Wednesday, October 16, 2019

Leather Party Pluderhose: The Documentation

The party pluderhose is a project I had been thinking about for some time--I wanted a pair of pluderhose which were a bit more durable, and which I actually handsewed (the Brunswick suit was machine sewn, if with a considerable amount of handwork).

Once again, I have a love/hate relationship with this garment--they are so extra that I love them, along with the challenge of drafting them.  On the other hand, they have a lot of material in them so are not particularly lightweight to wear, and do require the wearing of stockings.  Also, while period codpieces only had two points holding them up, because I make most of my late period gear for SCA fencing, it needs to be more secure than that--and tying those fiddly little points with cold hands is a nuisance.

This is the full documentation, which covers just about every step of my design, construction, and decisions.  If you just want to look at the photo shoot and read an overview, click here for my previous post. 



Description of the Garment:

Pluderhose are one of the distinctive garments in 16th century German clothing, and evolved from the hosen/strumpfhosen of earlier in the century presumably by adding more and more fabric in the lining layer.  They appear to show up in the 1550s, and are only in style for a few decades.  On the whole, they consist of a more or less straight-legged set of panes which come to anywhere from mid calf to the knee, with the hosen shortening as the decades moved on.  Unlike the round or trunk hosen of other countries, they are fitted to the hips and mostly drape, rather than sticking out.

Much like other styles of upper class clothing of the period, they were a form of conspicuous consumption--using large quantities of expensive fabrics, and quite possibly pinking (cutting small holes) them as well.  Beyond that...they are another example of evolution from hosen--just leg coverings, because while trousers aren't required for some cultures, they kinda are once the hem of you upper garment rises above the lower thigh.

Photograph copyright Travis Abe-Thomas


My Goals:

So.  Overall premise of the project was fairly simple; I wanted pluderhose, I wanted them to be somewhat "extra", and I wanted them to be functional both on the rapier field and for late night bardics.  This meant a few things: 
  • They needed to be in durable and less than flammable materials.
  • Must be easy to use the restroom in--while they would still tie closed, I wanted larger points and fewer of them.
  • No stockings required, so that I would not have to fight with those not staying up late at night.  This means that they needed to be long enough to wear with normal socks if desired.
  • They must meet SCA rapier requirements to prevent a blade from slipping into openings.  Meeting this requirement necessitated some anachronisms.
  • Pockets.  Enough said there.
 Therefore, some compromises were needed to move from being strictly authentic--mainly the use of internal plackets and...horror of horrors...velcro.

While the garment style is somewhat extra, I could have gone more so--I did not include the extra puffs on the waist, which are sometimes a part of pluderhose.  And I used fairly tame, complimentary colours--dark brown and green--instead of clashing bright ones as people seam to think German clothing /Must/ be.  Needless to say, I do not agree; while the Lansknechts often may have, not all German Renaissance men were mercenary soldiers...my outfit certainly is not intended to have that interpretation.  My aim was more along the lines of, say, a noble's hunting outfit--you clearly needed to be fashionable, but not impractical, and some degree of camouflage might help.

Although, I would suggest the addition of a bright red hat if wearing during deer season.


Sources:

I had to document a few things in particular for this garment; the length of the pluderhose, and the wearing of long pluderhose with a close fitting doublet (rather than one which had hugely poofy sleeves)--this was my preference for simplicity and the amount of fabric I had on hand for the doublet.  Separately, I wanted to document the use of different pinking patterns on each leg, although that was really optional--I didn't have to use different patterns, of course.  The last was firmly documenting the odd seaming of the butt of the pluderhose--while my pattern is based on extant examples which have it, I wanted a pictorial example as well. 

A Standard Bearer.  British Museum, #1952,0405.225
Example of longer pluderhose being worn.  Based on the fact that the panes have very little drape in this example as compared to others, I think documenting the length like this is less problematic as I originally believe.  The majority of examples from this period are apparently fastened just below the knee, and blouse out from there...if you visualize them being loose, they stop right about there--mid-calf.

The Butcher and His Servant, J Amman. 
Two for one!  Documenting longer pluderhose with a close fitting doublet--and without shoulder wings to boot!  /And/ an extremely exaggerated example of the funky butt.  As an aside, I love his doublet, with the tiny, curved pinks or poofs all over.  I may make it one of these days...the only reason I didn't for this time was lack of trim fabric and time.

