When I'm not working on Lygophilim pieces, one of my hobbies is historical clothing. I wanted a place where I would be able to share the process of my projects in more details and with more structure than instagram can offer, so I created this Maker's Diary. 

I hope this will become a repository of all my best work, a cross between a blog and a portfolio. 

The King in Yellow

Inspiration

For my entry in the Foundations Revealed 2021 Competition, under the theme "Once Upon a Time" I chose to explore the character of  "The King in Yellow" through the lens of history.

The King in Yellow is understood to be a sort of Avatar of the God Hastur, which Derleth classifies as a Great Old One within the Lovecraftian Mythos. 

I wanted to imagine how this avatar of a God that drives people to madness would have appeared in an 18th century court. 

Drawing on the stories surrounding King George III's late life "madness", I wondered if an outside influence such as the Avatar of Hastur might not have driven the British King George into the arms of insanity. 
What if The King in Yellow arrived at the British court in the mid 1770s and slowly gained the confidence of the British ruler, disguised as a dashing courtier?

This is how I have tried to represent the mysterious and sinister character of The King in Yellow.

 Initial research, resources and materials

When I was first toying with the idea of doing The King in Yellow, I hadn't quite decided on the exact decade I wanted to portray. I knew I wanted to reimagine him in another era, but I hadn't quite yet made the link to King George III. 

I spent a lot of time looking at extant pieces on museum websites and took a careful look at all the historical references in my library. ( Check out the bibliography section for links to all my resources!)

Three suits from the LACMA stood out to me. 

I was finally ready to pick fabrics!

Of course there was never any doubt that the suit was going to be yellow and because by now I had a better sense of when and where I was situating this character, I knew the fabric had to be luxurious enough for court. 
I looked at silk velvets but was unsatisfied with the shades of yellow I could find unless I was willing to spend $300 per yard! (The suit alone requires 4 1/2 yards) 
I feared plain silk taffeta would be too bland unless I could find the time and mental fortitude to hand embroider the entire coat.
I was ecstatic to come across one of the sumptuous figured silk taffetas at Silk Baron. I can only assume it was ment to be as the warm yellow dotted silk I chose was named: Sovereign!
I had a lovely piece of gold silk in my stash waiting for a worthy project and it seemed just right for the vest, giving a bit of contrast. 

I wasn't sure how I wanted to line the coat, but I was reading up on George III at the time and how he was pro-slavery for most of his life and brought in 1.6 million slaves into the British Empire during his reign alone. The though of it is simply maddening.
Then I came across this gorgeous wax-block printed African cotton. The symbolic became immediately poignant and obvious to me. Just as the British Empire's booming cotton trade was supported by the horrors of slavery, so would the luxurious silk hide the beautiful handwork of African artisans.

Notes on my proficiency; a personal interlude.

This is where I take a moment to share with you how I might as well have been touched by the King in Yellow's insanity myself, as this project was gearing up to be what many would have considered "bitting off more than I can chew". 

The coat was strangely too small across the back and chest but way too long in the torso. Vlad is a lithe and wiry 5'10" guy with a 28in waist and a 34in chest. That the person this coat was designed for in the 1770s could have been simultaneously taller and thinner than Vlad, in a time where excessive thinness was seen as a sign of poverty, was quite surprising to me. Especially since the original coat was definitely made for someone well off, out of silk satin and with ample embroidery. 

I had to remove some width in the the thigh of the breeches. The outside seam of the breeches was lying really well on the line of his thigh and all the extra fabric seemed to pool at his crotch so I decided to remove the excess from the inseam. 
Breeches from that era are typically cut with the legs spread apart which creates a lot of extra fabric around the posterior, in turn specifically enabling the wearer to ride a horse without things ripping. I wanted to make sure I kept in line with that feature, but even after removing fabric from the inseam and crotch, there was still way, WAY, too much fabric at the back. 


I reduced the volume from the middle back seam to make it less puffy as Vlad has a tiny round butt that didn't fill all that fabric. I did, however, lengthen the back waist a bit, making sure there was still enough fabric to sit or even ride a horse. 

After tinkering and slashing through mockups for a few days, I finally felt my pattern adjustments were deserving of a brand new mockup. 

The Final Toile (Mockup)

I knew all along that I would have to do a complete finish of my final toile. There were so many steps in the assembly of the pieces that I was really unsure how to do that I needed to go through the whole process of assembly once before risking ruining some expensive silk.

I made my final toile in more poly/cotton sheeting. I flatlined it with old sheets made of very thick 600 thread cotton. 

Side note about making things with old sheets: 

(I see a lot of people in the costuming community pulling out beautiful garments out of "old sheets" and I often think we probably don't have the same definition of "old". By the time I consider a set of sheets old enough to stop using them on my bed, they are usually thread bare, and full of holes, rips and stains. Not conducive to pretty garments. Clearly people are cutting into sheets that I would still consider perfectly usable... )

So my flatlining for this toile is full of stains. Thankfully, it won't matter much when I add a lining. 

