146th "Garrard's Tigers" Zouave Uniform

It's about time that I got around to posting the 146th zouave uniform. Especially once you consider that I made it for an event in May, and that it is now August.

The 146th New York Infantry started the war off as a regular volunteer regiment, dressed in New York State Jackets, with standard trousers, hats and equipment. Once the 146th absorbed veterans of the 5th New York, a zouave regiment, they were issued a brand new uniform. This uniform was almost a direct copy of an Algerian Turco uniform, consisting of a fez, red sash, gaiters, and sky blue jacket and pants. The uniform was produced at the Schuylkill Arsenal in Pennsylvania.

This belonged to a drum major in the 146th

Given that I began putting this uniform together less than a week before the event, I took less time than usual to take pictures. This means that there are no pictures of the fez, sash, or gaiters in production, only the jacket and trousers.

 The Jacket is, except for the trim, fairly straight-forward. It's a standard six-piece body, without any padding, collar, pockets or buttonholes. This meant that the jacket actually went together very quickly. The inside was lined in jean cloth, a standard for many Schuylkill Arsenal products, and copied specifically from an existing 146th jacket. The edges of the inside were faced in self-cloth, which was whipped down, as can be seen in the above picture.

The edges of the body had a 1/8" cording attached. The side piece of the body had a vent cut into it, and the cutting takes some time there to create two loops, reaching across the vent.

Less than an inch behind the cording, trim is added, again following the edges of the body. Along the sleeves, the same trim was added to create chevrons near the wrists.

The sleeves were lined in plain muslin, a standard for many Federal garments.

The (almost) completed jacket. The body is closed by a single hook-and-eye near the neck, and the sleeves each will have three buttons. The only thing left to do is add on the final buttons. The design on the front, the tombeaux, was added in thinner trim than the trim near the edge. All the trim was felled down.

The trousers were a good deal more complicated than the jacket. The legs were cut into perfect rectangles, and were very large. The excessive material was gathered and pleated into cuffs at the bottom of the trousers, and pleated in to the waistband at the top. This has an effect of creating very baggy legs, while still allowing a good fit on the waist and ankles.

The pockets were larger than standard infantry trousers, and were centered directly on the side seam, meaning that the opening to the pockets was cut in the middle of the pocket bag, which lay half on the front of the trousers, half on the back. A slightly confusing set-up, especially when making this the night before I needed them.

                               

Nevertheless, it all worked out in time. Here's the completed impression at the Wilderness, on the 150th anniversary. The black hat, in lieu of a fez, is actually documented in an account of a 146th Zouave at the Wilderness.

And what would it be without a tintype to go along with it? Period photography always helps thing look better, even if it's not needed. I'm standing second row, second from left.

That's the entire impression. Except for the trousers, very simple and straight-forward. I have many more projects which are building up a backlog, so I don't know which one I'll showcase next.

But first... Hats!

Before the final post on the VMI uniform, (it is coming, I promise) here are two hats, recently completed. The first is a US Navy flat cap. A common hat worn by almost every single sailor, a large percentage of them have some kind of personal decoration on them. Usually a variation on a star, all kinds could be seen, embroidered, cut out of fabric, or created from the panels of the hat.

Here's an original hat, with a well made six-pointed design:

And going to the opposite end of the spectrum, a five pointed star sewn onto the top:

For mine, I embroidered a ten-pointed star, inside of a circle. While certainly not as nice as the top example, it is still better than some of the others.

The entire hat. On the right, only slightly visible, is a silk ribbon. Many hats had a ribbon tied or sewn onto the side. A few hats had the name of the sailor's ship written upon the ribbon, but they were a small minority.

At some later date, I'll follow up this post with the rest of a sailor's uniform.

The second hat is not actually from the Civil War. In fact, it's not really even from the 19th century. This is a hat as worn by French Revolutionaries, and soldiers in the French Revolutionary Army in the 1790s. While most of the original hats were roughly shaped like this, time, wear, as well as supply all colluded to make no two hats exactly alike. Some are lined, some aren't. Some have silk ribbon, some don't. 

My particular hat is based off of this original hat. The only difference is that the original cockade is smaller, and the original uses hooks and eyes to hold up the brim. Original hats were put together in a few differnt ways. Some used hooks and eyes, others were sewn together to get their shape. Hooks and eyes, for whatever reason, weren't co-operating and giving the desired shape, so I ended up using thread instead.

 Nevertheless, my copy is relatively close, and certainly within the wide range of hat styles that existed.

Just as with the Navy flat cap, this hat is the beginning of a new impression, which in this case will actually encompass a few different impressions: Revolutionary Army infantry, National Guard infantry, as well as sans-culottes and other civilian groups. Stay tuned for more on that.

