As a now belated Yule gift I'm in the painful process of making a fencing jacket for a friend of mine. At each stage of this project I've had hurtles to jump and it's a good thing I'm patient when it comes to sewing. I'm using the Russian Svita design as that seems to be the closest thing I can find for what the images look like. http://www.strangelove.net/~kieser/Russia/KMC2.html
I had to start with a prototype to make sure it fit. I had to resize it after that especially considering the freedom of movement preferred for fencing. Then I discovered the fabric that I had used to make the jacket (fabric previously tested and passed) no longer passed the "punch test". Adding a third layer to the body of the coat makes it quite bulky. I'm annoyed at that but there's not much I can do short of buying new fabric and starting over. Next the innermost layer was naturally reversed so that the seams went to the outside to be contained between all of the layers. The coat design is assymetrical at the front so because I wasn't thinking I had to detach and reattach the two front body panels. While attaching the bottom skirting to the jacket now I see that the side gores on the bottom where not enlarged with the rest of the coat and won't make it all the way around. Sigh. I hope I have enough fabric to fix this next hiccup.
