Wyatt Arming Jacket

 

After I had made a rather stunning jacket for myself, a friend in the league asked if he could pay me to make one for him. I said “of course” and got to work on this beauty. It was the first double breasted garment I had every made. Furthermore he wanted a set of padded chausses to match! SO I got ot work designing and patterning. I had just taken a class in dying fabric and wanted to take a stab at it. I learned that linen doesnt dye very vibrantly. I don’t know how vendors do it but what I came up with became the “lining linen” for the project and I ordered the proper color in. Still, I hand dyed part of this project and I’m proud of that.

Design

As always you start with a design. Wyatt and I came up with this together. later he asked me to make it burgandy and black. 

Final Product

Dying the Fabric

I took 4 yard of natural colored linen and then washed on hot to preshrink and get rid of any finishes or treatments on the fabric. Then using a combination of scarlet, blue and black powder rit dyes for natural fabrics and salted water, I stuck it in a hot bath. 

Final Color of Dyed Fabric

I left that fabric in the dye vat, a professional one mind you, for hours! This is as dark as it got. I guess linen needs more than just a dye vat to get burgundy.

Bodice Pattern Next to Bodice Piece

You can see that I have the black overlapping bodice piece here pinned up and ready to be quilted. The pins follow the direction of the stripes becasue I found that unless I did that, the fabric would pucker or gather on the bottome latyer due to the batting on the inside of the jacket.

The Back Panel

The back panel is the only part of the project where the red and black join.

Bodice Assembly

Now that the front and back panels are quilted It was time to assemble the bodice.

Sleeve

The sleeve has a button for arm, those are hand made soft buttons made from the same red linen and cotton fluff for pillows. 

Underarm View

Ties

The front panel closes by ties that I made out of scrap red linen. In this pic you can also see the red and black stitching. 

Finished 

seriously gorgeous. I was elated that all the chevrons on the front matched up perfectly.

Ensemble Front View

Held together beautiful after a full day of fighting. He actually faced down one of the scariest fighters in the league that day an dhis jacket took it!

Ensemble Side View

 

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