Once all my pieces were flatlined, I spent a good 3 days just trying to figure out the order of assembly (order of operations) for the breeches. With the fall front pieces and the pockets that open with a flap, and with various layers being sewn into the waistband, and/or side seam, or not, it took me a while to figure out how to assemble them without having seams that were unsightly or too bulky or random stitch lines breaking the visual lines. 
I rewatched THIS video by Sewstine on Youtube many times, in double speed, and in slow motion (!) to help me figure out when and to what seam to attach the pocket layers.

I made a few mistakes assembling the mockup and some seams were unruly. I used the machine to assemble the mockup where ever was possible, but I still ended up doing a fair amount of hand sewing because all the tricky layers are often harder to do with the machine anyway. 

Since I did my final mockup in purple poly/cotton, I decided to line it with some green cotton voile I had lying around, in the hopes I might use it later on for a silly 18th century Joker cosplay. 

You can see there are a LOT of pull lines on this mockup, and I made numerous tiny adjustments before making the final garments to minimize these line. 

However, some of these lines do come from the fact that the fabric is too flimsy to hold the weight of the coat. Also, I didn't really press it before taking these pictures. 

The main correction that resulted from this mockup was the position on the sleeves. 18th century sleeves are neither cut nor positioned like modern coat sleeves, and figuring out the right position for the shoulder to fit right whilst avoiding diagonal lines below the sleeve cap required a fair amount of fiddling. 

The solution for the final garment was to pin the sleeve in place while my model was wearing the coat. 

Final Construction

Once I was reasonably satisfied with my mockups, I started the final construction. All the silk pieces were flatlined to linen to give them extra body. This step is the only step that was done by machine and is the white stitching that can occasionally be seen in progress picture. Most of this stitching was removed once the pieces were complete, even when it could only be seen in seam allowances. 

I had some significant "help" from my furry friend as I tried to cut fabric out for all the pieces. 

I started with the breeches because I wanted to fiddle with all the complicated assembly before I got too close to the deadline, and therefor stressed and tired.

The cotton print being a fairly stiff, I didn't want to line the entire breeches with it, mainly for comfort. So I lined the breeches with a chocolate cotton voile and lined only the front fall flap with the print. 

All the layers were carefully assembled to that no stitching would be seen from the outside and that all seam allowances would eventually be inside the lining. 

The lining was carefully whipstitched into place at the knee hem and the waistband was whipstitched over it for a clean finish. 

Embroidery

I was eager to make the embroidery next because I knew this would represent a large chunk of my time. 
I marked out the pattern piece for the front of the vest on the gold silk and then thread marked the entire embroidery design on the folded piece, to ensure that my two sides would be mirrored and identical.  

After a lot of reading on the subject (my favorite books are listed in the resources at the bottom) I threw myself into the goldwork embroidery. 

Again, a skill I had never attempted. (Why do I do this to myself?) 

It took me around 50 hours to complete all the embroidery. I chose to use mostly roccoco for the outline and filled the leaves with cutwork in a mix of bronze and gold bright check purl, the pattern starting darker at the bottom and gradually getting lighter at the top.

The top leaves were left mostly empty except for some delicate bead and spangle work. 

The Coat

The fit of the coat needed to be very precise to fall correctly, so I took the time to thread mark the large pieces to make sure my sewing would be exactly where it needed to be. 

I then worked on the sleeves, complete with cuffs and linings. In modern construction, people often put the sleeves on the garment, and then come back to do finishings on cuffs because they need to adjust the length of sleeves after they are attached to the shoulder. Because I was so precise with my mockup, I knew my sleeve length was right, so I could complete the entire sleeve before putting it on. 

I then created the pocket slits and pocket bags in the front coat pieces, because I needed them to be inside the lining. The pocket bags are first sewn to the outside of the coat and then turned in for a stitchless look. 

I added pocket flaps which I lined with the cotton print. 

I then worked on the collar which needed some horsehair canvas to hold up properly and on the padding of the coat. Unlike modern coats which tend to have shoulder padding, 18th century coats had padding at the front of the shoulder, just above the pectoral muscle, to fill the natural hollow and give a smooth line. 

Both of these hidden structural bits are worked in place with padstitching, I skill I had not really used in my usual work. I watched a lot of videos to try to learn to do it correctly. I have to admit there is still a fair bit of room for improvement there. 

I could finally put in the lining. 

I wanted to emulate the linings I have seen in numerous extant pieces where each piece is whipstitched in individually, rather than bag lining like in modern methods. The lining pieces are also put in before closing the shoulder seams, so that the back seams allowances can be  all caught together and the front lining folded over to cover everything. This makes the shoulder seam extra strong.