A Completed Coat: Keep your shillings in your pockets, not on them...

The Completed Coat and Weskit

     So I've been working on a new civilian coat in the last few weeks since I traded by last one to a Cherokee for some bone-handled silverware and dressed skins...no seriously I did that a year ago.   In any event, the coat, weskit and breeches are done.  Weskit and breeches are from a heavy weight linen I salvaged from some old British Army mattress ticks.

     The coat is linen, with a linen lining, since its hotter than Hades for most of the year in Virginia.  I will say that using the form that my dear wife bought me for my last birthday made making a garment like this a lot easier (pinning, tailoring, piecing, etc).  Didn't have to rip out any seams this time.

       The exterior linen I dyed from natural to a Sage-Green color, in an attempt to match the striped lining.  It came out pretty close.  So, I was planning on using some brass domed buttons...until I realized that I would have spent closed to $70 on them.  Not the thing I want to do while we're watching pennies and in the middle of buying a new house (that needs paint, carpets, wood flooring, etc).  So what could be more economical and home-spun than cloth covered buttons, right?




I measured the radius
and marked around the wooden disk to double the diameter.




Cut out my cloth circles from the scraps of the coat.




Blanket stitched around the circumference to prevent fraying.




Running stitch around the circumference.




Pull the thread tight to gather the edges
tightly to the center of the button.




Passed the needle through the gathered cloth a few times to lock it closed.



I leave the thread on the button, to sew to the body of the coat.

 Wallah...as they say in France.  I think Governor Henry would be pleased, seeing as he opposes the importation of cloth and manufactured goods (i.e. buttons).  In any event the coat is complete and ready for my militia impression at Claude Moore Farm's Market Faire in July.  See you there.

                                                                               -Cincinnatus

       "...And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also.  And who soever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain.  Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that woulf borrow of thee turn not thou away..."

                                                                                -Jesus  (Matthew 5:40-42)