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.
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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:
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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
Hey, quite a few of your details I think you may have assumed for the New Market Cadet uniform. I'm the guy that originally drafted the patterns and bought the material for the cadets for the VMI CWRT to use. I examined the original uniforms out of the case in 2008 and have photos of the original. Overall, not too bad though. But some details are incorrect:
ReplyDelete1. The buttonhole fly is not whipped down on the inside. It is topstitched using a backstitch through all layers parallel to the inside of the fly.
2. the inside piece on the opposite side (the off-center buttonhole) is not faced in wool, it is linen like the rest of the lining. Also, this style of button fly is still present on modern cadet trowsers, so you could say it's taken off. It was also very prevalent on private contract and officer trowsers on both sides.
3. While the jacket may be cut in four pieces, it is made to look like a 6 piece jacket by means of a long dart extending from the front bottom edge on the side up to the bottom of the armscye. Only 1/2" was not sewn on the original, so we barely caught that detail.
4. The top edge of the trowsers is left raw. The fronts are topstitched (not whipped) through the lining and the lining then folded down and topstitched an inch below and parallel to the top edges. The back pieces are cut on the bias so they won't unravel. The linings on the back are all whipstitched down.
If you have any further questions, my name is Pat Smith (VMI '12) and you can email me at smithwp@mail.vmi.edu