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A sentimental journey

By | May 8th, 2024|embroidery, equipment, laundry, tools|

 Years ago my sister-in-law gave me a laundry marking kit. It dates from before 1930, and was from her Dutch family stuff. It’s an attractive object, and, because it’s a gift from her, I’ve kept it through many moves.

In the box, there’s a bunch of thin metal sheet stencils, mostly copper. One sheet has part of an alphabet, another has the numbers 0 to 9, there’s repeating motif that looks like it’s for borders, three large fancy letters, a picture of a child with a hoop and stick, and, to my delight, a laurel border motif. The laurel stencil has never been used, and, oddly, is a grey metal. I’m guessing that it wasn’t part of the original kit.

To mark the fabric, there’s a brush, and a tiny china dish with a tablet of blue pigment. I’m guessing it’s the same chemical as laundry bluing – ferric ferrocyanide aka “Prussian blue”.

And the instructions. In three languages, which is oddly nostalgic. We’re so used to multi-lingual instructions; somehow, despite the olde timey font, it makes the kit seem more present.

As for what was originally in the kit, again, I’m guessing. Almost certainly, it had all the letters of the alphabet, though I suspect the fancy individual letters may have been bought separately. I have no idea how many border or image stencils it included. Maybe some came with it, and maybe, like the fancy letters, they might have been bought separately.

The kit has obviously been used; the brush is stained blue, some of the stencils have blue brush marks, and the surface of the pigment tablet has been wetted and rubbed – presumably with the brush.

There are also several things that don’t appear to belong – another tablet of pigment that’s too big for the dish, a pair of tweezers, a tiny ivory-handled crochet hook, and an ivory object that looks like it’s for cleaning under fingernails. I suspect that, at some point, someone tucked them into the box just because they fit.

But I’ve never actually explored using it until a convo with The Sempster nudged me into seeing how it works – or if it still works.

It does. I fished out a scrap of handkerchief linen, wetted the pigment, rubbed the brush over it, and marked the linen using one of the fancy letter stencils. I wet the pigment too much, so it came out wet & blurry, but, with a good light and a bit of squinting, one of the two marks was clear enough to embroider over. So I dug out a skein of cotton embroidery floss and did a bit of quick&dirty embroidery.

Then I washed out the blue. The marking material doesn’t wash out with just water, hot or cold. Since I don’t know how old it actually is, and might predate detergents, I used laundry soap. Though it took some persistence, and much hot water, it did eventually wash out

This was a sentimental practice run with a small, mundane object. Somewhere in the process, I realized that all of the napkins and handkerchiefs that I have that date back to the 1930s or earlier have embroidered monograms. I had assumed that that was just how it was done – a status marker, a way of saying “MINE!”.

That’s probably a large part of the reason, but, essentially, they’re marked so that the laundry gets the right piece back to the right person…

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Sequences, a project with three parents – a new book, change ringing, and Elizabethan samplers

By | April 5th, 2024|books, embroidery, knitting, math, Renaissance|

Cover of "Sequence Knitting - simple methods for creating complex fabrics"

I got this fascinating book last fall, just before we moved. It shows how to make an amazing array of textures and patterns with a weird mix of super-simple knit patterns and math. Or, in knitters’ terms, it uses short sequences of knit and purl stitches, repeated over and over and over and over – on at least one more stitch than multiples of the length of the sequence.

Which brings in the change ringing – recently I had a chance to participate in a demonstration of change ringing with hand bells at a Society for Creative Anachronism event. Change ringing is also pattern-making with short sequences. Instead of stitches, it uses tones, and repeats by starting each round at a different place in the sequence.

The other element is the Elizabethan whitework sampler, like this one in the Metropolitan Museum of Art – long&narrow, many patterns, one colour. Again, making a series of patterns with repeats of short sequences – this time stitches again, though thread through fabric rather than loops of yarn.

Weirdly, when I googled on “mathematics repeat “short sequences””  looking to see if there’s a name in mathematics for this kind of pattern making, it brought up pages&pages of information on short sequence repeats (SSRs) in DNA replication! Which is intriguing, and a little startling.

But, for now, I’m going to stay out of the DNA rabbit hole, and stick to repeating short sequences in a lovely pale grey merino/silk/yak yarn.

