The Armour Archive

I have a simple but sincere question for you more experienced sewers than I.

Is there a reason to use gores and gussets, rather than just cut the pattern with them included, other than fabric conservation?

Ive sewn gussetts into pant crotches and tunic armpits. But it just seems like extra work, and frailer because of the extra and unneeded seams.

-Halbrust

Period fabrics tended to be woven on much narrower looms, so, in addition to fabric conservation, which was a concern, it was also necessary to build garments from smaller pieces simply because that's all there were.

Ditto to what Blaine posted above. Fabric conservation, too; I don't need to use as much fabric if I'm using minimum-wastage techniques to create a tunic for a specific person, based on their measurements and the amount of fabric I've got on hand.

(I was especially pleased with my fabric conservation skills when I made several outfits for my son out of scraps saved from things I'd made for my husband or me. My favorite, I think, is his 15th century wool coat, that had been scraps left over from his dad's 14th century dagged hood. I use the same "minimum wastage" techniques that I use on grown-up garments -- but with smaller pieces of fabric to start out with.)

I'm not a great seamstress, though, and I prefer to make things look right on the person who's going to wear the garment, rather than going through the motions of having all of the cuts and seams on a precise artifact garment. It takes a bit of arithmetic and geometry, and sometimes a bit of forethought (do I really want the side gores and front/back center gores?) to determine if I can get what I want out of the layout I'm thinking about using. Sometimes I lay out the sleeve piece so that it incorporates the gusset.

i'm not sure about period clothes but gores and gussets help the clothing sit right

I was under the impression that the seams are the strongest part of the garment. I'm probably wrong since noone else pointed this out earlier, though.

jarlragnar wrote:I was under the impression that the seams are the strongest part of the garment. I'm probably wrong since noone else pointed this out earlier, though.

Depends on the quality of the particular fabric and seam...can go either way.

It depends.

Sometimes, it's for fabric conservation, and you can just cut it in one piece. Case in point, when I cut a four panel dress, the side gores could be cut all in one piece with the body panel. However, even now, that's less conservative of fabric, and I usually cut the side gores.

So, gores added onto the side of something else, assuming the seams are all straight, can be cut in piece.

However, if I have a flat piece of fabric, and I want to set a gore in a slit, I cannot just cut a larger piece. This is the case in some women's dresses with a single front panel, and a gore inset into the center front. It is also most certainly the case in the Charles de Blois Grande Assiette sleeve.

Unfortunately, my only example is a set of child's clothes, but you can at least see the concept at work in this article:
http://www.mathildegirlgenius.com/Docum ... ctions.pdf


Now, even when the gore is added to the side of something else, like *some* of the gores on the Grand Assiette, I've found that sometimes you just need those seams for fitting. Or at least they make it easier. Some people draft out some of the seams in the CdB, but when I drafted them all back in, I was able to more easily fit the sleeve to Jeff.

It depends.

STOP SAYING THAT!

For my tunics I just cut the gores into the sleeves (underarm), but add them in seperately to the skirt area.

FYI - In theory the seam should be the weakest part of just about any garment. You want your seam to go before your fabric so that you can repair it.

Halbrust wrote:Is there a reason to use gores and gussets, rather than just cut the pattern with them included, other than fabric conservation?

Ive sewn gussetts into pant crotches and tunic armpits. But it just seems like extra work, and frailer because of the extra and unneeded seams

In the case of gussets (which I'm defining here as diamonds or squares), the purpose is to provide a pocket of space for something. Gores on the other hand (defined here as isosceles triangle), help to create flare. There are other shapes that provide flare and could probably be called gores too, but I've kept it simple for this explanation.

So for the crotch gusset, we know what's being accommodated. For the underarm gussets, we're providing extra fabric for the highly mobile hinge of the shoulder. For skirt gores, we're putting volume (flare) into the skirt to let the legs move freely.

Also, depending on how skirt gores are put in, they can affect the drape of the fabric as gravity pulls on it. Sewing a bias edge to a straight-grain edge creates a different drape than sewing two bias edges together or sewing two straight-grain edges together.

Hope that helps,
Tasha

Another thing that hasn't been explicitly mentioned is, by sewing a bias-cut gore into a seam, such as a shoulder, the clothing gains a greater range of motion. Fabric cut on the bias will stretch further than straight-grain fabric, and using that property of the cloth allows you to get a closer-fit garment, without having to trade-off mobility.

Keegan Ingrassia wrote: Fabric cut on the bias will stretch further than straight-grain fabric, and using that property of the cloth allows you to get a closer-fit garment, without having to trade-off mobility.

Ha! Tell me about it! I figured that out the hard way when I made my dirt pair of hosen. I had purchased a nice set that fit well and figured I could simply copy the pattern and make more. Much to my surprise, my new pair, precisely the same size as the other, were too small. Of course I hadn't cut the new pair on the bias.

Glen K wrote:STOP SAYING THAT!

I'm an ENTP. There is No Such Thing as black and white.



I'm glad somebody else mentioned the bias to straight thing. I had it on my mind and never got around to it!

One thing that hasn't been brought up is aesthetics, though Tasha hinted at it.
We tend to assume that there are logical cutting reasons for the pieces being cut and fitted as they are, based on common widths of fabric and conservation as goal, however, when you construct a garment with a particular shape ( and, for that matter, with particular stitches and methods) you also create a specific and deliberate final effect for the garment on the body.

In part, this is a fit issue and drape issue but it also relates to what might have been considered appealing in the movement and shape of a garment on a body to those looking at it in period - much like well fit clothing today. Clothes maketh the man - not just in rich textiles, but in the overall visual effect.

When you insert a gore in a tunic or gown, the point you insert it, whether it fits to bias or straight of grain, and the way it is stitched give the garment a specific line create a very distinct effect. Those lines work with the body's shape and move with it to create an effect we find pleasing.

I think we neglect the aesthetics of it a lot, because we tend to imagine medieval people as doing everything out of necessity, but the reality is that some choises really did get made because they liked a particular fit and shape better in a completed garment visually, than they did another.

Next time you're at an event, take a look around, and notice the difference between the visual effects of a tunic with wide skirts cut entirely from a 58" wide modern piece of fabric, and those with added gores front, back and sides.


Gwen

Expanding on what azure and others have said, gores allow you to control where the extra fabric is placed. You can achieve a full skirt on a tunic by cutting out a roadkill / t-tunic shape with a flaring skirt, like this:



But if you do that, all the extra fabric in the skirt is on the sides, and it will tend to bunch up there, leaving the tunic tight over the legs in the front and back. Yet when you walk, you want there to be some ease in the middle of the skirt so it doesn't bind your legs when you take a large step, so you want to add some of the extra fabric between your legs (thus, the gore).

This is less critical when it comes to underarm gussets, since you can put the extra fabric where you want it by simply cutting the piece wider. Some bog-find tunics do this, like the Moselund tunic (note the points on the ends of the sleeves where they would meet the body of the tunic):



Done this way, the seams fall on the bias, preserving the stretchiness Keegan mentioned that you get from adding a separate gusset (though this stretch is lost if you sew it with a machine stitch, which can't stretch).

Tailoress wrote:Gores on the other hand (defined here as isosceles triangle), help to create flare.

"Brian Has 37 Pieces of Flair On Today."

He must have had a lot of gores.