A Hand-Sewn 18th Century Jacket In A Day!

On Saturday, I had an 18th century event I wanted to attend. . . And on Friday, (yes I mean the day before!) I decided that I should turn this fabric:



Into this jacket:



In just the one day, and with doing the entire thing by hand - no machine involved!

Well, this is how far I got on day #1:



Not too shabby! I was able to get up the next morning and finish it enough to be able to wear it. . .





I really feel like this went pretty well, considering that I did not make a mock-up before cutting in to my fabric! I should have probably shortened it overall just a bit, as I'm pretty short-waisted and there's wrinkling there telling me it wishes to be shorter, but it's nothing too extreme. . . Really, I think the only things I need to fix are to move the shoulder strap, and rotate the sleeve. The pattern (which is the JP Ryan jackets pattern) had me lining up the sleeve so that the sleeve seam lines up with the bodice seam under the arm. This is not correct! If you do that, the nook for your elbow will be sticking out of the side/front of your arm. And that's why you see the end of the sleeve being all wrinkly on me! So, I'll need to rotate the sleeve a bit, and then I think it will be just about perfect.

All in all, I'm super happy with it! And now I know that I can hand-sew an entire 18th century jacket in less than 24 hours. In fact, I kept a little log of all the time I spent on it, and it actually came to 13 hours and 6 minutes! It actually should have taken a little longer than this because I didn't finish the second half of the jacket as nicely as I did the first half, and I've yet to make eyelets. . . Just for kicks, when I go to do all that, I'll have to track that time too!