Here’s the first few:

1

  1. the whitework sampler in the Metropolitan Museum of Art: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/217955 ↩︎
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Found the culprit

By | April 8th, 2023|dyes, embroidery, silk|

Last year, when I was working on my blackworked half smock, I had a horrible shock when I washed the embroidered panels before assembling the smock – the black thread leaked a dark & murky purple.

Luckily, the purple mostly rinsed out, and the half smock looks OK.

Today, I was sorting through my studio stuff, and ran across a bag of the black silk threads I’d used, and decided to see if I could identify which one leaked dye. There were two kinds – Eterna, and a Chinese hand-dyed silk that I’d bought from Miriam’s at Pennsic (a Society for Creative Anachronism event).

I soaked each one in a small amount of water.

The culprit was the Eterna silk. Within a few minutes, the ten-centimeter length I used ran purple. I was truly horrified – and surprised. Eterna is lovely to work with and has an excellent reputation. Possibly an “off” lot – the ends were tied oddly, and left undyed spots in several places, which isn’t something I’d expect from Eterna. Sadly, it’s no longer in production, so I can’t buy another skein & see if it leaks too.

Silk floss from Miriam, soaked overnight, leaking pale yellow

I’d kinda expected it to be the Chinese hand-dyed silk from Miriam’s! It did leak a faint yellow – when I left a whole skein to soak overnight.

From now on, when I’m setting up to embroider something that will need washing, I’ll test the threads for leaking. And, just to be sure, will treat them with Raycafix, which somehow stabilizes the dye and keeps it from leaking.

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Roses, not fabric this time

By | March 7th, 2023|roses|

I love this rose! December 7, a bit stunned that it was still blooming, I cut a twig with a flower and a bud.

I put it in a vase, and changed the water from time to time, as one does. The flower bloomed, faded, and dropped its petals. The bud went through the same cycle. The leaves stayed green, or mostly green, so I kept changing the water occasionally.

Until the day I noticed that the bottom of the twig had developed tiny whitish bumps around the edge. They looked like the beginning of roots – wildly unlikely in a cutting taken on the seventh of December, and kept in a vase on the kitchen table. But I took a chance, and planted it in a slurry of water & potting soil, and gradually added more soil.

Three days ago I realized it was putting out new leaves! Yay Morden Sunrise! You’re an amazing rose!

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The blackworked half smock

By | April 13th, 2022|costume, embroidery, linen, Pent, silk|

The blackwork

In sixteenth century Europe, blackwork was the most fashionable and go-to style of embroidery for linens. The relatively simple materials required – linen, a contrasting fine fiber, and the ability to count threads – saw a veritable blooming of this intricate style of embroidery. Surviving examples include smocks, sleeves, coifs, forehead cloths, the occasional cushion, at least one skirt1, and many, many portraits.

Remaining examples of early medieval designs are highly geometric. There’s a strong resemblance between blackwork and a monochrome Middle Eastern embroidery technique which may have migrated to Europe from Egypt via Moorish Spain.

The example below is 13th-15th century, from Egypt2.

It was once thought that blackwork came to England with Catherine of Aragon, who arrived there in 1501. However, it was in use much earlier. One of the earliest literary appearances of blackwork can be found in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, written between 1387 and 1400. His description of the miller’s wife’s smock sounds like the classic double running stitch used in blackwork, where the pattern is the same on both sides3 :

Of white, too, was the dainty smock she wore, embroidered at the collar all about with coalblack silk, alike within and out.

Blackwork evolved rapidly to include a wide range of patterns; from intricate geometric repeats to an almost freeform style, lively with critters and fanciful flora.

Like the collar of the miller’s wife’s smock, the geometric motifs are sometimes reversible. A double running stitch and thread counting can permit the pattern to be the same on both sides. This method of blackwork embroidery is also known as Holbein stitch4 because of its frequent appearance in his portraits. It’s one of the few kinds of embroidery that follows the (totally unrealistic) Victorian conceit that embroidery should be as tidy on the back as on the front!

The cuff on the left in the image below5 is from the 1530 Holbein portrait of Jane Seymour. The embroidery painstakingly painted illustrates counted stitch blackwork being used to produce an intricate and delicate geometric pattern.

On the right is the slightly later portrait of Queen Elizabeth’s sleeve (from an unknown artist in 1590). Compared to the cuff, the sleeve demonstrates the evolution of blackwork from the early geometric style to the later freeform style.

