Follow me on one of my historical adventures and take a look inside our medieval pavilion, to find out what I do in the morning to get ready- medieval style! (Yeah, just like a regular blog person I post getting-ready photos and todays-outfit. I just do it in my way… super serious, promise!)
When the sun rises it gets bright, and during summer it also gets quite warm in the tent, if the sun shines on the roof. Our new tent is a little better; you can easily sleep until 9 if you don’t have to rise early for breakfast duty. We have curtains to create a sleeping area in the tent, and here I sit on the bed, dressed in a linen shift.
Combing out my hair before braiding it. I could say that I get pretty every morning before going out for breakfast and coffee, but the truth is that most often I just put on a simple kirtle or my brown coat over the shift to have my breakfast as soon as possible. But let’s pretend this is a morning with plenty of time…
Then I put on my woolen hose, my medieval shoes, and the garters that holds the hose in place.
After that it is time to put on the dress or kirtle. This is my green woolen 15th c dress, fastened with hooks and eyes at the front. An apron is good to protect the clothes and to finish of the outfit. Under the shift I sometimes wear a lengberg bra, a modern bra or a sports bra to get the support I need. They all work well, but the lengberg bra or a balconette model will give you the 15th c silhouette. If you have smaller breast, going natural works well too!
Then I usually braid my hair, and/or pull a cap and veil over it, or a cap and straw hat if I am working outside in the sun. The hairdo I will post in a separate blog post, with a DIY guide. This photo is from Double wars, being out in the forest in really nice and warm weather.
This is my walk-through on how I made my green 15th c kirtle/dress in wool. It is not a complete tutorial with all details, so if you have never sewn before I recommend starting with a shift or other straight garment. If you want more good sewing tip, you will find many problems addressed in my other tutorials.
This is a common late 15th c middle dress for women, it is quite easy to make, practical and is shown in many different pictures from the period. Your choice of colour, neckline, clasps and other details will make it different, and if you choose a thicker wool fabric it will work as an overdress too. The artwork I have used is from 1470-1485.
You will need about 3-4 meters of thin wool fabric, I bought mine from Handelsgillet, they have a thin twill fabric that is easy to work with and quite historically accurate for the period. I fell in love with the perfect green colour… And you can see some examples of green kirtles at the bottom of this blog post and in other artworks from the period. The shade can be achieved with plant dying but is more expensive than a madder red or yellow, and I think it makes a good option for my outfit; a well of burgher from a city.
I lined my dress with prewashed, unbleached linen, but you only need to line the upper body for some stability, and that will need a maximum of 1 meter. I sew my dress by hand, with waxed linen thread. Running stitches for the main seams, back stitches in armholes and sides, and whip stitches for the seam allowances and hems, are all you need. The dress closes with hooks and eyes, be sure to have lots of them!
This is what the model looks like, it is really simple, and if you have a personal toile/mock-up for your upper body you can use that with some small modifications. The front opening should have a slightly curved seam to follow your body, and the closure makes the front pieces lay edge to edge.
Comparing to a supportive kirtle, you need a bit more room now for your bust area, it should be quite loose and lay over your breast, to get the shape of the period. Make a new mock-up in fabric and make the front pieces a bit wider, and try it out.
The sleeves are regular S-sleeves or a sleeve with a curved upper edge and seam under your arm. You can see both from the period, though the S-sleeve seems to be more common. The skirt is made up of 4 pieces in my dress. Here are the pieces I used together with my measures (around 36-38/small European size)
The dotted line on one of the skirt panel indicates a gore to save some fabric, but I wrote out the wrong number of pieces; the left panel is the front and you only need one of them. But this is just one way to create the skirt; you can use more pieces, gores, or just 2 wider parts.
The upper body back piece is whole, you can shape the back in the sides and with the help of the waist seam.
I lost my sketch of the outlay but made another one just to show you. Since I am a rather petite person, I can use the width of the fabric for most outlays, but if you are longer than I am (around 160 cm) you may want to lay the skirt panels out the other way. In this picture the panels are a bit wider in the back than that above, so you only need two. The front is straight or almost straight. Note also that I apparently drafted regular sleeves instead of S-sleeves, but you will get the idea…
After I cut out all the pieces, I basted the dress together to try it out. When happy with the fit and measures, I started to sew all the seams by hand. If you keep the correct basting stitches while sewing, you don’t need to pin and can easily work on the sofa, super cosy!