VMI New Market Uniform- Part 3

Ignoring the long delay between the last post and this one, I'm back to finishing up the VMI uniform. This will finish up the jacket, leaving just the cap and haversack to be completed.


The first step in this jacket is the padding on the inside. This is basted down to an interlining:

This is then itself basted down onto the main body pieces, which were quickly put together. The body consists of four pieces, making it pretty simple to put together.

Before attaching the lining, the collar is put onto the body. Like most military jackets of the time, it's a simple four piece collar, with a basic interlining:

The lining for the jacket is the fabric of the main body: a mixed blue-grey jean. There's a welt pocket on the inside left, but otherwise the inside is plain, without quilting.

The lining is pretty odd in that it only extends partly over the body. The lining doesn't cover the back body pieces, and misses a small portion of the front body pieces, which the picture shows below:

 With the lining put in, the body is mostly complete. The only other thing to add is buttonholes, of which there are five.

 The sleeves themselves aren't notable in any way. They're basic two pieces sleeves lined with osnaburg. No cuffs, buttons or trim on them.

With that, the jacket is complete. Once the entire impression is complete, I'll show off all the various components. Until then, I'll be working on finishing the cap and haversack, before moving onto other, very interesting projects, including an entire 146th New York uniform.

VMI New Market Uniform- Part 2

The second update for the VMI cadet impression finishes off the trousers, along with the vest. After this, I just have the jacket, haversack and cap left.


Starting off with finishing up the trousers, a bit of stitching is added on, securing the osnaburg lining. This is done for both sides, as is the whip-stitch around the raw edge of the trousers.

The right side of the fly. This reaches over a good distance, buttoning off center. However, since the button is on the inside, the asymmetrical design isn't visible. The edges are whipped down. Compared to a normal fly, this is actually much easier to put together, and functions just as well. I wonder why these never took off?

After each half was complete, the long seams on the legs were sewn up, and a back belt attached. That completed the trousers, which went together relatively quickly.


Working my way up, I next have the vest. Since I didn't have any sort of a pattern, I needed to draft one. For that, I used L. Phyliky's The Tailor, from 1867. The 1867 date helps ensure the style is appropriate for the 1864 vest. The basic drafting was relatively basic, most of the pieces were identical to a jacket pattern; I suppose I could've just converted a jacket pattern over.

Either way, that gave me a generic vest pattern. However, I wanted something a bit more Cadet-specific. So, I used a picture of a Georgia Military Institute Cadet's vest as inspiration. This photo is from Echoes of Glory.  The vest is relatively basic, as vests tend to be, but nevertheless I copied the layout of pockets, lining, etc.

Given the relative complexity of making the pockets, which easily took up half my time, I'll cover the specifics of those in the next post. But let's skip past the pockets on the front, and move right on to having the major pieces of the body attached:

With the jean cloth fronts attached to the polished cotton back, I added a linen interlining, along with the jean cloth lapel facings, onto the fronts.

With that in position, the osnaburg lining is laid over and felled down:

The lining for the center, going over the brown cotton is laid over the edges of the front lining, and whipped down:

And, the armscye is closed off, with another felled stitch:

The majority of the vest consisted of pockets, and felling together the lining. There wasn't nearly as much to it as I imagined. With topstitching, buttonholes and buttons added, the vest was nearly done. The last step was to copy a neat detail in the original. The Georgia Cadet wrote his name on the back lining of his vest; I did the same:

And so with that, 2/5 of the VMI uniform is completed. I'll hold off on showing off the finished sections until the entire uniform is done.

VMI New Market Uniform- Part 1

Now for a much more drawn out project: a complete Virginia Military Institute (VMI) cadet impression for the 150th New Market later this year. I'll be making a new hat, jacket, vest, trousers and haversack for this.

The uniform is a little different from the dress uniform that VMI is known for. On the left is the more common, well known dress uniform, with bars across the jacket, as well as a shako and white pants. When the VMI cadets were called up to help repulse the 1864 invasion of the Shenandoah Valley, they donned a simpler uniform, shown on the right. It was consisted of a simple, plain jacket and pants, and unadorned blue kepi.

           



Despite it being simpler, it's still a lot to make. I'll begin with the trousers. The trousers, jacket and vest will all be made out of a dark blue-on-natural jean cloth


The trousers are actually oddly unique. To begin with, there aren't any pockets. Added to that, instead of a normal fly front, found on pretty much every pair of pants, they have a 'blind' fly. It'll become clearer with pictures, but basically the buttonholes are folded behind the main fabric

To start off, here's the left side, viewed from the inside. On the right is part of the fly construction.

