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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When I originally made the sottana, I used 16th century techniques, finishing each component – the two fronts, the back, and the skirt – completely before final assembly.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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A fabriholic in Turin

By | September 19th, 2019|Uncategorized|

One of two larger-than-life statues of Sekhmet flanking the doors to the Museo Egizio in Turni

I spent most of last May in Italy with my sister at her farm near Turin, and, by a fluke of scheduling, finally got to wander around Turin’s legendary Museo Egizio, reputed to have the best collection of Egyptian artefacts outside of Cairo.

Due to the vagaries of flying on points, I arrived the day before she did, so I booked into a hotel, had a good night’s sleep and spent the day at the Museo.

The Museo’s contents blew my mind. There’s way too much there to see in one day, so (surprise) I focused on textiles. And even just the textiles had me wandering around in a daze, shooting left, right and centre with my phone camera, eventually ignoring most of the descriptions. And regretting that I had forgotten to get a set of supplementary lenses for my iPhone so that I could get decent close-ups & wide-angle shots.

Being a cat person, I was pleased and amused to see giant images of the goddess Sekhmet flanking the entrance. Time-worn and far from home, she still radiates a fierce dignity as she stands guard over this alien place.

The Gebelein textile

Dancing figure from the Gebelein textile

Anyway, there are SO many more surviving fabrics than I expected, starting with the Gebelein textile, which is the second object in the main gallery (the first object is, unsurprisingly, a mummy). The textile is painted, something like 5600 years old and the oldest piece of fabric in the collection. It’s fragmentary; of the parts that survive, my favourite is this charming little dancing figure.

The pleated dresses

More complete, and much more exciting are the pleated linen dresses. The Museo has about a dozen. I had no idea that they existed, never mind that that many survive!

One of the pleated dresses

Three are on exhibit – two shown flat and a third shown wrapped around the remains of its former owner. The didactic panels say that it isn’t known how they were made. From the two that are flat, it looks like the fabric was woven on narrow looms and pleated horizontally before being seamed down the middle & sides.

If they were worn by living people, I’m guessing these were luxury garments. Pleats in linen are hard to maintain. Unless the Egyptians had some long-lost linen-pleating technique equivalent to Fortuny’s silk method, they would have had to reset the horizontal pleats every time the dresses were worn to keep them looking sharp, especially if the wearer sat down!

The shape of the pleated gowns looks as if they were made from a series of rectangles, pretty much like the tunic and top on the right.

Oddly, the diagram on the wall behind the tunic and top is different from either – it shows what looks very much like the side-gores-and-underarm-gussets cut that’s still in use in some ethnic costume and historical recreationist garments.

In fact, it was still taught in sewing classes in Europe into the 20th century. The Textile Museum in Toronto has a set of quarter-scale garments that were made as part of a professional seamstress’s graduation exercise in the 1930s, and some of the pieces use the same cut. Shows how long a good and practical design can persist!

More clothing

But back to the Museo Egizio – not surprisingly, some of their textiles are clothing. A couple of the better-preserved are this small, dour figure swathed in a cloak and the underwear of a man named Kha – about whom more later.

There are also several beaded net dresses in various states of repair, ranging from a boxful of beads & broken strings, to this one, which is in pretty good condition, considering!

A random selection of other fibre stuff:

Aside from clothing, the Museo has lots of fibre items used for other purposes.

A saddle cloth or horse blanket

A rag left tucked through the handle of a jug

Linen rope handles for baskets

Seals for jars, some of them crisply tidy, some not so much.

Linen seems to have been the go-to material for closing jars. There were so many I could have done a whole (probably very dull) post about them! Though I did find the various patterns on the tops fascinating – the pic with the five tidy seals shows several typical ones.

jars with tidy cloth-wrapped tops

But, disappointingly, no “blankets and sheets” – though, according to the text on the cases showing the beds from the tomb of Kha and his wife Merit, the exhibit should include their blankets and sheets.

Sadly, it turns out that, to protect the blankets and sheets from light damage, they are no longer on display.

I’m sure the Museo has lots more fibre and textile holdings – but, like with Merit’s blankets and sheets, to preserve them, they need to limit the amount of time they’re on display. Unlike stone, pottery, and metals, most of which can withstand exposure to light more or less indefinitely – textiles and artefacts made of fibre deteriorate comparatively quickly.