The design

The collar, plackets, and cuffs of my linen waist smock are embroidered in the later, freeform style. The design was inspired by the front panels of the smock worn by Europa Anguissola in her sister Sofonisba’s painting The Chess Game6:

The motifs are an adaptation of those on this coif in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston7:

I adapted the design, adjusted the scale, redrew it, and added pea pods & snails for whimsy.

The finishing trim and ties are an adaptation in black of the crisp whipstitched cord edging and ties on the collar of this shirt from the collection of the Victoria & Albert Museum, which I also used as a model for the cut. I have used the rectangular cut8 of a shirt because, as the half smock only goes to the waist, it doesn’t need the hip width provided by the triangular gores that are used in women’s full-length smocks. The shirt is also shown in the well-loved Janet Arnold tome: Patterns of Fashion 4.9

For my half smock, the ground fabric is white handkerchief linen, and the thread is loosely-twisted black filament silk. The embroidery is mostly executed in stem stitch, with a sprinkling of others – such as spiderweb, stippling, blanket stitch, and herringbone – where the motif suggests it.

Assembly

For the main seams, the individual pieces are hemmed and assembled with a faggoting stitch. The other seams are clean-finished using whip stitch, slip stitch, or flat felled, where appropriate.

The strings at the neck and cuffs are fingerloop braided from buttonhole-weight spun silk. To keep the front panels in line, I made a hook and sewed it in below the placket. It’s made of 18 gauge brass wire, formed with pliers, and work hardened in a tumbler. It fastens with a thread loop, which is less likely to unhook than a matching metal one would be.

Comments Regarding Blackwork and The Internet

Today, April 13th, 2022, searching for “blackwork embroidery” on the web brought up 2,780,000 hits. I included “embroidery” in the search terms because just “blackwork” brings up a lot of tattoo pages, which are sometimes interesting, but usually irrelevant. Many of the “embroidery” pages are also irrelevant to research: touting clothing, commercial embroidery services, supply sales, kits etc. However, if you have the patience to wade through the distractions, there is a lot of good, solid information and research out there. A very deep rabbit hole – easy to lose an afternoon in.

  1. The Museum of London, accession # 59.77b. [↩]
  2. Textile Museum of Canada, accession # T88.0029, retrieved from https://collections.textilemuseum.ca/collection/4957/ [↩]
  3. The Canterbury Tales, 1435, Duke Classics, eBook, ISBN 978-1-62013-113-8, P. 324 [↩]
  4. Eaton, Jan. Mary Thomas’s Dictionary of Embroidery Stitches, Revised by Jan Eaton. London: Hodder&Stoughton, 1989. ISBN 0-340-51075-7 [↩]
  5. Image from Wikimedia Commons; supplied by By PKM – Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5793298 [↩]
  6. Image from Wikimedia Commons; supplied by the National Museum in Poznań, https //en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Game_of_Chess_(Sofonisba_Anguissola) [↩]
  7. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Accession Number 1996.51 [↩]
  8. Victoria and Albert Museum, Accession Number T.112-1972 [↩]
  9. Arnold, Janet et. al., Patterns of Fashion 4 c. 1540-1660, The cut and construction of linen shirts, smocks, neckwear, headwear and accessories for men and women, Macmillan, London, ISBN 878-0-333-57082-1, 2008, p. 17 [↩]
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Do your #!&@!! research!

By | January 2nd, 2022|books, dyes, rants|

A caution to authors: no matter how well you know your subject, no matter how deeply you’ve researched it, also research your tangential comments. Getting a detail wrong can torpedo your credibility.

A case in point: I’ve just taken The Empire of Cotton out of the library. Been waiting for it for a while & was eager to start listening. Within the first ten minutes – literally – the author made six blanket statements about pre-industrial textiles in Europe that I know are flat out wrong.

The biggest clunker is:

“[your clothes] are largely monochromatic since, unlike cottons, wool and other natural fibres do not take colours very well”

  • really? Had the author done ANY research on pre-industrial dyes? Any at all? Or even looked at paintings of the period? While linen takes colour indifferently, wool accepts dyes just fine, and silk dyes magnificently!

Other dubious “facts”:

“you wake up in the morning in a bed covered in fur or straw”

  • while fur is nice & warm, and straw certainly was used – even in the 20th century, I had occasion to sleep on a paillasse – your pre-industrial bedding might include, among other things, wool, feathers, down, linen, hemp, and, if you’re super-rich, possibly even silk. Not just fur&straw 

“it is hard to wash your clothes”

  • linens, and some wools, are easy to wash

“you change [your clothes] irregularly”

  • most people in Europe wore linen next to the skin and changed these body linens routinely, even daily if they could afford it.