That part of the fly is folded back, behind the main fabric. Six buttonholes are added, and the edges whipped down. That means that only one side of the buttonhole is accessible:

 The trousers are also unique in that there is no waistband. Instead, the edges are left raw, and just have thread whipped around them. On a jean cloth material, which unravels very easily, it seems short-sighted, but that's how the original trousers were made. Doing this around a raw edge is also surprisingly difficult; neat stitches are difficult to make.

Next time I'll finish up the trousers, and then work on either the haversack or vest

Richmond Depot III- Part 3

The third and final installment for the Richmond Depot III


Picking up where I left off, I've cut out the sleeves. Typical to 1860s fashion, the sleeves are comparatively wide. Below are the two-piece sleeves put together; one of kersey and the other osnaburg for the lining.

The sleeve ends are put together and turned under. The lining is then felled to the kersey, shown below.

The stitches are allowed to show through to the other side. This results in a visible stitch, almost like a topstitch. Some originals were put together with a running stitch, and some whipped or felled down the lining. Either way, all had visible stitching. This is what the outside looks like:

After this, the sleeves are attached to the body. I use a mixture of pins and basting to hold the sleeve in place. Whenever I can get away with it (ie. Whenever hand sewing is present on an original) I make sure to attach the sleeves by hand to the body, regardless of whether or not I've machined the other inner seams.
This results in a seam that has a little give, and won't be as likely to break as a stiff machine-sewn seam. In the armscye, which undergoes a lot of pressure, it's good to have a little leeway.

 With the kersey part of the sleeves attached, the lining is felled down, and the jacket completed. Not owning a form of any kind, I've got to resort to laying out flat anything I want to take a picture of. Here's the complete Richmond Depot type III:

And it wouldn't be complete without a picture of myself wearing it. The jacket is appropriate for a 1864-65 Virginia setting. For those interested, I also made the hat and pants, as well as the shirt, despite not being able to see it here. An interesting thing to note, which some astute readers might have already, is that up close and far away the jacket has a different color. Close up, it appears to be more of a dark grey, while outside in the sun, farther away, it appears a dark blueish color. This same effect happened with the original jackets, which in 1863 in Chickamauga, ended up with Confederate soldiers mistaken for Federals.

Next up, I have an entire VMI cadet uniform to make, so be on the lookout for that.

Richmond Depot III- Part 2

With heavy snowfall today, little else to do, and a growing backlog of other sewing projects, I decided to continue work on this jacket. The body is finished up, leaving the sleeves left.

Picking up from where I left off, the bottom edges of the lining and the shell are attached together. It's then turned and pressed.

After turning it, the lining pieces are basted down to their counterparts

With everything held in place by pins and basting, the outside edges are felled down over the lapel facings, an under the inner collar

Once the perimeter is felled down, the lining is done. Here's the complete body lining.

After this, the outside of the jacket is topstitched, and nine hand-worked buttons are added onto the front

Here's a close-up of one of the button and buttonhole. 

The buttonhole on this original RDII jacket is about similar, though mine have a higher stitch count.
The thread I'm using is logwood dyed, so with time and exposure it'll fade to the brown color seen in the original thread.

 And the completed body. All nine Script I buttons are added, topstitching done, and lining complete. What remains is completing the sleeves and adding them on.

Welt Pocket Construction

A Welt pocket is standard in the lining of a Richmond jacket. I figured I would go photograph all the different steps to making one.

Firstly, the left hand front lining piece should be used. That means that the armscye opening of the jacket is to the top left. From there, the two pocket bags pieces should be laid above and below where the intended opening goes.

A simple running stitch should then be used about ½" from the top and bottom edges of the pieces. They should end a little farther than ½" from the edges on the right and left.

After that, a slit should be cut between the two bags. It should end ½" from the end of both running stitches, and then be cut up to them.

Turn the pocket pieces to the inside of the lining.

After that, use a simple running stitch to sew along the bottom of the bag, holding down the lower pocket bag piece, but being sure not to catch the top bag piece that is now behind the lower one. If you do catch it, it will sew the bag shut.

After that, push in the small triangles of fabric that will have formed from turning the pieces. Use a buttonhole stitch to hold them in place. Your bag ought to look like this now:

 Now, looking at the inside of the lining, simply sew together the two pieces. Use a backstitch, since it'll provide more strength than a running stitch. From the right side, the backstitch looks just like a running stitch.

And that's it. A relatively simple way to make a pocket. Hopefully this helped anyone having confusion  on how to make one.