Please forgive me if this has been discussed before but I couldn't find an answer to my questions so I will post them here.
My husband recently purchased a new artillery uniform (Chesnut Light Artillery impression). There were some fitting issues so it was necessary to take the entire jacket apart and refit it and now I am putting it back together. On taking it apart I noticed that the red piping that goes in several of the seams is very wide, about 1/4" in diameter. Also, the piping is made from a strip of red wool folded in half; there is no cord inserted into it to make a nice rounded edge. Is this typical, or should I insert a cord when I resew this? Would hand topstitching be appropriate on this type of uniform coat? When we received the coat it was machine topstitched about 2" from the edge, all around, in black thread machine stitch. This seems a little TOO far from the edge to me but I have never seen any original CW uniforms except pics of federal ones; my research in the Confederate area is very limited.
So:
1. How wide should the piping be?
2. Should the piping have a cord inserted into the strip that creates it?
3. Should the coat be topstitched?
4. How far from the edge should the topstitching be?
Thank you!
Sarah
My husband recently purchased a new artillery uniform (Chesnut Light Artillery impression). There were some fitting issues so it was necessary to take the entire jacket apart and refit it and now I am putting it back together. On taking it apart I noticed that the red piping that goes in several of the seams is very wide, about 1/4" in diameter. Also, the piping is made from a strip of red wool folded in half; there is no cord inserted into it to make a nice rounded edge. Is this typical, or should I insert a cord when I resew this? Would hand topstitching be appropriate on this type of uniform coat? When we received the coat it was machine topstitched about 2" from the edge, all around, in black thread machine stitch. This seems a little TOO far from the edge to me but I have never seen any original CW uniforms except pics of federal ones; my research in the Confederate area is very limited.
So:
1. How wide should the piping be?
2. Should the piping have a cord inserted into the strip that creates it?
3. Should the coat be topstitched?
4. How far from the edge should the topstitching be?
Thank you!
Sarah
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