This is a placeholder for the project to make a robe of two garnements (a cote and a hood) and matching hose this winter while its too dark and wet to do woodworking outside. They are inspired by the clothes of working men in the Tacuinum Sanitatis of Vienna c 1370-1400, and the breadths and yardages of wool and linen which retired peasants received in England earlier in the fourteenth century. The cote is cut like a gown (it expands continually from the shoulders to the hem) not like a cote which flares wider below the waist because many of the workers' cotes have dense vertical pleating which starts at shoulder-blade-level and continues down.
Out of ten self-stuffed buttons, one (the second above) is nice and firm and solid. I wish I could figure out what differentiated the successful buttons and the failed buttons but this cote will have the half-assed buttons because they are the best I can do.
Does this diagram of the cutting plan make sense? It avoids details like the exact shape and size of the sleeves and armholes to communicate the essence that you fold the cloth lengthwise, mark off a triangle to become the sleeve, and use the rest for the body.
No surviving garments from the fourteenth century were made of broadcloth (which was somewhere between an English yard and a half and two yards wide when finished and washed) and you cut narrow cloth differently than broadcloth. Robin Netherton was using this general layout for Gothic Fitted Dresses 20 or 30 years ago and now we know its in the tailor's books from the sixteenth century. Its a very efficient way to use the minimum length in 14th-16th century England (three yards of broadcloth) and get a gown. The scraps are good for a collar, or lining a short buttoned opening. The only disadvantage is the two long bias-to-bias seams.
This cote has relatively narrow sleeves, so there is a wedge of waste coth between the sleeve and the body. I am tempted to sew these wedges to the center front and center back seam where the garment is open below the belt.