“[your clothes] smell”

  • while standards were less exacting than today’s, stinky clothes were not the norm. Cleanliness was important – one of the functions of body linens was to protect the outer clothes.

“…and scratch”

  • not all wools scratch, most linens don’t scratch, and I’ve never met a scratchy silk

He did get one thing right:

“[your clothes] are expensive or, if you make your own, labour intensive”. Actually, if someone makes them for you, they’re still labour intensive.

The author appears to have been trying to set up his book’s background with a quick gallop through the conditions preceding his main subject. Which is fine; he wasn’t writing about the pre-industrial rag trade. But making pronouncements based on assumptions that seem to come from a combination of “everybody knows” & entertainment industry interpretations, was a mistake.

Now that I know he didn’t know what he was talking about in an area I know well, I wonder what else he got wrong. I’m going to return the book without finishing it. He may be 100% accurate about everything else, but how would I know?

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SO much easier…

By | September 19th, 2021|alterations, costume, cotton, linen, Renaissance, repairs, the stash|

My pretty blue fustian sottana was sideswiped by Covid. I’ve gained weight, and, if I didn’t alter it, I’d either have had to lace it up excruciatingly tight, or wear a stomacher.

While I could actually get the front edges to meet – for a few seconds  – it was way ridiculously too uncomfortably tight. And stomachers don’t appear to have been a thing in late 16th century Italy. Or, at least, I haven’t found a reference to one, or an image.

So alteration it was. Which is where the beauty of 16th century garment assembly came to the fore.

When I originally made the sottana, I used 16th century techniques, finishing each component – the two fronts, the back, and the skirt – completely before final assembly. I’d catch stitched the seam allowances of the fashion fabric to the canvas interfacings, and slip stitched the bodies linings in. The skirt is flatlined, and I and stitched the raw edges of the skirt lining under to hide the raggedy shuttleless loom selvedges. Then I whip stitched the seams of the bodies, applied the trim, stitched the skirt to the bodies, and, finally, sewed the trim to the bottom of the skirt.

Lots of hand sewing, and a clean finish all around, which made adding the extra SO much easier. (And easily reversible, if I ever lose the weight! )

Rather than having a bunch of raw edges to contend with when I unpicked the seam where I wanted to add the extra fabric, there was a nice, clean, finish, all ready to pop the extensions in.

It needed about 2.5 centimetres/1 inch  width added on each side. I had plenty of fabric left to make the alterations – almost a meter of the fustian, and lots of the washed canvas & muslin that I’d used for the interlining and lining.

Since the added piece was such a simple shape, I didn’t bother with making a pattern – I measured it out on the canvas, cut it out, and cut the fustian around the canvas, adding seam allowances. Then I followed the same process as with the original construction – catch stitching the seam allowances to the canvas interfacing, slip stitching the lining in, and whip stitching the finished extensions into place.

Alterations - the top of the insertion, with the seam allowances catch stitched to the interlining
Lining side of completed inserts for sottana bodies
Right side of completed inserts for sottana bodies
Whip stitch in progress
Inside view of fustian sottana bodies, showing alteration - strips sewn in to add girth

Once that was done, I tried the sottana on just to be sure the alteration fit. It does; and I put it up on my judy to photograph it. Kinda disappointing. It looked OK; just … OK.

So I had a dig through my stash to see if I had some of the original tape that I’d used as trim left to cover the extra seam in the bodies. I did, but not enough, so I went to Mokuba to see if they still carry it. They do – and they have a narrower version, which is in even better proportion. I splurged a kingly $2.49 for a meter.

Because the sottana is made to be washable, and I’d pre-shrunk all the elements, I soaked the tape in hot water, then dried it in the sun. Once it was dry, I ironed it and sewed it on over the extra seams.

Luckily, to sew the skirt back on, I didn’t have to re-gather it – cartridge pleats are flexible, and I’d stabilized them with lots of stitching on the inside. All I had to do was pick back the stitches joining the skirt to the bodies a few centimetres either side of where I added the width, and the cartridge pleats graciously agreed to expand enough to accommodate the extra girth.

