An idiot’s guide to making cdrama period dress - the Wen Ke Xing edition.
Like many people, I was sucked into the cdrama Word of Honor and it has consumed more of my life than I’d like to admit. I’m always big into making character outfits under the pretense of a great Halloween costume, but really, I should come clean that I just like to do some cosplay/historical dress/fun outfits. Thank you pandemic lockdown and lack of traveling; I really got into historical dress youtubers and it shows in my new interest in natural fibers and vintage patterns.
My goal is the make a full replica of the following outfit from the show.
I chose this one for several reasons.
i.) this is one of the simpler outfits that WKX wears. The outer green jacket has a fairly straight cut in front and has unstructured shoulders.
ii.) the blue and red layers and both following a ‘long shirt’ pattern, and again are simple in structure.
iii.) the belt is also a large band with a red cord as the major accent.
iv.) color scheme; I personally prefer his blue/green/purple outfits and I like the pop of red he frequently wears as a part of layer 2, a reference to his role as the ghost valley master.
With this in mind, I did some research using ye olde interwebs. I tried to find resources, but they are rather limited in English. I can find tons of images for patterns in Chinese with an image search, but what I want is a step by step guide for how to sew it together and to know what parts can be modified and what parts have to be kept constant.
There is a website with resources based in Toronto, but I suspect this was written by an engineer based on how text heavy it is and the use of a CAD program.
https://torguqin.wordpress.com/hanfu/hanfu-tutorial-list/
I’ve read it several times over and as someone with sewing experience, I would have preferred more pictures. Maybe this makes more sense to other readers, but I felt pretty meh about it.
I turned to finding a more traditional pattern making guide and purchased this book; Hanfu Pattern Making by TT Duong. It is available as an ebook on Amazon with both metric and English units.
I chose the English units version as I’m currently in the States. Sure, I could have gotten the metric one - I use metric for my job and lived in Canada for 5 years for work meaning I only do temperatures in Celsius but but but. . . . I bought my sewing machine in the States and the seam allowance markers are all in inches. American scientist problems, am I right?
The Hanfu Pattern Making book is fairly easy to understand; the major concepts for making a wide variety of garments and highlights the mix and match abilities of them as well. This was how I determined that the red and blue layers of WKX’s outfit are following the long shirt pattern shown here. I think this corresponds to the Zhiju/直裾 - straight-hem robe as described by @ziseviolet
Most importantly, the book helps you estimate the total yardage of fabric you will need and instructs how to lay the pattern down on the fabric and how to cut it out according to the grain line and selvedge. This is critical for getting the correct draping effect with the fabric and will it allow to fit and flow better when you are wearing it.
With the wider teardrop shaped sleeves, I decided on an extra yard of fabric. I’m still not sure if this will be enough - I may need to make it a little less curved and not quite as wide but I’ll update as necessary.
This requires you to draft your pattern ‘from scratch’ and I can already state that a mock-up will be essential. The guide also has estimates e.g. a curve of 4-6″ at the base so make sure you are consistent with your choices. I am going to give a suggested order of events on how to most efficiently establish your workflow.
Fabric selection:
Although a bit counter-intuitive, I chose to purchase my fabric first. After over thirty minutes of searching for good fabric matches from domestic suppliers ranging from Mood to JoAnn’s to my aunt’s sister’s shop, I realized it would be easier to [gasp] order fabric directly from China even with a variable shipping time. Plus, I could find patterns that are much closer matches to the original than anything here in the States.
I picked a bamboo fabric for the coat in a baby green color ordering 4m which is ~4 yards.
The fabric was in stock and shipped out fairly quickly and cleared customs without issue arriving 20 days faster than expected.
For the blue layer ( Zhiju/直裾 - straight-hem robe?) I went with this fabric with a leaf pattern. I choose it as a color match, not as a pattern match since I couldn’t find any fabrics in dusty blue with blades of grass. I also ordered 4m, again ~4 yards.
Unfortunately, this was still in production when I ordered it and I’m currently waiting for it to ship out. The seller has updated me on the status and I’m hoping it ships out soon. Update - my blue fabric arrived safely in the States, 1 day after the original predicted delivery date. Nice! I would highly recommend this fabric seller; excellent customer service.
The red layer ( Zhiju/直裾 - straight-hem robe?) I decided to save some money and purchase a cotton fabric locally at JoAnn’s. I wanted cotton since it breathes and something that looked close-ish but under $10/yard. I chose this cotton calico, which normally would be used for quilting, but the calicos have abstract patterns that mimic the patterns woven into silk. I bought 4 yards.
Update - I had to buy another 1.5 yards b/c I couldn’t quite fit my pieces; the fabric isn’t very wide and my sleeves were going to end up too short. Double check the width of your fabric. Unlike the imported fabrics this fabric was pretty short for width compared to other fabrics.
I may change my mind in the future and upgrade it also to silk but for right now I’m curious to see if it works out fine as it is only the second layer.
For the white Zhong Yi/中衣 (middle clothes) first layer, I just got basic cotton twill, and purchased 3 yards. I’m not including a picture b/c it is just basic white cotton.
Lastly, I bought 4 yards of white cotton muslin at $6/yard to make a mock-up. Also no fun picture of crappy fabric for you.
Make sure to wash and iron all of your fabric before using! I washed the cotton on cold with an unscented detergent air-dried it and then ironed out major wrinkles.
Drafting the pattern:
Following the directions in Hanfu Pattern Making, I took a bunch of measurements of myself. This would likely be slightly more accurate if someone else did this for me, but I live alone and my cat isn’t capable of assisting me. The fact that the book tells you exactly what to measure and then how to apply it, is vastly easier than the link above (sorry likely Canadian engineer).
