Sail Making Tutorial

[rock raider]

I needed to make the final sails for HMS BIRCH so I thought this would be a good opportunity to show my method for sail making. I based this technique on tutorials from this forum as well as some model ship forums along with some of my own intuition and experimentation. This tutorial is for making fairly realistic sails. If you are trying to make sails in the style of official Lego sails, I recommend you check out this topic on reproducing Lego sails from which I took inspiration. 

To start, make paper templates of the sails you want to make. Then trace them onto your fabric. I'm using calico because it has a natural color, it's thin and is pretty inexpensive.

Next, cut out your sails being sure to leave at least half an inch around the edges. This border will allow you to hem the edges later but you want to leave more than your intended hem to account for the fraying of the fabric.

Then, using a pencil and a ruler, draw lines to mark where you will sew a stitch to represent the seam between panels of sailcloth. In historical ships, panels were usually between 18 and 42 inches wide depending on what country they were made in the type of sail. I spaced my seams at 3/4 inch for square sails and 1/2 inch for triangular sails. Here is a great reference on sails.

Now you can sew the fake seams. The pencil lines make it much easier to sew a straight line and it is very obvious on the final product if your lines aren't parallel.

I'm no seamstress but I understand that you should backstitch at the ends of the stitch to prevent it from unraveling. I usually go 1/4 inch past the edge of the sail for this.

Now we apply art gesso to slightly stiffen the fabric and prevent further fraying. I applied a mixture of one part gesso to 3 parts water to both sides using a cheap paintbrush.

Then hang them up to dry for a few hours. I usually hang them outside but it was cold and rainy.

I usually iron the sails briefly to make sure they are flat before proceeding. Then, mark a line 1/4 inch from the edge of the final sail and cut it out. This will be our hemmed edge.

Fold over the edge using a ruler. This is your last opportunity to make sure the line is straight. I've noticed that tracing on a flexible fabric can lead to lines that are slightly curved but I don't sweat it because I know I can fix it here.

Finally, sew your hem. You can also glue or sew in some string to use as attachment points for your sheets and halyards to make attaching your sails to your ship easier later.

 

And you've done it! Your ships will be the fastest on the seas! Please let me know if you have any questions or if anything is unclear. This is my first time trying to make a tutorial so I hope you find it useful.

 

Edited March 3, 2021 by Brickander Brickumnus
Indexed

[deraven]

Those look great!  Thanks for the write-up!  

[evancelt]

Thanks for sharing! They look awesome

[LegoAUT]

I just saw this - wow!