All in all, the “finish each part, then assemble the whole” method of construction makes alterations SO much easier. I didn’t have to contend with clipped seam allowances, raw edges, re-gathering the skirt, or the general messiness of tidying the whole thing up. All I had to do was unpick two seams and a bit of a third, make the extensions, sew them in, and re-attach the skirt.

I suspect it also would make repurposing parts of worn-out clothing a lot easier. I haven’t seen any examples, but I wonder if there were some Frankenstein garments out there, with the front from one, the back from another, the sleeves from a third, and so on.

Fabric was precious; people wanted to get as much mileage out of it as possible, so it wouldn’t surprise me! Not at all!

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At last, The Stockings

By | April 21st, 2021|clothes moths, cochineal, damage, dyes, fibers, knitting, madder, mistakes, Pent, repairs, SCA, scouring, wool|

My Eleonora of Toledo-inspired stockings have been an adventure – with more than its share of misadventure – but they’re done and I’m delighted! [1]

After a couple trial runs, I started work on them five years ago. Though there’s an excellent pattern available on Ravelry [2], it’s in a heavier gauge than I wanted. It’s also faithful to the surface design of the originals, and I wanted to tweak a couple of details.

So I developed my own pattern. Most of it is based it on information gleaned from the Medici Archive, who hold the actual stockings. At the time, they had high-resolution images available on their website. [3]

As I intend to wear the stockings, they are not a line-for-line copy.

  • the originals are silk; mine are wool, which I prefer because of its resilience, knitting qualities, comfort – and ease of repair
  • the original stockings look baggy in the calf and foot. The decreases for the calf are far too low on the leg to fit me, and the feet are too thick. Perhaps, after at least eleven pregnancies, Eleonora’s feet and ankles were somewhat the worse for wear. Whatever the issues, the stockings wouldn’t have been practical in their original form, so I adjusted the shaping.

In a period-consistent manner, I tweaked minor details of the surface patterning that didn’t appeal to me

  • on the cuff, I used purl squares instead of eyelets in the centre of the diamond pattern and omitted the second zigag at the edge
  • on the widest leg panel, I substituted a chequerboard pattern for the ladder effect of the originals
  • And finally, though the original stockings may have been knit flat and seamed up the back [4], I knit them in the round. Strictly personal preference. By the sixteenth century, knitting in the round was known – the Virgin Mary, in this 15th century painting by Master Bertram of Minden, is clearly knitting a garment in the round

  • The heels and feet are mostly educated guesswork. Unfortunately, all the available detailed images were of the stockings in profile. None showed the back of the stocking or the sole face-on, so I based the shaping on Richard Rutt’s diagram of feet of 16th century knitted silk stockings.[5]

That heel pattern has an odd little quirk – since the heel flap is rectangular, there’s a small nub left sticking out when it’s worn. My daughter, who modelled the stockings for the pics, tells me she didn’t even feel it. It’s kinda cute, though I expect it’ll eventually flatten & felt into the sole with wear & sweat.

From the Medici Archive images of the stockings, I guesstimated that the originals were knit at ~18-20 stitches per 2.5cm, and found a cobweb-weight yarn in wool white that knits up at 18st/2.5cm on 1mm needles over one of the leg patterns.

I scoured the yarn, dyed it with madder, then overdyed it with cochineal, made a gauge swatch and started knitting.

The first stocking went smoothly. It took about six months, which I felt pretty good about, seeing as I was knitting a complicated pattern on tiny needles in my “spare” time.

With the second stocking, the “adventure” set in.

First of all, when I got the yarn out, I discovered that, for some reason that still eludes me, about half the remaining yarn was darker than the yarn I’d knit the first stocking with. No idea how or why – it was the same dye lot of the same yarn, scoured and dyed at the same time, and had looked the same when I started knitting.

Rather than have an abrupt colour change somewhere, I decided to knit alternating the two shades throughout the stocking, even though it would make the second stocking a bit darker than the first one.

Then I went in for foot surgery, and continued knitting while convalescing.

Big mistake.

Never, ever, work on anything more complex than a garter stitch dishcloth when under the influence of heavy-duty painkillers! I’d nearly finished the second stocking when I realized I’d knit the foot off the wrong side – since the stocking is shaped at the calf, it matters which side the foot comes off of! I ripped it back, reestablished the pattern, and decided to put it away until I was less annoyed with myself.

Life happened, and it was a couple of years before I picked the project up again. At which point I discovered that, though I thought I’d packed it away carefully, moths had gotten at it. I wrapped it up & stuck it in the freezer, where it sat for a year or so.

