I Made a Victorian Smoking Jacket! Venturing into a New Era

I'm Gracie and today we're going to be talking about the process of making a Victorian smoking jacket. Not for myself, but for Ollie as both a Christmas and anniversary gift because it's kind of an involved gift and they're the person who's editing this video so it's also kind of a thank you for that. This video isn't going to be about the history and purpose of smoking jackets so much as it is going to be about like learning a new skill and venturing into a new era. I've never really made anything Victorian like this before so you're as new as I am. I'm using the pattern by Black Snail Patterns for a Victorian smoking jacket and so most of the like instructions that I'm following are coming from there and because of that I'm not going to be going super in-depth into the construction. I'm more just going to be talking about the process of like how I learn new skills and what it's like to try something new and know that it won't turn out perfectly and that's okay. I didn't do a mock-up for this project because I was feeling lazy so any final fitting issues are at the fault of myself, not of the pattern. This project involves several different fabric types. There's a cotton velveteen which is like the main body of the smoking jacket as well as a silk, a blue silk velvet which is for the lapels and the cuffs and the pocket lining. I only had a little bit of that but I wanted to make use of it because it's so pretty. But because this is a tailored garment with a fair bit of structure there's also a lot of inner layers and those are made of lots of different fabrics. So we have some linen and some cotton calico and some cotton organdy. Oh and then of course the lining. So the main lining is a really pretty kind of woven pattern silk but I only had a little bit of that so the sleeves are going to be lined with kind of a red rayon which I think ended up complementing the lining pretty well. And because there were so many different patterns or so many different fabrics it was pretty difficult to like keep track of everything as I was cutting it out but luckily the pattern that I used has kind of diagrams that say oh cut this bit out of this lining fabric and cut these pieces out of this fabric. So I was able to cut out everything and then I was able to start sewing. You might think that the first steps to making this smoking jacket would be to like start stitching together the pieces but you'd be wrong. As it turns out I first had to prepare the pattern pieces. For the most part this involved basting linen or linen inner lining to the front panels. This is going to basically serve as the support for the lapels once the smoking jacket is done but I had to add that before I could even start assembling the jacket. I also theoretically could have done welt pockets at this stage but I decided to procrastinate on my pockets and do patch pockets instead which allowed me to put those off till later because I was not in the mood to do pockets. Once I had my linen inner lining basted into place it was time to begin pad stitching and lest you think I know what I'm doing with this I do not. This was basic- my pad stitching is basically a conjecture based on videos I've watched of other people pad stitching and images I've seen but I'm not a trained tailor in any way shape or form so I'm just kind of doing what I thought would work and what I did for this was I basically pad stitched in a zigzag shape so you would see the stitch on one side and then the zag of the zigzag would pick up a little bit of the cotton velveteen on its way under passing through the linen interlining and then back up and holding the fabric in a curved way as you're doing this pad stitching basically locks those curves into shape and so you end up getting a folded over lapel which is what you want because lapels are supposed to fold over. And the other thing that I found helpful for this was drawing parallel lines along my lapels so that I could make sure that my pad stitches were nice and even looking. Even with all the pad stitching we're still not done preparing this front panel. The next step was to attach cotton tape around the edges of the pad stitched area. This creates both a clear definition of where the roll line of the lapel will be and it also ends up kind of finishing off the outer edge of the pad stitching along the front edge of the smoking jacket and I think this just ends up making the whole thing look nicer once the jacket is done but it also looked quite pretty even before I added the lapels because the lines of tape ended up looking very architectural and even which I really like. I like things that look even and neat. Having procrastinated on the pockets long enough I decided I should probably work on those. These are velveteen and lined in silk velvet which in hindsight is way too floopy. I ended up having to like use a bunch of basting and some cotton tape and a bunch of stitching to get them to sit evenly so that I had a clean finish on the inside and the outside of the pocket and so that they were shaped like squares rather than like loopy rectangles. The next bit, the next step was to attach sutash trim to the pockets in a decorative manner. Sutash