Leather fencing doublet

This project was my first try on sewing leather. A doublet that would be legal as armor for SCA fencing and Cut and Thrust.

Most of my supplies for this project were bought at Tandy Leather, and I'll add a list of the links at the bottom. As a disclaimer, I'm not affiliated with any of the brands or links that are published here.

The pattern that I used is the Woman's doublet from "The Modern Maker, Vol 2" by Mathew Gnagy, that I had already traced and cut from before.

First, I traced all the pattern pieces in the back side of the leather. I'm 5'9" so I used half a shoulder hide of medium weight leather. I tried tracing the pieces with tailor's chalk but it does not work well over the hairy surface, so I ended using a sharpie. The pieces are 2 backs, 2 fronts, 2 inner sleeves and 2 outer sleeves.

I cut all the pieces using lather shears. Technically you could use your fabric scissors, but it would just ruin them.

The next step is making all the holes. Leather is different that fabric in the sense that it is a solid piece instead of a weave of fiber, so the needles does not have a space to go through when sewing. Tring to make the holes with a needle would ruin your needles and your hands so holes need to be pre-punched before sewing.

Starting with the center back seam, I marked a half inch allowance in one of the back pieces and then clipped both back pieces together. This will ensure that all the holes are aligned while I'm punching them.

As an example, here is one of the sleeves with the seam allowance, pre punched and halfway sewn on the left side, and on the right a detail of the punched holes.

To punch the holes there are many alternatives, but I'm using these two: The left one is a manual punching press and the right one is a plier set. Both use sharp comb like chisels to go through the leather and each one came with a set of 1, 2 and 4 points, the latter ones you can see in the tools because they allow me to go faster while keeping all the holes aligned. What I did was to use the last hole punched as placeholder position for the leftmost point of the chisel and that way I make sure all the holes are equally spaced.

The press I've used for all seams except the armscythe, for which I asked my husband to punch the holes with the pliers because I'm not strong enough. The pliers are easier to use in small spaces where keeping the leather straight and flat is tricky.

After all the holes in a seam have been punched, is time to sew. I cut a length of waxed leather thread approximately 3 times the length of the seam and make a know in the middle. Using a leather needle I start sewing using a simple running stitch, using the know as stop in the beginning so the thread does not slide through. Once once side is done, I start again form the other side using the other half of the length of thread. Once the seam is finished, you should have a solid line of stitches on both sides.

In the picture above of the sleeve, you can see that I'm actually using 2 needles and in the left part you can see the finished seam. I thought it would be more efficient to use 2 needles and sew both sides at the same time alternating needles, but at the end they tangled too much and decided to go back to sewing one side fully first. I guess if you had a stitching saddle it would be easier to do, but I don't have access to one and this leather is too soft to try and use my knees as one.

Once both sides of the seam are finished, I just did a simple know on each end to secure them and cut any leftovers, of which you should have plenty. You can try and adjust the length of the thread to minimize the waste, but I prefer to have leftovers and minimize the knots in the seams.

When sewing fabric, this would be the point to iron the seam open and finish it in your preferred way. For leather is the same but instead of ironing you hammer the seam open to make sure it lays at flat as possible. To finish the leather seams I use leather double contact tape. I cut a length of the seam, attach one side to the piece as close to the seam as possible and then press the seam allowance to it.

If you want to have a sewn finish, you need to use again a running stitch but making sure that you only go through the seam allowance and going "inside" the leather in the piece so the stitches do not show on the outer side. This also means that you will need to pre punch a second set of holes in the middle of the seam allowance, or 0.25 inches from the border.

Once the seam is finished I start again with the next one. I prefer to do it this way to make sure I can lay flat all the pieces I need as I work on them. The order of the seams on the body of the doublet was:

Center Back
Shoulders
Sides
Armscyes

Attaching the sleeves is the very last seam done. If you want the full period look you can add the high collar and skirt.

Front picture of the test fitting with the body complete

Back picture of the test fitting with the body complete

During the construction of the doublet, I encountered one major problem and one minor problem: I had to set it aside for a couple of months between finishing the body and attaching the sleeves. The minor problem was that when I clipped the first sleeve into place so my husband could punch the holes I aligned it incorrectly and did not notice after the seam was done, but before finishing.

If we use the elbow as reference, doublet sleeves have an "inside" and an "outside" piece, but because of the shape of the armscye the seams do not align with the shoulder. Originally I clipped the sleeve using the seam as reference point to the shoulder so when I tried it I had a sleeve that bulged on a side of the elbow and was tight on the other. The fix for this was to undo the seam, turn the body and the sleeve of the doublet inside out, try on the body and the sleeve separately making sure the sleeve was comfortable and draw a mark on the point the sleeve aligned with the shoulder seam.

The major problem was that after months of pause, the doublet did not fit me anymore. If I tried to close it my bust was extremely tight and uncomfortable. Going back to the Modern Maker Vol2, a friend pointed to me that in the woman's doublet there was a note about some tailoring that needed to be done at bust level so the front fit correctly.

This was a couple of darts (one on each side) that same from the front border to the bust. They could allow the front to lay straight and fit better when closing in.

Turning the doublet body inside out, we marked the length and depth of the dart, then I cut it open and closed it in.

When working in fabric, an adjustment like this would be barely noticeable because fabric is very supple and flexible. Because leather is thicker, the darts were very stiff and the corners difficult to make lay flat, so I was afraid that I had made the tailoring incorrectly and had to scrap at least the doublet front.

After checking with my friend, they said that the tailoring was correct, and to make sure the fit was comfortable I could set buttons on either side of the front and use a central panel to close it. But before doing that I needed to sew on the sleeves.

These are the links to the supplies I used:

Leather: Purple Denver side (https://tandyleather.com/products/9074-100-denver-leather-sides?_pos=2&_sid=906c260d4&_ss=r&variant=39420360261763)
Thread: Waxed Nylon Thread (https://tandyleather.com/collections/supplies/products/waxed-nylon-thread-25-yards)
Double Contact tape: Tanner's Bonde Permanent adhesive tape (https://tandyleather.com/collections/supplies/products/2535-650-tanners-bond-adhesive-tape)
Punching press: FASTTOBUY Manual Punching Press (https://a.co/d/eQj4uv2)
Punching pliers: BUTUZE Leather punch pliers (https://a.co/d/2V49LZ0)

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