Finally, I picked it up a couple of months ago, and started darning the moth holes. That took a while – darning many, many, moth holes can be tiresome. Luckily, the surface pattern is so busy that the darns barely show!

When the darning was done, I started knitting the foot again, and discovered that my notes from the first stocking were vague in spots, so I had to reinvent the toe decreases.

My daughter modelled the stockings so that I could take the pics. In the process, a couple more moth-weakened strands gave way, so there was some more darning.

And now the stockings are done. Despite all the mistakes, mends and imperfections, I’m thoroughly pleased with them and  eagerly waiting for a suitable SCA[6] event to wear them to!

And just for the fun of it, here’s a pic of the sole. Turned out that the stitch count worked out so that I was able to continue the pattern all the way around the foot!

[1] Because of copyright concerns, I haven’t included an image of the original Eleonora of Toledo stockings. If you want to see an image, and more information, have a look at this article; they’re on page four: https://kemeresearch.com/files/ATR_60_2018_pp3-9_Malcolm-Davies_FINAL.pdf

[2] https://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/eleonora-di-toledo-stockings-first-edition

[3] The images I used are no longer available on the Medici Archive project at https://www.medici.org/ . I have no idea why.

[4] Currently, there doesn’t seem to be information available on some details of the stockings, including what the gauge is, how the feet were made, and whether they were knit flat or in the round. So, while it’s not 100% certain that they were knit flat, the interpretive text at the Palazzo Pitti, where they’re displayed, said “The closure seam is at the centre back”, and Richard Rutt’s text indicates that 16th century stockings were sewn up the back, so I went with that. Or rather, decided not to go with that.

[5] Richard Rutt, A History of Hand Knitting, Loveland, Colorado, Interweave Press, 1987, p.74

[6] Society for Creative Anachronism

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The infamous “somewhere safe”.

By | August 21st, 2020|Uncategorized|

Early this year – before Covid and well before my enforced broken-wristed hiatus from handwork, I discovered that the cuff bands I’d embroidered for my blackwork “waist smock”[1] were too wide. I’d sewn one ruffle to its band, and the proportions were all wrong. So I unpicked the ruffle and put it somewhere safe.

I designed & embroidered a new, narrower, pair of cuff bands. It took a while. Then, in the classic “I put it somewhere safe” way, I couldn’t find the ruffle that I’d taken off the too-wide band, and I’ve been looking for it sporadically ever since.

Today, while cleaning out the outside compartment of my old brown handbag, I finally found it. Neatly folded in a snack-size Ziploc, nestled in among the crumpled tissues and random receipts.

Thinking back, I realize I’d been intending to get more of the edging cord, and had put it in the handbag so I’d have it with me the next time I went by Mokuba. Which, in those days, was usually at least once a week.

Not this time. Covid intervened, Mokuba closed for the duration, and by the time I’d finished the new cuff bands, the idea of casually dropping by a shop for a couple of meters of cord had drifted away in this year’s confusions.

When I found the errant ruffle, I was so delighted that I put today’s plans on hold, gathered it, pinned it, sewed it on to the new, narrow, band, ironed it and took a picture.

Tomorrow I’ll go to Mokuba and buy the cord, and finally be able to get on with finishing the waist smock.

Next day: it seems Covid is still with us. Mokuba is only open four days a week right now – Monday through Thursday. Today is Saturday, so cord acquisition is now scheduled for Monday 😊

[1] Ninya Mikhaila of Tudor Tailor fame kindly provided me with documentation of a “waist smock”, which sounds pretty much like partlet with attached sleeves. (the will of Joan Smyth, a widow from Essex in Emmison, F – ed (1998) Essex Wills: The Bishop of London’s Commissary Court 1587-1599, Chelmsford: Essex Record Office, item 1186)

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The Fustian Chronicles – part one

By | March 27th, 2020|costume, cotton, Italy, linen, Renaissance, SCA, the stash|

In the late middle ages and Renaissance, “fustian” meant an affordable fabric woven of two kinds of fibre – cotton & linen, or cotton & wool, or linen & wool.[1]

A lot of historical novels I’ve read mentioned fustian. It’s one of those words, like “curricle” or “cotehardie” that writers use to position their work in past time. It’s not something you’ll find in a present-day fabric shop unless it’s one that specializes in textiles for historical reenactors.