is basically like silk spaghetti. It's often used to create ornate designs but I went for just a simple loop-de-loop on the pocket which is what the pattern showed in their version and I thought it looked quite nice and it ends up giving a little bit of visual interest to the front of the smoking jacket. With all that done I finally got to begin assembling the jacket and because this is after 1850 and the beginning of the widespread use of the sewing machine I got to make use of this 1929 senior sewing machine. This one's electric and I don't think that a Victorian smoking jacket like this would have been sewn with an electric machine but I might be wrong. I think in the Victorian period they were most machines were foot powered but I really like this machine. My uncle helped restore it and it sews better than her modern one. I began by stitching the front pieces to the back and to its lining and then I got to add lapel facings to cover up the pad stitching in blue velvet. After lots of basting the lapel facing was tacked to the interior of the smoking jacket and the seam allowance is going to be covered by the lining so I didn't have to worry about that. From there it was a process of stitching together the side seams which I was also able to do by machine and then dealing with the lining on the interior of the jacket. For the most part this was just whip stitching the lining to the inside of the jacket except around the hem where first I turned up the hem of the cotton velveteen and then folded over the lining over like the top of the hem allowance so that it went so the hem allowance wouldn't show. I probably should have followed the instructions more closely here because I ended up having to kind of like do some more fiddling and basting than I probably would have and the other thing I realized is that pinning a garment like this is probably much better done if it's hanging so if I'd put it on my dress form that would have given me a better idea of how to make sure that the hem was even as well as how to make sure that the hem hung nicely. I don't know how to put that but the hem doesn't hang as nicely as I'd like it to and I think it would have I think it would hang better if I had done the hemming and pinning while it was hanging up on a dress form. Once the jacket was mostly assembled I had the privilege or possibly punishment of working on the sleeves. First I started on the cuffs because these are the most complex part of the sleeves. I wanted a silk velvet cuff lined with cotton velveteen but from my experience with the pockets I knew that I needed some sort of inner lining or else these cuffs would be way too loopy. I ended up choosing a stiff cotton organdy which I think worked pretty well because my cuffs stand up quite nicely but first what I did was I basted the cotton organdy to the blue silk velvet and I basted all over so that the silk velvet could not move an inch. Then I used some sutash trim to apply a decoration to the cuff that matched the decoration on the pocket. Once that was done I assembled the cuffs and sleeves as as was described in the instructions which was not very difficult and then I set the sleeves. I should have probably basted them in and checked the fit but I was so done with this project by that point that I decided to just put them in and call her good and they fit okay so I mean don't do what I did but it worked out for me. Once that was done I had to stitch the lining to the allowance of the arm side to finish off the interior of the jacket but with that the whole garment was done and I mean there was still a bunch of basting thread in it which I did eventually have to rip out but other than that it like this was a long project but it ended up going pretty quickly once I actually like got working on it. This is the smoking jacket. I'm getting to model it because Ollie didn't want to be on film and so it doesn't fit me it's like a little bit too big but I think it turned out really cute and it's super cozy like it's there's so many layers of fabric that it's really warm. I think projects like this are just really good for trying to explore a new era and learn new techniques especially if you can find a pattern that has good instructions and maybe some diagrams because that way you can like learn a new you can learn new techniques and you're not like trying to figure out from like a compilation of internet vlogs which is always a little bit different difficult to for learning a new skill and the other good thing about this is it's like an everyday garment so if I was making this for myself and I wanted to venture into Victorian clothes but I didn't know if I wanted to make like a full outfit making something like this allows me to make something that I can wear not just in like a Victorian style but as a modern person. Of course I'm giving it away but it still applies. Let me know in the comments if you have any projects or patterns that you like as a gateway through new eras I'd love to hear about that. Thank you to thank you to you for watching. Thank you to Ollie for their help in filming and editing this video and for liking this smoking jacket. Don't worry they're very happy with it and yeah I hope you have a great rest of your day. Bye!