An 18th-century jacket

Autumn is the time for a Harvest festival and I went to celebrate it with my daughter. I had already made her an 18th-century costume but, as the weather was already pretty chilly, she needed an 18th-century jacket as well. Luckily I had some appropriate fabric that Susanna of Kultavilla wove from the leftover yarn from our skirt fabric project.

The fabric had a white cotton warp. To get a deeper red color, I decided to dye my fabric red to hide the white warp. This had the added benefit of felting the fabric. I really liked the final result. In fact, I’m going to buy more of this fabric from Susanna to dye and play with. Even without dyeing the slow heating up to 90 degrees would have a nice effect.

I started with this free pattern that is based on a Swedish 18th-century jacket. Of course, this was too big for my daughter, so I took it in quite a lot. I also changed the front so that the jacket closes at the center front with ties.

I didn’t have time to sew the whole thing by hand but I still did some hand-finishing. The lining is made out of printed cotton fabric. However, I didn’t bother lining the sleeves.

The finished jacket

Here are some pictures of the finished jacket taken at Pakin talo (Paki’s house), Helsinki.

Pakin talo is an mid-18th-century farm house and one of the earliest surviving buildings in Helsinki. However, the records tell that there has been a farm here already in 1632. It is believed that the original farmhouse was burned down by the Russian soldiers during the war in 1742.

Old crafts

S helped to decorate the hall with traditional himmeli decorations made out of straw and thread. I remember my grandparents’ farmhouse having huge, complicated himmelis hanging from the ceiling every Christmas.

We baked tons of Karelian pastries that were then glazed with melted butter. S has been practicing baking these pastries since she was a toddler and now she’s making them very well. This time she wanted to learn how to mix the crust as well.

The best thing in the Harvest festival for S is the chance to make butter. She learned how to make it last year and this time she was determined to make a batch by herself. It didn’t matter that the small churn broke down – she took a whisk and whisked the cream in a bowl until it became butter!

Here is the finished butter, all washed, salted and ready to eat:

There are no videos of this project but I am currently editing a video on how to weave a patterned band with a rigid heddle. So subscribe not to miss that! See you soon!

Katja