Make the dress in the following order:
Sew the upper body together, front and back pieces, and then sew the sleeves before you insert them in the body.
Sew the skirt panels together, but leave around 20 cm at the top centre front, to be able to put the dress on (the slit shown on the first sketch). I hemmed the body and the skirts upper circle separately, and then attached them to one another with whip stitches. This seam will get a lot of wear, so it is nice to make it twice or use a sturdy thread, like the buttonhole silks or a thicker linen thread, like 35/2.
When the whole dress was assembled together, I put it on my doll to hang out for some days, before I cut and hemmed the skirt and sleeves. If you have a doll, it is really good to leave the dress hanging for a couple of days before hemming, this will make the fabric in the skirt stretch out, and you can cut away excess fabric to make the hem even.
The front with its lining is sewn from the right side, first with basting and then with a seam. To make the front opening and the neckline more durable I added a second row of stitches around.
The hooks and eyes are fastened last. This is what it looks like on the inside, note that I have sewn the hooks and eyes not only in the loops but also at the stems/higher up. This will make your opening lay flat and give that characteristic look at the closure you can see on 15th c paintings.
And finally, some of my favourite artworks that I used during my research. As you can see, they are all green kirtles, of the same models, but with some different cuts, necklines, closures and headwear.
Historically accurate? My main aim with making this outfit was practicality, durability and a dress I would feel comfortable in, based on period clothing. With this said, I aimed to make the dress (and outfit) as historically believable as possible from my means.
The fabric is machine woven and dyed to cut on costs, but the pattern construction, sewing techniques, material and look aims to be close to the dresses from the period. Another modern take is the hooks and eyes, which are machine-made instead of handmade.
I rarely work with metal due to some problem with my joints, but I tried to make a couple of hooks and eyes by hand. It is not hard work, they got quite pretty, but I didn’t make enough of them for a dress.
One thing I did give a lot of thought was the lining. My experience is that lining a skirt with a different material that is sewn down in a slim hemline rarely gives a good result. But I was curious and gave it a try with the method of letting the skirt and skirt lining hang down before cutting and hemming. It worked quite well but gave me a lot more work than leaving the skirt unlined. In artwork, you can often see a lining inside the dresses, and this was a try to make one without adding warmth with another wool layer.
I actually started to write this in spring 2017, and now more 1,5 year later I finally feel that I can post it. Why did it take such a long time? Because it was a new subject I approached, and I was not confident enough to post something I didn’t really know that much about. But now, looking back, I can see that the post is just right for that moment in my work. It is the first in a long series of try out, and I wanted to show you some part of my learning process.
I’m really in the beginning of reenacting the 15th century, but find both the clothing and the headwear so interesting! One of the things I have learned while trying to do the headwear myself, is that it really is important to look at the details to get the over all look for your outfit.
This is what I came up with for the event my local SCA group had early in the summer. It looks ok, but really only is a lot of linen veils pinned down on top of each other, with a really long one then draping over the head at the end. But this chaotic look actually resembles some of the paintings…
Want to try it for yourself? I start by putting up my hair in braids, and then a Birgitta cap for a secure base. Then I add one or two thin linen veils on top of that, wrapped and pinned to the head like a turban, to get the volume and shape of the headwear. On top of those, I then add a very long veil that is pinned down, and then hangs loosely from one side. This is folded and laid over the head, quite loose. And that is all. I’m yet to learn the best way to put the pins, how many is needed, and most of all; remember how I did the headwear some months later when I want to redo it again.
This was a very spontaneous project with no customer commissioning it, and not for my own wardrobe either. I just wanted to try out how the velvet would work in a full circular houppelande (late medieval over dress) and experiment a bit with pattern construction, seam techniques and silk fabric. I am actually very satisfied with the result; for a cotton velvet the fabric is in a nice quality and with a good drape, the pattern turned out very well, and the silk lining in the sleeves add that extra touch I wanted.
The materials in the dress is cotton velvet (black) viscose/rayon velvet (moss-green) and silk (sleeve lining) with a total of about ten meters for the whole dress. The cotton velvet is really affordable comparing to silk velvet, and is very easily maintained; I actually just put it in a washing machine, air dried it and it came out as new; no shrinkage, no creasing and no sad silk velvet after water washing… If you want to learn more about velvet fabrics, I have a guide about the subject under “tutorials”.
I finished the dress during our brewer’s guild meeting in early December, and would usually iron the silk lining first before wearing it, but it was such a good opportunity to take good photos in gear so the sleeve lining is a bit bulky still. But soon to be fixed!
