One piece sleeves

[RetiredCanuck]

I've been doing a fair amount of reading on well-written articles describing and showing original Confederate shell jackets.
Noted that one or two have one-piece sleeves.

Saves one seam, but makes it harder to align top and bottom with the grain of the fabric.

How common was this?

 

[RedRover]

I've been doing a fair amount of reading on well-written articles describing and showing original Confederate shell jackets.
Noted that one or two have one-piece sleeves.

Saves one seam, but makes it harder to align top and bottom with the grain of the fabric.

How common was this?

Devere's tailoring books of the 1850s and 60s include the mode of drafting one-piece sleeves for men's garments. Evidently common for sack coats, and as you mention, many Confederate military jackets cut the same way.

The common cut was the two-piece sleeve, hollowed more or less in the forepart, as with this military jacket draft of the era...

The Tailor's guide: a complete system of cutting every kind of garment to measure, containing upwards of five hundred diagrams

Digitized content from the collections of Cornell University Library

digital.library.cornell.edu

Devere's 1866 work, reprinted by R.L. Shep some years back, has a more thorough description of correctly cutting a one-piece sleeve.

Cutting the sleeves in one piece Makes the sleeve somewhat larger, as the forepart is cut straight, on a fold.

Mr. Acton's 1862 book shows same.

 

[RetiredCanuck]

The post above shows one disadvantage of the one-piece construction.
Namely you must have a straight edge on the fold line. You cannot contour the inner portion the way the outer seam is shown.

 

[RedRover]

The post above shows one disadvantage of the one-piece construction.
Namely you must have a straight edge on the fold line. You cannot contour the inner portion the way the outer seam is shown.

Indeed. uses more cloth. The only advantages being lack of necessity to sew the missing seam, and more ease to the wearer.