Last summer at Pennsic, a reenactment event that features a marketplace full of supplies for reenactors, I found a generous remnant of cotton/linen fustian and decided to make an “everyday” sottana of it, loosely based on what the women in Vincenzo Campi’s  lively kitchen scene are wearing.

All of the materials I used would have been available in the late Renaissance, aside from a package of olive green iDye and a meter or so of synthetic whalebone.[2]

The materials:

  • blue fustian fashion fabric
  • “natural” cotton canvas interlining
  • “natural” cotton muslin bodice lining
  • lightweight linen for the skirt lining, dyed olive green [3]
  • synthetic whalebone to reinforce the front edges of the bodice
  • a small remnant (aka cabbage)[4] of silk for reinforcing the corners of the front neckline
  • 21 brass aiglets. 20 are for the points tying the sleeves on, and the 21st is a tiny one for the lacing cord. I made that one myself . It’s my first attempt at making an aiglet, and I’m quite pleased with it. The lacing holes came out very, very small, and the purchased aiglets I have are too big to pass through them without using pliers
  • a largish piece of cabbage of lightweight olive green wool for the sleeves
  • cotton and linen threads for assembly, and, for touch of luxury, silk threads to make the eyelets and the lacing cord
  • two kinds of black cotton braid – herringbone-patterned for the trim, and plain tabby weave for the sleeve points. Sewing the herringbone braid on, I discovered it has a tendency to pick up dust & cat hair. Luckily, it cleans up easily with a lint roller!

Except for the fustian and the braids for trim, all of the materials, including the packet of iDye, were from my stash! (Though I did have to buy some salt to add to the dye.)

For the bodice pattern, I used one that I had drafted a while ago. It was designed to side lace, but that was an easy fix – I turned the lacing edges into seams and created a centre-front opening. Then I made a muslin out of sturdy cotton canvas, tweaked the fit, and used the muslin as the underlining of the bodice.

Instead of bag-lining the bodice, I assembled it Renaissance-style. To minimize bulk at the shoulders, I sewed the shoulder straps in position and trimmed the excess fabric. Then I catch stitched the seam allowances over the canvas underlining, and slip stitched the lining in.

Once that was done, I whip stitched the pieces together and made the eyelets.

There’s no pattern for the skirt – it’s two full widths of the fustian, flat-lined, seamed at the centre front and back, and with the front seam left open for about thirty centimeters at the top so that I can get into the garment.

On the right hand side of the skirt I’ve made a fitchet – an opening so that I can reach my tie-on pocket. The edges of the fitchet are bound with a piece of navy blue linen from my cabbage basket.

To gather the skirt to fit the bodice, I used cartridge pleats. I like cartridge pleats a lot, and use them whenever they’re appropriate.

For the hem, I tried an experiment. I like padded hems; I like the way they make a skirt hang & move. For padding, I usually use wool felt. This time, because I want this sottana to be washable, and wool felt shrinks and gets lumpy, I used multiple layers of the fustian – seven if I remember correctly. It works as well as the felt!

The sottana is fully lined, and, aside from the long seams on the skirt and sleeves, it’s hand-sewn. Up to and including flat-felling the sleeve seams and the skirt seams where the raggedy shuttleless loom selvedges showed.

Between catch stitching the seam allowances, sewing in the linings, whip stitching the pieces together, clean-finishing the seams, hemming the top&bottom of the sleeves, making the eyelets, making the points, and sewing on the trim, it was a LOT of hand sewing!

Luckily, I enjoy hand sewing, and, all in all, I’m satisfied with how this project turned out!

[1]the meaning of “fustian” has changed with time – in the late middle ages/Renaissance it meant a fabric woven of two kinds of fibre. By the nineteenth century, “fustian” meant cotton fabrics with a short, brushed pile, like corduroy. By the late 20th century, the word had become an archaism.

[2] I’m ignoring the fact that the materials were made with present-day processes rather than being organically grown, hand-harvested, plant dyed, etc. etc. And, though I’m not against all use of animal products, hunting whales is inexcusable in today’s world – therefore the synthetic whalebone.

[3] originally, this lining linen was bright egg yolk yellow. Linen is heavy, so when I found this cheap & lightweight linen, I bought a lot of it even though it’s a colour I wouldn’t usually choose – yellow is easy to overdye. Which I did. With iDye. In the washing machine.

[4] “cabbage” was the medieval/renaissance term for the fabric left over from making a garment, and the tailor got to keep it!

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