Friday, March 9, 2018

Trousers and Overshirt for Malachi

Malachi turned 9 earlier this year and he sat on his birthday money for a while before deciding to buy something with it. Meanwhile, I've been slowly adding a few things to our family impression and Malachi liked the replica of an 1848 dragoon I got for us so well, that he decided to use some of his money to get an 1849 pocket pistol for himself. (Both of our reproductions are from Denix and while they have the appearance of the originals they are based off of, they are non firing and cannot be altered to be firing. This makes me feel a lot better about having them around our living history area.)


It arrived in the mail earlier this week, just in time for some pictures with the new trousers and overshirt I made for him to wear at our first event in a few weeks.

His trousers are made of a single layer of medium weight cotton twill. The dark green fabric was described as a corded twill online and has the appearance of a fine corduroy. It seems very sturdy and I hope it will work well for this boy who is very hard on his clothes.


We went with an overshirt for additional warmth for our first few early-spring events. His coat still fits but is cut to be open in the front. An overshirt is more practical for us and were commonly worn in the period either under a coat or in place of one. From what I've been able to observe, I think that an overshirt can either be worn untucked over the shirt/trousers/braces either loose or belted, or worn tucked into the trousers with a belt used to hold up the trousers. Malachi is very slim so it's hard to find a belt in his size that looks period enough. For these pictures he's using an enormous leather belt I got from someone who made it themselves for mountain-man-type history events. I hope to find a more appropriate belt for him before we start this season.


The overshirt is made of a yard of wool flannel I've had for the past few years. I didn't have enough to do a full shirt from the wool so I made the collar, placket and cuffs out of scraps of brown cotton twill. With the sleeves, gussets and body cut on the square there was just enough fabric to eek this out. The placket closes with little white china buttons. The shape and location of the single pocket is inspired by the 1850's wool overshirt from the steamship Arabia as detailed in Thoughts on Men's Shirts by William Brown.


I made him new braces of ticking with leather ends and with that, I think he will be set for a while. Luckily his shirts from last year still fit nicely and so does his vest, now that he has new trousers with an appropriately high waist!


He had a lot of fun taking a few pictures, though it was bitterly cold outside!

Love,
Sarah

1 comment:

Thank you for your lovely thoughts!