn't bother to ask questions. Or they sat 10 feet away with their small child and explained to said child in a very hushed voice that we were "princesses" doing some "sewing". I guess visitors think it's rude to interrupt us in our work, but it does result in a lot of people spreading misinformation instead of learning something new.

We did attract the attention of a number of quilters in the crowd, and one woman who had specifically come to see us to ask me a somewhat obscure question about signature quilts (which I could not answer). I didn't feel qualified to answer their questions, because I'm not a Quilter, but rather a seamstress dabbling in other arts.

In the whole afternoon, we only quilted about two rows worth of squares accross the quilt. I think it would have been much quicker to have masses more people working on it, but then we would probably have been even harder to approach.

We didn't have as much chance to talk about period-appropriate politics as I had hoped, because we talked more about our lives, and how quilts even work, and about why are we too frightening to talk to. I have some thoughts about how to remedy that in the future, though.

YAY! On Columbus day (that's three days after this posts), I'm debuting a new reenacting program at the Old Manse! And it's a quilting bee. This is the quilt top we'll be quilting up:

It's medium period. I went for a basically round design in homage to the medallion quilts of the 18th century. And it is technically made of "scrap fabric" but in this case that means "polyester", because I refuse to make real clothes out of polyester. It's parts from a bunch of different sheet sets that I had in large quantities to make this very matchy pattern. I really like how it looks, with the white and the two-tone "carpenters star". Up close its pretty obvious that this is a beginners quilt, and that the fabric is widgy, and I wasn't suuper careful about cutting all the pieces exactly the same. I suspect it'll have a different effect all together when it's in the "quilt frame" for the reenacment. I hope I get it together to photograph and post about the event, it should be interesting.
I'm going to have two of my friends with me, all in 1860s clothes that I made! And we're going to hopefully talk amongst ourselves about politics, because I ascribe aggressively to the idea that a gathering of women is not only going to "gossip" (whatever that's even supposed to mean). I read that in every online summary of quilting bees that I came across: "there were no men and the women would sew all day and gossip". And just, considering the influence of women in reform movements of the 19th century, I think it isn't at all odd to think that women in women's spaces might discuss politics and society. Maybe that's what people call "gossip" nowadays, I dunno.

In this case, on my floor, but who'd notice a thing like that?

Several of my very best friends fall more on the menswear side of things, so if I want to take them reenacting with me (muahahahahahaha) I need to branch out into historical men's styles. On the table right now, 1860s. First up, a sack coat!

Yeah, those pictures are so convincing! definitely not a low-key disaster or anything.
The coat is blue corduroy, because I had it lying around, lined with ... whatever that is. I think there's some cotton in it, and I think it was a curtain once. And the wrong side, which is what will be face-up in the end, is less "grandma stripes" and more "variegated beige". Plus its inside a coat, no one should be looking at it!
There's piping all around the outside edges, and on the sleeve cuffs, because apparently 1860s sack coats don't have cuffs.

Right now, I have the whole outside sewn together and the whole lining, and then i sewed those together all the way around the outside. I put the lining in the sleeves and then i stuck those in through the armholes and sewed them in to the outside armholes.
What's next is, I've unpicked most of the CB seam in the lining so that I can turn the whole thing right side out, and then hand sew the lining armholes over the seam allowances and finish every thing up nice and tidy. Oh, and buttons and buttonholes. hahahahhhhhyikes

It only remains to be seen whether corduroy will be too stiff to sit properly, and whether I'll be cursing a lot trying to put in buttonholes.