An Arming Coat of the Albigensian Crusade
   Design

Determining a shape:

I looked at each of these examples closely and weighed the varieties of features against what I wanted to accomplish. I wanted a coat, practical as well as meaningful. For me this means a collar, and something that opens in the front. Buttons or hooks? I haven’t decided yet… I didn’t want to carry around a pot-belly, so I chose to pattern my coat along the lines of the English example, in figure 1. I stayed with the closer armsyce and the squarer sleeves, the only alteration I made was to lengthen the sleeves to the wrist. The English example is made with the body in four pieces, two front, two back. I deduced a collar pattern on the evidence from the Mannesse Codex, where the upright collar is seen underneath the surcoat.

Making the pattern:

Well I’ve made a couple of patterns… but now it was time for a new skill… So I went and learned how to make a toile. A toile, in this case, is a type of exceedingly generic pattern. It is the most basic shape of a persons body recorded onto pieces of fabric, (or interfacing, or paper), which then can be shaped into the pieces needed for a pattern. Clever stuff, but I won’t take up too much space here talking about it, suffice it to say, I made a useable and accurate pattern on the first shot. Whoo hoo.

I traced my finished pattern out onto brown paper, and thought about cutting it out… and then -fortunately- remembered my last experiment in period quilting, an unmitigated flop. So, I had to slow down and think this thing through.