Pluderhose: Putting it all Together

Things have gotten a bit wonky, since drafting the poofs is part of this post, but that is getting done before I have drafted the codpiece (which is done after the majority of construction is finished).

The puffs are made of a rectangle of fabric; silk (possibly backed with linen), and worsted wool are both period options, and linen is a option for the poor re-enactor in warmer climes--regardless, it needs to drape fairly well.  The three examples from the Sture suits have 72", 78", and 108" inches of fabric....per leg.  Each consists of multiple smaller pieces of fabric, joined at the selvage (since the width of the fabric used was only around 18") to give the full width.  Note that Nils' pluderhose (with the 108" of fabric) uses a different method of construction in the poofs--the entire thing is cartridge pleated, rather than being knife pleated only between the panes.


On to drafting:
Once you have figured out how much fabric is going to be in each leg--for me, it is limited by the amount of fabric I actually have.  Figure that you want the outseam of the poofs to be around 20% longer than that of the panes--you can always trim the panes and lining, up until you sew them to the foundation breeches.  So, you now have a rather large rectangle.

Pick up your panes--which should still be flat--and start measuring.  You are going to measure from the first pane opening, closest to the front opening, to the far side; both the total, and each pane width will be needed.

Mark them down as shown, adding a 1.5" to each side.  Add the 3" to your total [20.25"].  Subtract this measurement from your desired leg width to determine the total fabric you will need to pleat. [72 - 20.25 = 51.75" (which I will round up to 52")].
Divide that number by the number of poofs you will have--5 for me. [52 / 5 = 10.4"]  So I will end up needing to pleat 10.4 inches of fabric into each puff.

Now, sketch them out as shown, with the crosshatching denoting pleated zones.  For the shorter panes--the one on the back leg seam, for instance--measure down from the waistband, and remove a rectangle that high from your fabric, as seen.  You can easily measure this off onto your fabric when it's time.

Tilt your head to the right--the front edge of the lining is out of the image, at the bottom.  The flat sections are as above in the diagram, except that I had to have two steps in the case of this one, since there were two lengths of shorter slashes.  You should also mark the sections on the bottom hem now.

When you do this, make the vertical part of the steps actually vertical, not slanted as I did.  That was an experiment, which kinda worked--but having it vertical (and covering the full width of the pane) would have worked better.

Pleat the top of the panes in the denoted sections.  In the (grande total of) two examples I have to work off of (throwing out Nils' as a different style, with its cartridge pleats), this is done with stacked knife pleats, running towards the center front of the garment.

At some point in construction, you need to either bind the edges of the panes in order to cover the raw edges (unless you used a heavily fulled wool, or maybe leather) or turn the panes if you decided to cut them separately.  As I said in the previous post, I decided to slash--later I regretted the decision after having to handsew so many yards of binding down.

Mark the location of the slits on your foundation breeches so that you can place the pleats correctly.  This should have been done way back when you drafted the panes from the foundation breeches--mark the cuffs as well.

Pin, and permanently baste the lining to the foundation breeches; taking care that the pleats and all are in the correct locations.
 

Sew the butt panel into place, then stitch the outermost layer in place at the waist.  You don't need really small stitches for this, since they will be covered by the waistband.

The edges of the linings get sewn down to the inner leg pane, about 1-1.5" from the edge.  The bottommost section (I used 14" or so) of the lining gets gathered to the pane length before being sewn to the panes.

The back of the lining gets adjusted so that it is inside the seam for the butt panel.  You then stitch through all three layers of garment, in the ditch of the butt panel seam.  Start at the top.
The best way to sew this took me a bit to figure out, until I remembered that the shape of that particular piece was conjectured from stitch holes in the foundation breeches, on one of the Sture pairs. 

Now, sew around the rise, as you did for the waist.

 Permanently baste the panes to the lining  in the correct places.

Loosely gather both the lining and panes to the circumference of the foundation breeches cuff.  I chose to use an overcast stitch to fasten them in place.

 The cuff is simply a fairly narrow strip of material, doubled and sewn in place.  However, it does need to be sturdy, so interlinings were used.  If you are machine sewing it in place, you need a heavy duty machine for this.

I lapsed on photos here--sorry.  But, now that you've finished each individual leg, you can sew up the back rise--this seam takes a fair amount of strain, so stitch it well.  You also need to press the seam open.

This is the point where you can finally try them on and draft the codpiece--although, admittedly you could also draft it when you finalize the fit of the foundation breeches.


So, draft and construct the codpiece as described in its own, very special, post--PART III.  I'll wait.

 Sew the codpiece into place--nice and simple, no different than sewing a gore into a seam.  You'll want to sew up to the gusset seam, at least--far enough that the ends of your bindings get included and hidden.
BUT before you do that, the front edges also need to be bound, from the very top, all the way to the mark where the gusset ends.

Not much is left.  Bind the top with a waistband via whatever method you prefer (although I suggest covering any raw edges)--a sturdy linen is preferred, although you could certainly cover it with the fashion fabric as well.  Remember that this will take a fair amount of strain.

Then it's time to sew eyelets.  Lots and lots of eyelets (I had something like 34, but required more than actually needed since it's a fighting garment).  I dug up a couple of tutorials for you--one from Rosalie's Medieval Woman, one from Mathilde, and--my personal favourite--from Garb-for-Guys.

As for the locations, I have been putting a pair at each seam of the pluderhose legs--so at the top of each slash, center front/back, and the two seams slightly off center of the back; remember that when you bend over, extra tension is placed at that point--reinforcement is a good thing.
In addition you need a pair at the tip of each "ear" of the codpiece, as well as on the body to match those.  But! in addition to those (which are all you /should/ need for normal wear), I added a set at the center top of the codpiece to tie the center front together and keep a gap from forming there, and pairs to fasten the codpiece about halfway down.  Use your judgement, but more is definitely better if you will be fencing it these.

Finished--but not yet modeled--pluderhose.

Or, if you somehow found this page without coming through in the correct orders, PART I (Foundation Breeches), PART II (the panes), or PART III (the codpiece).
If curious about the documentation for the pair I made while writing this series of tutorials, go HERE.



© John Frey, 2016. The Author of this work retains full copyright for this material. Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this document for non-commercial private research or educational purposes provided the copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved on all copies.  Photographs of my work may not be duplicated.