Jost Amman.  Getty Museum, Object #89.GA.15
An Officer of the Rank of 'Oberster Feldprofoss' in the Imperial Army is the title of this piece, and it clearly shows pinking of different styles on each leg, as well as completely different pane patterns.  I attempted to use this for more inspiration--cutting the panes of one leg to the 'X' shape...but was unable to manage it.  I can draft complex patterns, but apparently not draw an X--it was rather upsetting. 

At some point in  the future, I also intend to make a cape and hat based on this woodcut in order to round out the outfit.  This style of tall, rounded hat with narrow brim is apparently referenced to as a "Saxon hat" [FBoF, pp 211].

Sture Suits in the Uppsala Cathedral Museum
The last bit of sourcing was for the pattern, which is based on the sketches in Patterns of Fashion 3 by Janet Arnold, and the Sture pluderhose thereinMy pluderhose drafting system is mostly based on the middle one in the above image, which was worn by Nils Sture.


Materials:

As in a few details of the construction for practicality, I made one or two decisions on the materials which are difficult to document.  From inside of the garment to the outside:

The base shorts were sewn and pieced of deerskin splits from Uncle George's Discount Leather...I do not particularly recommend the product, btw.  What he doesn't say is that these are the off side of the split, so the leather varies from tissue thin (and holey) to 5+oz.  Thankfully, they /were/ cheap and I purchased enough of them (with the thought of deerskin breeches as well) that I could easily piece the shorts.  This type of leather is probably the closest (and easily available) to what is used in the extant garments--a heavy, suede finished leather, possibly deerskin or heavy chamois [PoF3, pp. 62, 66].  This material was chosen because I wanted to get as close to the period option as possible.  The leather is also surprisingly soft and comfortable.

The next layer out--the poofy lining--is a hand-dyed silk canvas, which I had intended to use in my Hasting's Suit...but did a poor job getting the green even in the end.  The unevenness wasn't acceptable for a court suit where it is the outer layer, but I figured that using it for a lining layer like this would be perfectly fine, and would let me get a good use out of it.  Especially as it is intended as a more "practical" garment...the slight unevenness helps me blend into the trees (really!).  The silk canvas is one which I purchased from Fashion Fabrics Club several years ago; while the site is very much buyer beware, sometimes you get lucky.  As in this case, with some of the heaviest and tightest woven 100% silk (fully passed a bleach test) I've gotten my grubby mitts on.  While silk canvas does not appear to have been a thing, the poof layer of pluderhose did often appear to be silk, and often backed with a linen to increase stiffness.

Finally, the outer panes.  I knew I wanted leather for this, even if it isn't easily documentable.  It isn't used in the Sture suits (except for Nil's doublet), but there is some documentation for the use of leather in hosen as the material for hosen in the 1615-1620 suit on page 90 of PoF3.  There is also an excellent reference to leather hosen in The First Book of Fashion, pp. 212.
This thorn {?} was stiffened with bone, cost me 12fl even without the armor.  Otherwise my clothes were as shown below, leather hose with half silk.
 It appears the "half silk" refers to when hosen had the outer or primary fabric of some other fabric, and unspecified silk as the decoration.

The leather I used was also from Uncle George's Leather Shop, and was labeled as both deer-tanned cowhide, or re-tanned veg-tan--I bought four half hides of the stuff, in two shipments, and thinking they were different items.  Imagine my surprise when I found they weren't--it turned out fine, because I have a use for two full hides of leather, but still...accurate descriptions in sales is important.  I also have some good deer tan cowhide from Tandy leather--it is quite a bit softer (deliciously so!) and better draping than this stuff.

And lastly, thread.  I used linen thread throughout, in a variety of sizes and colours.  Black linen thread for finer stitching on the silk as well as tunnel stitching on the leather, the leather was sewn with 16/2 linen in a close of a brown as I could find, and the deerskin was sewn with a variety of white linen threads.  Exactly which size of thread depended on the seam, as well as the exact thickness of the leather in question.  And whether I felt like fighting the fine thread that sewing session.

Other bits used which could come under the notions category is the heavy use of beeswax and coad (a heat activated resin) to wax my threads for durability and to make them behave.

Photograph copyright Travis Abe-Thomas

Pattern:

The pattern was problematic.  I started this project on February 7th, 2018...and ran into issues right away.  My plan had been to use my original method for pattern drafting.  I drafted it out, and found I couldn't move in the slightest.  They didn't work, and the primary issue was the width of the rise.  In the end, I believe I went through at least four versions of the base shorts before arriving on one which worked.  Thankfully, I was taking notes throughout, and in the end, published an updated version of my base shorts drafting method, which can be found here.
The first version.  You can see how narrow the rise--the cutout there--is.  It don't work like that.

