i am making a cosplay and decided to show off the gambeson here in case anyone wanted to make their own. gambesons are definitely an intermediate to advanced project! the later stages need either a lot of hand sewing or a heavy duty machine that can handle multiple layers of fabric and batting.

if i could have bought a gambeson instead, i absolutely would. but i'm a very short woman with about twelve years of experience making clothes and costumes, and any gambeson available online would need altering anyway. so i made this from scratch.

i drafted the base pattern from the sleeved block section in 'the medieval tailor's assistant' by sarah thursfield. pretty simple alterations were lengthening it to the knees, putting center seams for vents, and not fitting it at the waist.

this is meant to be a light pullover gambeson for use under a hauberk. i sandwiched very thin cotton batting between two layers of cotton canvas and a third layer of a cotton print, and sewed parallel quilting lines about an inch and a half apart.

i could sew the quilting lines with no problem, as well as sewing the bodice together. however, the sleeves made the whole thing too thick to go through my machine and i had to sew them into the armscye by hand. i also whip-stitched the hems by hand because i couldn't easily pin them and the weight kept pulling the whole garment away from the feed dogs so seams kept slanting.

it is closed with buttons at the neck. the sleeves are laced shut with a bit of ease for bending my arms.

getting in and out is a bit difficult because of the stiffness, but once on it's pretty comfy, like a winter coat. my range of movement is about 95%--i can lift my arms completely over my head, swing them in a circle, and basically any combat based movement like swinging a sword should be unhindered. i just can't reach across my own body to do the buttons without a crochet hook or some help, lol.

this took me 6 months to finish, but i have two jobs so i was basically only able to sew on my days off. a time saving option would definitely be to use pre-quilted fabric. i could have also tried quilting pins instead of regular straight pins, but i don't know if i will do any more quilting projects so i didn't bother.

despite tearing my hair out at all the handsewing, i'm quite satisfied with how this turned out except for a few veeeeeery small details.

i made a gambeson!