The measurements allow you to plug and play to generate your draft pattern. This was my first sketch, which is rough and not drawn to scale.
On the left you can see the measurement for various parts. Above was my first attempt for layer 2. For the flare at the base, I chose 4″ and followed the suggested 3/4″ curve.
back armpit measurement is equal to: 1/4 bust + 5/8″
my bust is 32″, so 1/4 is 8″ and I add 5/8″ to that = 8 and 5/8″
waist is equal to: 1/2 waist + 2″
my waist is 27.5″, so 13.75″ (13 and 3/4″) + 2″ = 15.75″ (15 and 3/4″)
Therefore, once you are done calculating the various measurements you can add them onto a rough sketch of the shape of the pattern.
I choose to start with what the book refers to as layer 2 for my initial measurements. This is because I wanted to do the mock-up to correspond to the red second layer. I don’t think it matters which layer you decide to start from since you will either be adding or subtracting from a layer to change to the one above or below it.
With my Hokkaido cat notebook in hand, filled with my notes and numbers, I drafted the pattern. For drafting paper, I went to Target and bought gift wrapping paper as it has a grid pattern on the backside. This pattern is massive, even with my kitchen table, I still couldn’t fit all of it on my cardboard cutting guide! You can’t clearly see the grid on the ‘wrong’ side of the wrapping paper, but it is there. Since the wrapping paper wanted to curl, books were used on the corners and I didn’t need that many extra tools.
For drafting, I used a 2B pencil, the 2″ wide by 18″ long ruler with holes in the middle (from JoAnn’s) and the 12″ curve ruler. I also had a measuring tape to roughly mark of distance. I went over the pencil with a ballpoint pen once I decided on the lines and shape.
The curve of the neckline was the hardest part. I made an X in the corner of the neck line and an X at the waistline point. I then connected this with a straight line and at the halfway point took the line in by 1/2″ (towards the side of the body). The suggestion of the book is 3/4″, but I decided to be a little more conservative. I then gently made the slight curve by hand so that the most curved point was by 1/2″.
The armpit/shoulder is the next most difficult part. My sketch above isn’t quite correct, the 6″ should be doubled, 6″ for the front and 6″ for the back based on my measurements. You need to make sure that the armpit curves are in line with each other! I had the back one off and I had to erase it and redraw it.
I started with the initial curve of a 1″ armpit as suggested in the book. It says the curve can between 1/2″-2″. Note that the book is designed for a very small size range, from about 5′ to 5′5″ (152.4-165 cm) and I am 5′3″ (160 cm).
To make the curve, I used the curved ruler to trace a nice smooth line. Just make sure you use the same part of the ruler e.g. 1″ to 3″ or 9″ to 12″ etc. I went with the curve that looked the best.
This pattern doesn’t include seam allowance - you will have to add that on when cutting. To be most accurate, trace the pattern onto your fabric. I like to use the removable fabric markers like these:
You can then use the other color to mark out dots along the fabric for seam allowance, like 5/8″. If you can’t use fabric markers there are also removable mechanical pencils that come in yellow, magenta or you can be old school and use chalk.
I transferred the pattern to the cheap cotton muslin fabric and cut it out. There aren’t many seams to sew and I ignored the sleeves since I wanted to determine if the pattern fit me well. I placed the right sides together and first sewn together the back seam. After that I did the armpit/side seams, leaving the armpit unfinished on the end and check the fit. Already you can see that the neckline isn’t laying flat and the armpits are super tight.
I just grabbed a long scarf to tie it down and adjust the fit at the waist.
Leaning forward you can see the neckline is even more of a mess and the armpits are far to tight even though I am wearing a fitted t-shirt underneath (as this is layer two).
I went back to the drawing board to adjust the pattern. I kept my original pattern and added more paper to the armpit and neckline area to draft a new pattern and cut it out instead of a completely new draft since the waist down was totally fine, falling around my ankles.
This time I made a 2″ curve for the armpit, added more length to the armpit as well and only sewed the top with some scrap blue fabric. As you can see here, it was a more optimal armpit fit.
I also shifted the neckline curve to reduce it to 1/4″ instead of the 1/2″ from the first mock up. This was an excellent decision as it fit in the chest area much better. This is my sketch to reshape the neckline.
This is how it looked on me. Excellent!
The neck still looks wide because I haven’t added the neck placket but the fabric lays much more naturally. My conclusion to date is that if you don’t have a very large bust size, err on the side of making the neckline less curved.
What I also concluded from this mock up is that my measurements for layer 2 are more likely my layer 1 measurements since they were quite form fitting on top.
The next step (backwards compared to the suggested order in the book) was to add sleeves. I guessed what shape would work best and my first draft was terrible as shown here.
The bottom was too square and I was trying to figure it out based on this scene from the drama. I chose this model for the sleeve since you can tell that the white layer in WKX’s outfits has a relatively wide sleeve.
The only part that I used the pattern for reference was how to attach it to the armpit at the shoulder. The overall sleeve shape was just what I thought looked nice. Keep in mind that the shoulder seam sits fairly low on the shoulder compared to a modern garment. The seam line is a few inches down from the shoulder and you can see that the garment will naturally pucker in front of the armpit. In his several days of drunken sulking, you can see the seam line is even with the back of the chair.
The weight of the sleeve itself helps to hold the shoulder structure and it doesn’t pop up as you see on my second mock-up with the blue fabric.
I drastically reduced the size of the sleeve curve and made a pattern based on something that seemed alright. With all of this mock-up work done, I decided to turn to making the first layer, the Zhong Yi/中衣 which I have summarized as a separate post.