And the obligatory mummies: Merit and Kha

And speaking of Merit and Kha, their undisturbed tomb was discovered at Deir el-Medina by Ernesto Schiaparelli[i] in 1906. Kha was an architect, and Director of the Royal Works in Deir el-Medina, a major funerary complex, where he oversaw the construction of the royal tombs. While the objects from their tomb have been analyzed, their mummies have not been unwrapped and are are featured in Archeologia Invisibile (Invisible Archaeology), a temporary display at the Museo.

Archeologia Invisibile uses enhanced Neutron Tomography, Radiography, and Prompt Gamma Activation Analysis techniques to look within their linen wrappings. The detail is amazing; it moves through the layers of the mummy from completely wrapped (its actual state) to the bare skeleton. (And no, I don’t know what Neutron Tomography etc. entail; I’m quoting a research paper abstract.)

I found the info on Merit’s mummy fascinating. The imaging shows her wig, her jewellery and traces of clothing. It also shows that her skeleton is a mess – her ribs are displaced and her spine is dislocated. Either she died from a catastrophic accident or the people preparing her body for burial were hamfisted and inept. Or both.

But I digress; what really surprised me was the back view of her mummy. I had always assumed that the back of a mummy was pretty much like the front – wrapped in overlapping strips of linen. But no; the outer layer of Merit’s mummy is a sheet of fabric, snugly wrapped and fastened down the back with a series of tucks and stitches that look very much like a braid!

Archeologia Invisibile was incredibly difficult to photograph; it seems an iPhone was not the ideal camera. The colour effects were the weirdest – this pic (the best one I got) of the back of Merit’s mummy came out in shades of fluorescent pink and fish-belly white, with odd greenery-yallery highlights here and there around the edges. It took a serious Photoshop session to calm the colours down to the point where you can see what you’re looking at.

If you want to more science about Merit and Kha and their tomb, here’s a link to a Public Library of Science article with lots & lots & lots of technical information!

One more item!

There is SO much more I would have wanted to see, but by the time I got through the permanent exhibit and Archeologia Invisibile, I was done. No energy left to go back & look for details or take pics I had missed, so I headed to the Museo’s bar/café.

On my way, I was a delighted to find that essential tool – a yardstick. It had belonged to our old friend Kha, the architect. He tailored stone, not fabric – but he still needed to measure it!

It’s not actually a yardstick, it’s a “royal cubit”; the didactic panel gives an explanation, so I took a pic. The museum lighting and the school group in the background make it a challenge, but here it is!

Then I had my coffee, and headed back to the bus.

If you ever have a chance to visit the Museo Egizio, I heartily recommend it. And you don’t have to speak Italian – they have English audio tours and the exhibit labels and information materials include English. And most of the staff make a creditable attempt at English.

[i] A talented family!

Schiaparelli the Egyptologist was a relative of both Schiaparelli the astronomer, after whom this crater on the moon is named and Elsa Schiaparelli, the couturiere, who gave us some amazing designs, like this hat, this sweater, and a shade of pink that was shocking at the time – and is still called “Schiap pink” (there’s a bit on the heel of the hat) .

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IRCC 2019

By | May 28th, 2019|costume, IRCC, Italy|

I had hoped that, buy taking along what materials I could when I went to Italy, I could finish in time. Didn’t happen. Life intervened – I didn’t even manage to get my post on the Turin Egyptian museum up until September – so I withdrew from the competition.

Sigh.

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Italian Renaissance Costume Challenge – April report

By | April 30th, 2019|costume, embroidery, IRCC, Italy, jewellery, smocking, tools|

A change of plans

When I entered IRCC 9 I had no idea that I would be spending most of the month of May in Italy! Specifically, on my sister’s farm in Piedmonte, near Cisterna d’Asti. I’m delighted & looking forward eagerly to the trip – and scrambling to finish non-IRCC work scheduled for May before I leave.

This has also reshuffled my sewing plans; initially I had planned to make the gown, based on the Pisa half-gown, first, then the camicia based on the one worn by Laura Battiferri in the Bronzino portrait (the images above), followed by the underskirt, while working on the lace and jewellery when not sewing.

