Elizabethan Nobleman

Last year my big summer project was making faire garb for both of my brothers.  John had a very clear idea of what he wanted, and since he was willing to help do some of the work, I didn't mind.

The most important thing to John was the fabric.  We spent a lot of time looking at different fabrics, trying to find exactly what he wanted.  We ended up purchasing black ultrasuede from Poppy Fabrics for the majority of the costume; my mom called around, and they had the best price.  I lined the doublet in the same royal blue velveteen as my nobilty gown, and interlined it in a bright blue cotton duck cloth.

Since he didn't quite like the typical Renaissance breeches and slops, I went ahead and made him a regular pair of pants, using a standard men's slacks pattern.  It was a very simple, strait forward pattern and, for the most part, the ultrasuede was easy to work with.

I can't remember right now what pattern I used for the undershirt, but I'm pretty sure that it was a Simplicity costume pattern.  I took quite a bit of width out of the sleeves and body of the pattern (In addition to not liking Renaissance slops, he isn't too sure about the "puffy shirt look") and buttoned the collar and cuffs rather than tying them.

The doublet was the complicated part of this ensemble.  I used the AlterYears pattern, and was very pleased with the pattern, but ended up deviating a bit anyway.  I cut the pieces out of the duck cloth first, basted them together and did a fitting before beginning on the velveteen and the ultrasuede.  Once we had a good fit, I cut out all the layers and John cut the design in the ultrasuede on both the front and back pieces.  He found two Celtic looking patterns online and printed them out.  He then cut out enough sections of the pattern for the design to show while leaving enough material for the pattern to hold together.  This was then used as a template for cutting the ultrasuede, which we did with an exacto knife.  (Warning: If you are cutting a woven fabric, you will need to bind the edges.  Because ultrasuede, like its more expensive counterpart, is not woven, the raw edges do not frey.)  Once the embellisment was done I  assembled all three layers, making sure that they all ended up in the correct position (a difficult task for someone like me who does not think spacially).  In order to make the doublet reversable, I made sure that all the seams were hidden, which was not difficult until I got to the side seams, which is where I joined all the layers together; I used a flat-felled seam so that it would look good on both sides of the finished garment.  (One thing to note if you are making this out of three layers of fairly heavy fabric is that it will take a pretty sturdy machine and a thick needle to sew through all of the layers of fabric.)  Because my brother did not want an extremely structured garment, and because the thick layers already helped give a nice sturdy look to it, I only put boning at the center front edges in order to support the closure.  For the closure we took our inspiration from some doublets that we had seen for sale at fair.  The button and loop are on the same side of the garment with a button hole on the other side; the loop comes up through the buttonhole and then around to loop over the button.