Arming Cote - How does fabric talk to you?

Oops. I had this all written last night and forgot to post it.

I did a first round of fitting Jeff for the arming cote. Since I couldn't find my pattern pieces from before, and I want to change up the arms anyway, I started from scratch. But cheating. Since he has a doublet (I tend to use a lot of these terms interchangeably) I didn't want to completely lose what I'd done on that, in terms of seam placement, etc. So I fit him over it.

This should be interesting, because now that I have the body panels fit, I evened out the sides, sewed it up, and now I'll put it on him for tweaking, and to put the sleeves in. I'll be able to see what the difference is between fitting over his current doublet, and how the first layer next to his skin should fit. I wonder how big the size difference will be?

That fitting wasn't particularly exciting, but it did illustrate a point that I like to bring up when teaching fitting and sleeve classes. Fabric will tell you where the seams should be. This can be used to fit armscyes, but is particularly apparent in this garment.

The original CdB pourpoint has a seam across the waist on the back. This seam is essential to get the smooth fit on this back panel. You can get away without a waist seam on a four panel garment, if you have a seam down the back to fit over the rise of the rear-end.

( Fabric talks to me (pictures of Jeff's butt under the cut) )

See! Fitting is intuitive!