So, as I’m going to be in Italy instead of my studio, I’m focusing instead on what I can take along in a carry-on suitcase. This includes the materials/components for

  • the camicia
  • the lace (or lace-edged) cap
  • the pearl necklace
  • the belt

All of these involve a lot of handwork and minimal volumes of materials – even the camicia which, though it’s lots of yardage, is fine cotton & folds up small

So far,

Camicia smock pleating & collar hem

  • I made progress with the preliminary steps for cutting & fitting the bodice of the gown before the trip to Italy came up
  • completed the assembly of the camicia components, hemming & pleating its collar & cuffs preparatory to smocking
    Pearls, chain and tools for jewellery & belt for IRCC 9 submission
  • assembled the materials & tools for the other items I’m planning to take along

 

 

 

 

April working notes

1 April 2019

Muslin for gown bodice:

The bara system pattern pieces

  • drafted a basic doublet pattern using the Modern Maker[1] bara technique

 

 

 

 

 

 

2 April 2019

Trying on the first cut of the bodice made with the Modern Maker bara system

  • made a muslin from the Modern Maker pattern draft & found some issues with the fit:
    • too tight – needs at least 2cm added to the girth – actual amount tbd, depending on the thickness of the fabrics
    • the armhole is too high
    • the upper chest has a peculiar outward curve as if designed for a pigeon chest. Not sure where that came from – it’s over the sternum, too high to be intended to accommodate the fashionable 16th century flatten-the-girls-upward look. I’ll need to take out 2 or 3cm.

3 April 2019

  • tried the muslin on again & made the adjustments
  • drafted a new version of the pattern with the adjustments, a square neckline and side back lacing opening. (Side lacing makes dressing without help possible!)
  • cut new muslin

5 April 2019

  • sewed & fitted new muslin

10 – 18 April 2019

Canvas underling for bodice prior to final fitting

    • tweaked the bodice fit
    • lowered the armhole
    • raised the front neck 2cm; the extant garment is described as having a “scollo molto alto” (a very high neckline). This may account for why there is a centre front seam. Without the shaping this seam makes possible the front would stand out from the upper chest unless I took a deep dart or two at the top & one in each armscye, which solution does not appear to be supported by evidence from surviving garments or pattern books.
    • made the straps a separate piece as on the extant garment
  • drafted new pattern from adjusted muslin
  • cut the canvas for bodice interlining ready for final fitting

 

 

 

 

19-24 April 2019

Smocked camicia:

  • made a second smocking test swatch
  • calculated width of fabric needed to gather to a neck circumference of 33cm (~ 13 inches). It needs to be 304 cm (~ 120 inches) wide
  • cut out camicia pieces (front, back, 2 sleeves, 2 square gussets) by pulled-thread method to ensure all pieces are on the straight of grain. Cut a 30cm (~ 12 inches) neckline opening at the centre front.
  • narrow-hemmed 30cm of the top edges of the front, back & sleeves sewed them together. I’ve left the bulk of the sewing until the collar embroidery/smocking is complete because it’s hard to tell beforehand how deep/shallow the armholes will need to be.
  • did a fine rolled hem around the top edge, then narrow-hemmed the neckline opening and the edges of where the cuffs will be

25 – 28 April 2019

  • discovered that, in spite of being thin & fine, the full width of the camicia is too big to fit in my smocking pleater. Unpicked the seams far enough down to handle each panel separately.
  • pleated the collar & cuffs of the camicia
  • re-stitched the seams & bits of the rolled hem where I’d had to open them for pleating.

30 April 2019

  • photographed & packed handwork items

[1] Mathew Gnagy, The Modern Maker Vol. 2: Pattern Manual 1580 – 1640, self-published

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Italian Renaissance Costume Challenge – Day 1

By | April 1st, 2019|cat, costume, IRCC, Italy, Renaissance, SCA, smocking|

This year I’ve entered the Realm of Venus’s Italian Renaissance Costume Challenge (IRCC). The start date is the first of April – today.

The rules: the IRCC is a four-month long challenge to create a complete man’s, woman’s or child’s late Italian Renaissance outfit, from the skin out, of a style circa 1480 to 1600. The outfit can be of any social class and needs to include at least one accessory, with a maximum of four accessories allowed.