The skirts are really full; the pattern is based on a circle and the houppelande is also called a full circular houppelande. Lots and lots of fabric.
I have some tutorials about making your own houppelande if you are interested (and also makes them on order by your measures). To make them dramatic, historical and with this massive draping of skirts, it does take more meters of fabric and patience than difficult sewing techniques…
I fell in love with the colour combo of black, moss-green and bright grass-green in the dress. Under is my late 14th century dress, going historical there shouldn’t be a visible lacing underneath this kind of over dress. The gloves are also modern, but was so very nice to avoid freezing my fingers of.
More sleeves! If you have checked my “Pin on sleeves” tutorial, you will find some likeness with this garment, but I wanted to some nice tips when doing these ones. First some inspiration:
I started by drafting the sleeves from the pin-on pattern; the same as I used for my golden sleeves below (laying under them, you can see my original sleeve pattern for comparison)
First, I have tried out two kinds of sleeves that are tied at the arms; my wedding dress and lately, my 15th century Italian silk dress. The difference between these two sleeves is that my wedding dress is just opened at the seam in the arm and then closes with strings, while my green/black sleeves are cut out to make the chemise even more visible. Also, the green sleeves are tied at the shoulders and therefore loose; I can change them for others at any time. The wedding dress is sewn together, the sleeves sewn after the sleeve tutorial I have on my blog.
Here you can see the wedding dress, the sleeves are quite straight, and the chemise is puffing out between the laces. When making these sleeves, you just sew a regular S-sleeve but leave it open above the elbow. Hem the edges, and make lacing holes and sew on laces on the edges. These ends with a pearl decorated cuff, but a regular sleeve will do fine.
The green sleeves look like this when cut out:
I started with my basic loose sleeve pattern in scrap fabric, pinned it on my arm and tried out where the gaps with chemise sleeves visible should be, then I cut away the excess fabric, and here you can see the result. The sleeves are in pure silk fabric, and I wanted to make them reversible to be able to choose between green or black ones for my dress. So I cut out two identical pieces of fabric for each arm, here you can see the black sides. Remember to make them mirrored, one for each arm.
I then pinned the fabrics together and marked out where the ties were going to be. Here you can see both layers of fabric.
I decided to sew them on the sewing machine since they are going to be turned inside out afterwards, so the seams would not be visible. But if you like; just follow the steps but sew them with runningstitches or backstitches instead.
To make it easier; sew the ribbons at the same time as you sew the sleeves together. I cut out the silk ribbons (40-50 cm each) and then pinned them by the seam allowance around the sleeves, on the inside between the two fabrics.
And sew around the sleeves. Leave an opening for turning them; I left the wrist open. Here you can see the silk ribbons in the seam allowance, just make sure they don’t slip away or get under a seam when sewing.
All done! Trim the edges by cutting away tips and seam allowances at the corners, turn the sleeves inside out and iron them flat. Since I want them to be reversible, I will make sure the two layers of silk fabric lays smooth and even edge to edge around the garment so the black won’t be visible when turning the green out, and vice versa.
Now it is time for some hand sewing; start by making lacing holes for the ribbons. I make them with a sharp awl, and whipstitch them with buttonhole silk thread.
After that, fold the fabric edges at the wrist to the inside of the sleeves, and sew that side closed with small whipstitches by the edges. If you use fake silk ribbons, you may burn the edges carefully to make them melt and not thread. If using pure silk, you will have to sew the edges or finish them in some kind of way. I folded mine twice and sewed them down with whip stitches and a thin silk thread (for sewing machines). This part took the most time on the sleeves, with the making of the sleeves on around two hours and the ribbon hemming around 2,5 hours. I failed to photograph this part, apparently, there was some movie time on the sofa instead. But this is what it looks like when done:
The silk ribbon has two lengths and these are pulled through the hole and then knotted. Either a simple knotted loop like this or a regular bow can be seen on art. At the shoulders, the sleeves are attached to the dress by similar holes and ribbons, three on each shoulder.
And finally, some good advice when making silk sleeves:
Silk often needs to be lined to get that really good look, chose a thin fabric in silk, cotton or linen or a mix of these to get a historical lining which also works great.
Silk is not a stretchy material, so make your silk sleeves a bit larger than your woollen ones.
Try them on while working to be sure you get the look you want.
Straight sleeves lay more flatly on your arm (white dress), while cut out sleeves gives more volume, pick the model that fits your project.
