I promised myself I would post at least one piece of clothing this week, so as to keep motivated as far as painting is concerned. I started working on a very simple vest for James, then got distracted into making this West Point Military Academy jacket. James entered the Academy in 1844 and graduated second to the last in his class in 1847 for sheer want of discipline (just missing the honor of being the "goat").
The style of the cadet uniform has changed very little over the years. I thought this would be extremely easy to make: simple style, one color. Easy right? It was actually pretty tedious. All those little buttons! But I think the effect came out well. The grey color came out very nice, even if the collar got a little woggly. I will make some pantaloons to go along with this. Hopefully soon.
The only thing I might add are the buttons on the collar (you can see them here on the left from this example of the uniform from 1859).
I probably should have angled the top row of buttons and frogs more dramatically (to the shoulder line), but it was hard to tell precisely where the line should fall based on several other pictures. I'm not entirely sure what accounts for the mild variations.
Nevertheless, it was certainly fun to do this even if it took me a lot longer than I anticipated.
I'm going to continue working on the clothes for this doll throughout the weekend. I'll try to have another little piece or two done and posted in the coming week.
RSS Feed