What I’ve proposed to make is:

  • a camicia
  • an underskirt
  • a gown based on the extant diamond twill half-gown held in Pisa
  • a headdress or cap

Depending on how things go, I may add one or two of the following

  • an apron
  • a belt
  • a pearl necklace with matching earrings
  • a vest or short cape

Entries started a month ago. That first month was to be dedicated to deciding on what to make and gathering materials.

Deciding what to make was easy; ever since I found out about the wool/linen diamond twill half dress that’s in Pisa, I’ve wanted to make a gown based on it, using the diamond twill I found when King Textiles – one of our local fabric shops – had to move when their building was sold to a condo developer.

I’ve also wanted to try needle lace, so, if all goes well, the “headdress” will be a needle lace cap.

And my current White Wolf Fian challenge is a carved busk. So far all I’ve done on it is taking a carving class at Lee Valley and assembling the tools & materials, so, since I haven’t started on the actual busk, it works with the timing rules. Though, since it’s woodwork rather than textile, I’m not sure it fits in the criteria – I’ll have to check before adding it to the entry.

As for gathering materials, that’s pretty much done:


The materials for my IRCC 9 entry

The fabrics:

The right stack:

  • white lightweight cotton for the camicia
  • blue wool/linen diamond twill for the gown
  • black wool twill for the gown’s guards

The left stack:

  • red lightweight wool for the petticote
  • lightweight yellow linen for the linings (lightweight linen is usually expensive, so when I found this one cheap at Pennsic*, I bought lots of it even though it’s not a colour I’d usually choose for linings)
  • cotton canvas, heavy linen & various interfacings for the bodice

The odds & ends:

  • 50/3 linen thread for my super-ambitious lace cap plus the images & plastic to cover them (it might wind up as a lace-edged cap)
  • Mathew Gnagy’s Modern Maker volumes and the bara tapes I made following his instructions
  • a sample of the smocking for the camicia
  • my faithful roll of butcher paper that’s seen me through many patterning adventures
  • a piece of basswood and some carving tools for the busk
  • and, of course, the obligatory furry assistant.

I’m not sure I’ll use all of this, and will probably find I’m missing some odds & ends.

Today’s project: drafting the basic bodice pattern:

Pattern draft for 16th century woman's bodice

…to be continued

 

  • Pennsic is an annual Society for Creative Anachronism event that’s held in Pennsylvania and usually draws 10,000 or more attendees. One of its features is a market with lots of merchants who specialize in reenactment-related stuff.
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From stash to trash

By | November 22nd, 2018|damage, knitting, the stash|

It’s amazingly difficult to throw out stash stuff – even if its only proper place is in the trash!

The yarn

A case in point: three years ago, at Romni Wools’ annual July sale, I found some yarn in beautiful shades of grey, indigo and white. It was 80% wool/20% nylon which I thought would wear well, and the price was good, so I bought enough to make a Faroese shawl and a sweater vest.

My first project with it was the Faroese shawl. Once I figured out where to put the markers so that I wouldn’t have to count too often, it was the perfect “carry around” project and I was very pleased with it when it was finished.

For a while.

The disappointment

Closeup of the horrible-yarn Faroese shawlSoon after I started wearing the shawl, the yarn started to beard. Horribly. Eventually it looked as if I’d worn it while wrestling with goats. I tried smoothing the bearding off with one of those pumice-like bars that’s made for removing pills. That took off the first round of bearding, and it eventually stopped. To be replaced by dirty-looking pilling and these funny little twisty protrusions. Not a great look!

So I stopped wearing it, put it in the “disappointing” pile and left the yarn in the stash.

I’m in the process of getting rid of that “disappointing” pile and thinning my fabric and yarn stash. Some of it I’ll give to friends&family, some I’ll sell, and some I’ll donate to charity.

Horrible yarn in bin bagThe difficult decision

When I came to the beardy yarn, it was surprisingly hard to do what needed to be done – namely, trash it.

Nothing else makes sense. I’m not going to use it, and I’m not going to give it to a friend, sell it or donate it to a charity.

Setting someone up to waste time and effort knitting something from it would be unconscionable!

But still, it was amazingly hard to put this lovely-looking yarn – and the shawl I’d made from it – into the bin bag and trot it out to the curb on garbage day!