And the final version--note the differences.  Much wider on the rise, which gives a correspondingly wider thigh as well.  The center back seam (left) is also much longer.  For writing drafting tutorials, I like to do it scaled down on paper, as it is much easier to get clean lines and photograph.

Overall, once the base shorts are drafted, it is fairly simple to do the rest; the poof layer is more or less a rectangle pleated or gathered to fit at waist and cuff with a shortened section for between the legs.  The panes are based on the base shorts by shifting and separating the butt seam, and lengthening it overall while eliminating the taper of the legs.

The number of panes was determined by what I find pleasing to the eye--you see examples of any number from 4-7.  I believe there was also some finagling due to inconsistencies in the leather.

At one point I did experiment with cutting the panes into an 'X' shaped layer as seen in the Jost Amman woodcut...I eventually gave that hope up when I discovered I was unable to actually draw an X. :/


Seams:

I kept it simple--the majority of seams in the leather were done in a double running stitch, or a saddle stitch.  The two seams end up looking more or less the same, but on a double running (or Holbein stitch) stitch you go over the same seam twice, and saddle stitch is worked with a needle on either end of the thread.  Overcast or whip stitches were also used, as was a tunneling version.

Construction:

 The first step, of course, was to piece together the base shorts.  Each side is nominally one piece, but as I said in the section on my materials, I was unable to cut them in one.  The seams were done with a double running or Holbein stitch--this is the same stitch used for blackwork embroidery.  The seam allowance on one side was trimmed, and the other side felled on top of it.  I did have to patch a few small holes, and did so by whip-stitching a patch both around the outside and the inside the hole.

One of the features of the Nils Sture base shorts was the addition of piping in certain seams for reinforcement.  I did so on the butt seam, with it continuing down the leg slightly.  The piping was simply a medium weight strip of my leather, folded in half to be slightly wider than my seam allowance.

 I cannot remember if I basted the piping in place, or simply "pinned" the heck out of it as you can see above.  This is one of my favourite tricks when working with garment weight leather...use paper clips instead of the pins which would leave permanent holes.

 Once that seam was sewn, the seam allowances were graded (trimmed as shown above) to reduce bulk, and felled.  Felling all the seams here is important--while they aren't against my skin and will never be seen, they need to behave and not be lumpy.

The panes, arranged on half of a cow of "deer tan" cowhide.  As you can see, I couldn't quite fit it, and pieced in the bits of the back seam.  These were sewn with a saddle stitch, then felled and topstitched with the same.

I treated the edges of the panes differently on each leg.  On one leg, I essentially perforated the pane line with a hole punch...yes, it took a while. 

The other leg received pinking cuts at 45* across the pane edge, to give a slightly feathered appearance with wear.

Funky butt piece sewn into place after that--same method, with saddle stitch and topstitched seams.

I also used two different pinking patterns.  On one side, this diagonal pattern.  On the other, a compass star--the populace badge of Oertha.  Thus far, nobody has noted that.

 I was asked to show my process for pinking...this is it.  Fairly simple.  I make a cardboard template (out of a cracker box, usually...), and just keep wacking my chisel or hole punch with a plastic/rawhide mallet.  Underneath, I have a heavy plastic cutting board.

The panes from each leg, next to each other.  Two different patterns, as you can see.  On the compass side, I would not be surprised if I tore a pane there--if it happens, I'll just have to repair it.

One of the requirements for these pants was pockets.  Big pockets.  Pockets which can easily hold a bottle of wine for nefarious reasons.

After much self debate, I decided to use a heavy linen in this russet-brown; it is justscrap fabric which I had laying around--I have a fair amount of the stuff, and this exact one was chosen because I had enough at hand and it compliments the green.  I had considered using more of the deerskin, but at that point was fed up with working the stuff, plus I felt it could stick to said wine bottles and make them hard to extract.

The pocket construction is based on those in the Sir Richard Cotton suit, as detailed on page 77 of 17th-Century Men's Dress Patterns.  This is not the first step.

This is.

As detailed, the pocket openings are bound in narrow strips of silk--just a simple binding, nothing fancy.  This strip happens to be far too narrow, and gave me trouble.

Essentially, the next step is to sew the pocketing on top of that in a way that the raw edges are to the inside--the binding doesn't actually cover the raw edges.

Binding is pulled through and neatly (as I can) sewn up with the vertical seam.  The final step of the pocketing is to fold it so the vertical seam is in the middle, and close up the bottom.  This allows the pockets to be slightly flatter against the leg.  I will have to do a tutorial next time I make pockets in this style.

