Viking Winter Coat

For someone who couldn't care less what his everyday clothes look like, Adam has Opinions about his historical clothing. He had gotten an idea of a coat he wanted a few years ago and started saving materials when he found them. The coat needed to be a wrap style like the coats worn on the Sutton Hoo plaques. It needed to be wool, fully lined and also quilted. And it needed trim- significantly more trim that we normally use for his clothing. And it needed to be "warm enough to hunt a bear with a spear in the middle of winter". The pattern that I used is one we designed for his wrap coats a few years ago, and it's worked for everything from jackets to his heraldic fighting coat.

The measurement at the top is the width across his back from shoulder to shoulder. It stays straight at the sides for 16"- to cover half his preferred sleeve width (20" total) plus his 6" armpit gusset. From there we flared it out from the bottom the width of his usual side gore- around 12-14" and drew an angled line connecting the armpit to the bottom. The front sides are identical to the back, but the middle front (the wrap of the wrap coat) is one long angle. I think the full width at the bottom is about 3/4 the width of one of his tunics if measured from the middle of a side gore, across the front, and to the middle of the other side gore. The width at the top is about half the back top width minus about 2", which leaves about a 4" neck gap in the middle. That always needs to be tweaked as we finesse the final garment, but it's a good starting place.

The first step was to cut the coat pattern pieces out of the wool, adding sleeves (rectangles 20" wide by 26" long), 2 6" squares for armpit gussets, and a back gore that will be inset later. The same process was duplicated for the lining. When the wool pieces were cut, we fused them to the batting using basting spray (found in quilting sections of fabric stores) and then cut the batting. This helps them stay together as one unit and the excess batting on the sides will also help control any excess basting spray from going onto the work surface and making every subsequent thing sticky.

Then we fused the lining to the other side of the gold and batting, making a wool/batting/lining sandwich. I used an iron while fusing to help smooth out any wrinkles and keep things nice and flat. I inset the back gore into the middle of the back before I fused the lining onto that piece, and then hand stitched the lining into place. Because the wool and batting were thick, it was helpful to trim the batting out of the seam allowances after sewing to reduce bulk.

I drew the quilting lines on with chalk and it probably would have been easier to draw the vertical quilting lines before the back gore went in, but we made it work.

The sides were sewn to the front at the shoulders and at the point the sides start to angle outward, leaving the sleeve and armpit gusset area open. We tried to match quilting lines as closely as possible.

Once the body was quilted, I went back and angled in his armholes, bringing the top of the shoulder in about an inch and half and then angling down to where the gusset would start. While it still looked very bulky, it did help eliminate a bit of the Mortal Kombat shoulders he had going on. I also cut the neck hole a bit bigger.

The sleeves were quilted flat and the armpit gussets just had an x sewn through them to keep the batting from shifting. All batting has a recommended sewing distance on the package- the maximum distance apart the quilting lines can be without the batting shifting or bunching inside the quilt in the wash, so I made sure to stay within that guideline when I was quilting the coat. I then sewed the sleeves into place.

Once the body was assembled, I covered all the seams on the inside with gold bias tape to prevent any fraying and to neaten everything up.

And then we were finally! Finally! At trimming! At this point, this thing is a beast and probably weighs about 7 pounds, which isn't a lot- until you're constantly shifting it around and hauling it back and forth from the ironing board to the sewing table. The dark green silk was scavenged from a project long dead, so it was cut into strips with only the back of the neck cut and the cuffs cut on the bias for fabric conservation. The rust colored linen was from the fabric stash but there was only a yard or so left, so it also got the same treatment. The card woven trim was discovered when Adam brought down my loom so I could start another project and I realized that I already had this one warped and started and thankfully had had the wherewithal to save the pattern on pinterest, so it was easy to find. It was also lucky that it wasn't a terribly complicated pattern, so it was easy to pick up again, and as luck would have it, the colors matched his coat perfectly.

The other card woven trim I did not make, but it was leftover from a dress I had just made myself and it worked really well. Thankfully we had juuuust enough to do the hem. But no extra of either, so the cuffs got a tiny bit of decorative machine stitching just to bring the gold into the trim and add some interest.

And then it was done! It all told took about five days, including trim weaving. He loves it, which is good, because it was definitely a labor of love. It is, also, warm enough to go hunt a bear with a spear.

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