But it’s done. It went out last Tuesday.

The Faroese shawl – take two

The whole beardy yarn debacle had one good result – I discovered that I really like Faroese shawls, so when I found a beautiful yarn in just the right weight & colour (though not exactly cheap), I took the chance & made another. Which has worn beautifully.

 

Blue Faroese shawl

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The Viking coat – Part 1

By | October 19th, 2018|costume, dyes, fibers, fur, indigo, SCA, the stash, Viking costume, woad, wool|

My Viking coat is finished!

Blue Viking coat with green bordersIt’s been a journey; I’ve been working on the coat since spring. It came together from three sources: weather, a stalled project, and a pattern I bought so long ago that it now turns up in listings of vintage patterns on Etsy and eBay.

The weather:

Several years ago I was horribly cold at an SCA * camping event. There was frost overnight and, while daytime was warmer, it was still crisp.

It wasn’t the first time I had been cold at an event, just the worst, and I thought it would be nice to have a seriously warm Viking-style coat.

The stalled project:

During the years people were donating their furs to Goodwill, I got a full-length black mink coat that I intended to use to line a cloth winter coat. I found the ideal tweed for the coat shell, got the interlining fabric and studied much information on how to sew furs. And stalled there, intimidated by the idea of cutting into a fully-functional mink coat.

That was more than ten years ago. Finally, I figured this was ridiculous and decided to take the indirect route – to make a fur-lined Viking coat to get experience in handling that much fur.

Due largely to the lack of surviving physical evidence, there’s been a lot of discussion on whether the Vikings used much fur and whether they used it for linings. I think they did, and I agree with archaeologist Tuija Kirkinen. In her paper on the ritual use of fur, she stated that “the use of pelts and furs for clothing is self-evident in a region at the edge of the taiga”. ** While I don’t live at the edge of the taiga, the weather, even in southern Canada, can get ridiculously cold, and I’ve found that furs (and I include sheepskin) are best at keeping me warm when the temperature dips below -30C (-22 Fahrenheit).

The pattern:

The Turkish Coat is one of the first patterns Folkwear published. I don’t remember exactly when I bought it – sometime around 1974. And I’ve been meaning to make it ever since.

The Viking coat was the perfect opportunity. From surviving fragments and images, it appears the coats Viking men wore might have been constructed in a similar way.Folkwear Turkish Coat back view drawing

Granted, it’s a “male” garment, and the existing evidence shows women mainly in shawls. Which I’ve tried, and discovered that to keep warm in seriously cold weather, I’d have to wrap myself up in many, many layers.

Nope. For the sake of sanity and mobility, I decided on a coat.

The materials:

The fabrics: since this was going to be an experiment, I wanted to spend as little as possible on it, so I dug through my stash and found two yardages that worked well together – a medium“indigo” blue  and a vivid apple green  wool.

Apple green fulled wool swatch

 

 

 

While they’re both commercially dyed, both are colours that are possible with natural dyes that were available to the Vikings.

The blue is easy – woad, which contains indigotin. Woad seeds were found on the Oseberg ship.

On the other hand, green can be dyed many different ways, so the possible dye sources are guesswork. Maybe woad plus weld or broom – or one of the many other sources of yellow.

Coincidentally, a friend – textile artist Jaclyn Paltanen – just did an experiment on dyeing woad-based greens on wool and got a lovely range, including that apple green!

Both fabrics are pure wool, and they’re fulled. The apple green is a lightly-fulled 2/1 twill; the blue is more heavily fulled so I’m not sure what the weave is.

There’s still occasional discussion about whether Vikings fulled their wools, but apparently archaeologist Inga Hägg has documented the existence of fulled wools in Viking-era finds in Hedeby in her Die Textilfunde aus dem Hafen von Haithabu***.  Fulled wool is not appropriate for every kind of garment – but for a coat intended for Canadian winters it most definitely is!

The lining: this is where I spent some money – $35 if I remember correctly. When I bought the donor coat for the lining, I wasn’t sure what the fur was (and neither was the man who owns the secondhand shop where I bought it). We guessed it was some sort of water critter – maybe beaver or otter – or maybe marten, all of which were available to the Vikings **.