It was time to separate the panes and begin wrestling the leather octopus!  Obviously, I just neatly followed the lines.  You can also see the other leg's pattern here.

Around the funky butt piece, the lining was sewn down to  the leather, using a tunneling overcast stitch.  This allows the pieces to move as one and prevents gaps, since the pattern of the silk layer is essentially a rectangle, and additionally you don't want that extra fabric where you sit.

Looking through Patterns of fashion, I determined that the most period place to have the fastening would be on the inner leg...which means I had to bind the opening.  Again, I didn't give myself enough width to do so easily, but managed.  Before this step, I also basted the silk and the leather layers together at the top and bottom, lining the pleated sections up with the gaps.

And tolerably neatly bound.

An additional feature here is that I have a small placket of leather tucked away behind there in order to give me my overlap for fencing--help prevent a blade from slipping in and getting caught, although that is extremely unlikely to happen.  I sewed it down along the line of the silk in order to hide the stitches.

And for one of the worst steps of this garment...gathering the cuff.  Because I was dedicated to using period materials and not, say, 200lb mono-filament line, Breakage happened.  Repeatedly.

In the end, I had to run the gathering stitches per pane and be quite careful in drawing them up.

Once gathered, I whipstitched them in place just to hold the stitches, then backstitched through all the layers.

Isn't it pretty? 

And then I discovered that I forgot to take the thickness of the pleats into account, and had to start this bit all over with cuffs about 2.5" longer.  I was not pleased at all.

Eventually, I managed to get it done correctly, and proceeded to whipstitch the inside of the cuff down.  The leather cuffs are just a simple rectangle which ended up being only a couple of fingers wide--all that is really needed.  The stitching through the leather pane is tunnel stitched so it doesn't show on the right side.

The last step on here was to install the base shorts.  They are only attached to the rest of the garment along the front rise and top--I just basted them in place, here.

The codpiece was a tricky little devil, as always.  I believe I am finally getting the hang of them though--the base layer isn't difficult--it is just a triangle, really--but the sculptural bit is.  I decided to use tiny darts to give it shape.

And testing the pattern.  Yay...it worked.  I had planned to use this as an interlining to keep the stuffing from migrating, but because of the differences between this and the leather shell, doing so didn't work--this was eventually discarded as scrap.

Switching to the leather, pleats were not an option due to the thickness of the material.  Neither was using massive number of slashes.  So I evened out the amount the pleats removed, decided on three sets of slashes...pretty much the maximum I have seen. 

And removed the requisite amount of material in a slightly radial pattern.

The following step was more difficult than you would think...installing the poofs.  At this point, I had very little of my silk left, so I had to make a few compromises on size.  The poofs are essentially rectangles of fabric, pleated down to nothing on the ends and gathered on the long sides.  The ends consisted of stacked knife pleats, pointing down--I did some experimenting and found that gave the appearance I liked best.  For reference, the largest (middle) is 13.25" by 12", and the smallest 9" by 9.5" (bottom).  The top one is in between.

 The poofs were sewn down to the leather by topstitching with a backstitch.  I also pre-punched my stitching holes in order to make it less difficult and (much) neater.

Finally, I actually sewed the slashes together from the wrong side, just roughly cris-crossing the back to hold them shut and prevent the stuffing from working its way in there.

I had a hard time thinking of the best way to secure the two halves of my codpiece neatly.  A straight up right sides together seam wouldn't work, due to the thickness of the silk there.  Overlapping would make it asymmetrical--and therefore make me twitch.  All that was left was butting the edges together, sewing them, then covering it with a narrow strip of leather which was then topstitched down.

This photo is slightly out of order and was taken after stuffing, as apparently I didn't take photos of that step.

To stuff the codpiece, I went with raw "cotton wool".  Just straight up cotton fiber with some extraneous vegetation in it.  While straw is easily documentable, and scraps of fabric are what I used in the past, this worked fairly well.  Certainly much more even and less likely to be lumpy than the fabric scraps.

That said, packing it sufficiently tight to avoid a droopy codpiece made for a rather heavy codpiece.  In the future, I /may/ actually try the period stuffing of straw, or maybe horsehair.

The backing was made fairly simply; I used my deerskin lining and roughly traced around the codpiece, and basted around the outside again.

Gratuitous codpiece photo from another angle.

In order to keep the stuffing where it is supposed to be...I had to figure out how to stitch the lining to the outer shell around base.  I ended up doing so using a tunneling backstitch, as I did not want visible stitching on the outside.  It was a major pain in the butt, but the codpiece was finally completed.

