The Great Grappling Gambeson Project, Part 1

[sasha_sews]

EDIT: This entry has been updated as of 3/8/08 @ 1:15 pm to add pictures and details.

For a good length of time now, I have been promising Roger a fighting gambeson/jacket/coat. Something he can look all kinds of spiff in while he's teaching and that will hold up to the amount of sparring with swords and grappling unarmed that he does.

And by good length of time, I mean years.

Well the time has come to actually get off my ass and make it. Except I have no idea what I'm doing. But! I have a solution! Roger has a handful of students who just achieved the rank of Scholar within the Chicago Swordplay Guild program. Locally they are the Rocky Mountain Swordplay Guild, but they were born as a study group of the CSG. None of which has anything to do with clothing, outside of the fact that it's because of this I started sewing again. When the boys passed their Scholars tests they took a trip out to Chicago to "play for their prize" - basically they had to do a series of bouts with other Scholars to prove they had earned the rank. I guess? I don't know I wasn't there. But Roger wanted a new cotte to wear to the prize play and thus the Prize Play Cotte was born.

And I discovered I am still able to sew, and in fact seem to have gotten better at it. (Which I attribute to my eleven year old and the infinate amount of patience the little snot darling has taught me in the last two and a half years. *G*

So it's time to conquer the gambeson.

I decided to use the new Scholars as breathing test dummies. They will all be getting new cottes out of the endeavor, and all they have to do is put up with endless amounts of fitting and pay for the fabric in the end result. I'm starting with Thayne as he lives in our extra bedroom and I can interrupt his day get a hold of him easier for fittings. (Also, he and I got left behind when they all went to the prize play we were sad and so he gets his gambeson first out of mutual sympathy.)

I once again utilized the "modified cotte fitting method" that I learned from this site to form the basic shell from which I will be working. Thayne is one of those tall and thinly built blokes. So fitting him seemed like a dream. However he's also bendy as all hell so I wound up having to keep adjusting things for a good while to get the pattern to a point where he was going to have the broadest range of motion.

As you can see Thayne is a very fit person. This pattern wouldn't even go around me. Bastard. *G* You can see the points of difference from Roger's pattern, the waist comes in more, and the front seam is completely straight, because Thayne is completely flat. (He has lovely abs, fyi. *snicker*)

The reason the back piece is cut into two pieces is for two reasons: the de Blois gambeson has the back in two pieces, top and bottom, so I decided to see what I could to with mimicking that. However the upper piece is one solid piece, which for Thayne at least won't work as well he needs the extra give that comes with an uneven seam up the back. As I do test pieces we may find it necessary to do the one-piece back, but that will come later.

The next step, now that I have his pattern is going to be modifying it to make the "articulated" sleeves that are going to give him a great deal of room of move. The final gambeson will be based on the Charles de Blois gambeson, but it will be customized to fit Thayne's desires for looks, and altered as necessary to fit what we need it to do.

And what do we need it to do, you ask?

It needs to fit each person ideally as possible. It needs to be made of a fabric and lining to provide maximum protection while sparring with steel, and be sturdy enough to hold up under the stresses of unarmed grappling, and it needs to do these two things while not bunching, binding, or restricting movement. Cake, right?

The most used gambeson currently (at least in our circles) is this gambeson from Revival Clothing. It rocks. Unfortunately, it's not designed to do all of the things that we need it to, so it has some points that I think we can improve upon in customization. (These gambesons are a simplified version of what I want, made to fit a standard set of sizes, and able to produced in bulk. Obviously, when you're buying "off the rack" you're not necessarily going to find everything you want/need in a single item, especially not for that price.)

For a great deal of people they are perfect, just what they need, thanks. Which is awesome.

But for our purposes, here's where it doesn't hold up. The linen has shown a lack of durability when worn against steel swords. I'm going to be spending some time tomorrow stitching up a number of nicks in the fabric in Roger's from the prize play. Because of the location of the buttons and button holes they haven't shown an inclination to stand up to long-term grappling. On a cotton version a button hole tore clear out, and Roger lost a button today. They are quite stiff and unless you are one of the body types they fit best can be restrictive in movement.

So the question is, can I spend a ridiculous amount of time and money and work and improve on these points, understanding that after this first round I will be charging hundreds and hundreds of dollars if anyone else wants one and they will never ever be mass produced?

Yes. Yes I believe I can. (note the time/money/omg hard work factor there. There's a reason that the mass produced and reasonably priced ones aren't perfect and custom fit to every customer. Srsly.)

Right now I am preparing to play with some 100% cotton twill. It seems fairly sturdy, is very flexible, and decently priced. This will make the very first test gambeson for Thayne to try and beat the hell out of. (or, the other guys to beat the hell out of while Thayne wears it. *G*)

I'm thinking we're going to try the thin cotton batting used for quilts in the second version. Once I know if the fabric itself holds up it will be time to test the fabric with the padding, see if it maintains the flexibility and durability with the extra layer. Also, that test will require testing the protection provided by the padding.

If both of these tests go well, then I have achieved success and i just have to start cranking out the final products, and by the time I am ready to make Roger's I will be a pro and he will have the best of them all. Which is only appropriate, I think. *G*.

So right now, here's what I know about this project:

• Cotton not linen for longer life (and ability to take frequent washings)


• Flexibility is premium


• Historical accuracy is a plus not a must. (we want it to look medieval, but function the way we need it to.)


• The buttons and button holes will be set further in, not right on the edge, to make them stronger.


• This is going to be a ridiculously enormous amount of work for me. *G*

It occurs to me that you might be saying, "But, Sasha, why not just make two kinds of jackets that do the different things you need?"

Because Roger's bloody Spartans go from sword to unarmed in the middle of a bout, they can't stop to change jackets midway through a throw after disarming someone. Bloody talented bastards.

Comments

[loralienasa.livejournal.com]

You know, if you ever have any patterning or fitting problems, you can always ask Tim. He may be a bitch to sew *with*, but he is a geometry and pattern-making genius and he is very good at finding solutions for these things. And you're in another state, so you're safe. ;)