To my surprise, when I took out the lining, I discovered it was fur seal."fur seal" stamp on skin side of fur coat used for lining It’s not at all like what I know as seal!

Turns out the fur seal is a southern hemisphere beastie, so it’s improbable that a Viking-era coat maker would have had access to it. However, I’m taking a pass on “authenticity” here; the furs I thought it might be – beaver or otter or marten – would all have been available. We do the best we can!

Making the coat:

The first step was figuring out how to allow for the thickness of the fur lining. While I got over 48 million hits the last time I googled “fur sewing”, the vast majority handled fur in the present-day convention – as something to show on the outside of the garment. Finding information on working out how to allow for a fur lining took some digging. The clearest I found was on a Threads Magazine forum post from 2010:

“Take a length of the fur and wrap it around your middle with the fur facing inward, safety pinning it closed. Using a tape measure, measure around the outside of the fur. Take off the fur and measure around at the same spot. The difference between the two measurements will be your “fur adjustment.”

So that’s what I did, and it worked!

Viking coat muslinTo check the size and length, I made a muslin ****, trying it on over a wool Viking-style gown and a heavy sweater.

After I cut and assembled the shell fabrics I gathered my courage and started on the fur coat.

Taking it apart, I was reminded of the amazing amount of hand work that goes into furs! Even though the pelts are now sewn together by machine, the garment assembly is largely manual. hand stitching on inside of fur coat used for liningThe edgings and the lining were sewn in by hand, and there was a grid of long, loose hand stitches anchoring the pelts to the underlining throughout the coat.

Once I’d disassembled the coat, I realized I’d been lucky. The body of the coat was very close to the shape & size of the body of the Folkwear pattern, with only one significant difference: the original fur coat had a straight up-and-down overlap, while the pattern’s fronts are at an angle that’s supposed to keep the coat closed without fasteners. All I needed to do was stitch in two triangular sections at the centre fronts to add the overlap – and luckily again, the front facings which I had removed were big enough to cut the triangles from.

The sleeves were another matter. Originally, I intended to use the fur sleeves to line the fabric wool twill sleeve liningssleeve, but I found that the combination of the fur and the fulled wool fabric was too bulky for comfort. So back to the stash, where I found a medium-light woolen twill remnant that worked to line the sleeves.

pocketRegarding authenticity, I made two decisions to be deliberately inauthentic, and the first was pockets. The Folkwear pattern has no pockets – just pocket slits, which are probably Viking-appropriate. But with a fur-lined coat intended for brutally cold weather, making pocket slits that would have been convenient openings for weather to get in seemed self-defeating. So I added pockets. Gotta have somewhere to stash those kleenexes!

My other “inauthentic” decision was to underline the coat with a lightweight cotton, much as the underlinigpresent-day fur coats are. I wanted to make this coat look good and last as long as possible, and the underlining helps with both. It keeps the internal stitching – and there’s a lot of it – from pulling on the outer fabric and showing through to the right side.

If cotton made it to Scandinavia at all during the Viking era it would have been a wildly exotic fibre, and way too expensive to use as an underlining.

I could have used linen, which was available then, but the 3.5oz linen I have in my stash would have added a lot of weight – and the coat is heavy enough as it is. There may be some super-fine linens that wouldn’t have been so heavy, but from what I’ve seen on the web they’re also super-expensive. Which is where reality cuts in – this is a coat to wear, not a museum-quality interpretation.

Final details and a decison:

Once the coat was “finished” and wearable, I decided that, having put so much thought and work into, it would be worth going the extra mile and spending a bit more time and money on trim and fasteners.

Which is another post!

* Society for Creative Anachronism – a world-wide reenactment group that focuses on pre-1700 CE history

** Tuija Kirkinen The role of wild animals in death rituals: furs and animal skins in the late iron age inhumation burials in southeastern Fennoscandia. Fennoscandia archaeologica XXXII, 2015

*** Inga Hägg Textilfunde aus dem Hafen von Haithabu (The textile finds from the harbour of Hedeby) Neumünster, K. Wachholtz, 1984, ©1985

****I use 1/4″ gingham for muslins – the gridded weave of gingham makes the grain lines obvious. (And yes, there’s only one sleeve – I took the other one off to use as a pattern for the sleeve lining.)

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