Additionally, the portion of the codpiece which isn't being sewn into the rise had to be bound in the silk, likewise the front opening of the pluderhose.  The bindings were all straight and on grain, with any excess being neatly gathered.

Next step was to sew up the rise and install the codpiece.  Because unlike ren-faire costume shops would have you believe, a codpiece is not a separate garment.  It's a gusset or gore and installed like one.

The seams were sewn through /all/ layers of leather and silk, then flattened open and felled down.

Because that would not be particularly comfortable if they were exposed, I also covered the seams with a layer of my deerskin--it was simply whipstitched down.  This also gives a little bit of reinforcement to the seam, which is needed.

The final steps were to bind the waist--deerskin again, sewn right sides together then overcast on the inside; sew the points--17 sets between the waistband (with nine points), the sets on the cuffs, and the ones holding up the codpiece.

As you can see, I also installed the front leather placket for fencing overlap at this point.  I will have to redo the velcro one of these days--it is what allows me to /not/ use an extra 10 sets of points to secure everything.

By this point I had also made considerable progress on the doublet to go with it; I bring this up, because I designed them to have the same waist measurement for easy lacing, and I sewed the lacing band eyelets at the same time in order to make sure they match up.


Conclusions:

Pluderhose are and always will be a bit of a pain to pattern and construct.  Still, I am happier with the construction of this pair more than the previous ones, I learned a few things about working with leather as well...I had never actually made a leather garment before.  Things like piping were all new to me.  I had never done eyelets in leather (buttonholes, certainly), and that was interesting to do.


What I would do differently next time:

Not make them in leather.  Once was enough on that count!  I would also probably machine sew them, although the length of actual seams on the garment is surprisingly low, and therefore not a major time sink compared to the handfinishing which is required.  I would try other stuffings for the codpiece--something springy like straw or horsehair.
I do like the leather base shorts, as they are buttery soft...but given the amount of labour it required and how difficult it was to handsew using glover's needles made it not really worth it for me to do again.  Even if I was considering it on the 1590s trunkhose I recently started (signs of my madness for sure, but thankfully I don't have enough leather leftover).

One of the other things I would like to do differently is to not have to take shortcuts on the amount of fabric I have for the poofy lining; in each of the three pluderhose I've made, I've barely got enough width in each leg.  Having more than enough of that fabric to begin with, without skimping, would be lovely.


How Historically Accurate is it:

Moderately.  Pattern is accurate, as are the materials for the most part.  If I were going to be extremely strict, the exterior leather is a touch modern in style--it should be alum tanned deer or elk--but I used what I had.  The velcro and the plackets are obviously modern, but are extra pieces for fencing safety--they could easily be removed if desired.  Stitching is all simple and correct.

I would give it a 90%.


Time:

The project--not including time spent making mockup after mockup and rewriting my drafting system--took a full 78 hours and 38 minutes (approximately).  The codpiece alone took about 15 hours of work, again, not including the patterning and troubleshooting.

Value:  I would really rather not think of it.  I am fairly certain I don't have more than $150 in materials in it on the high end, which isn't bad considering the amount of time I spent on the project.

Photograph copyright Travis Abe-Thomas


Bibliography:

 Amman, Jost, Deutsch: Metzger Und Geselle Bei Der Schlachtung Eines Hausrinds, Holzstich Aus Dem Ständebuch von Jost Amman, 16. Jahrhundert., 1568, Paul Lacroix, ‘Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period’, available freely at Project Gutenberg <https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Butcher_and_his_Servant_drawn_and_engraved_by_J_Amman_Sixteenth_Century.png> [accessed 19 September 2019]
‘An Officer of the Rank of “Oberster Feldprofoss” in the Imperial Army (Getty Museum)’, The J. Paul Getty in Los Angeles <http://www.getty.edu/art/collection/objects/274/> [accessed 19 September 2019]

Arnold, Janet, Patterns of Fashion 3, 3 (Macmillian, 1985)

Braun, Melanie, Luca Costigliolo, Susan North, Claire Thornton, and Jenny Tiramani, 17th Century Men’s Dress Patterns; 1600 - 1630 (Thames & Hudson, 2016)

‘Soldiers’, British Museum <https://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details.aspx?objectId=1595859&partId=1&people=107034&peoA=107034-2-60&page=1> [accessed 19 September 2019]

‘The Cathedral Museum, Uppsala’ <https://depts.washington.edu/silkroad/museums/upcath/upcath.html> [accessed 19 September 2019]







© John Frey, 2019. 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

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