My new shoes arrived yesterday. Medieval shoes, of course - hand-stitched beauties made to measure on a replica of historical lasts. (Photos may follow once I find the time to make proper ones.) Now I'm almost through with my wardrobe updates for the summer half of the year - one dress remains to be altered a bit.

Otherwise, I am very well occupied with design and typography of my brochure, preparing for the conference in May and doing a myriad of other small things besides - so I have nothing really interesting or new to blog about. At least there is progress being made in all those areas.

This is the sewing project I finished Friday, a sideless surcot. It had been on my list for ages.
I finally started sewing it this winter, with high hopes of keeping warmer next year during the colder parts of the season.

Cut and proportions are based on the garments from Burgos de las Huelgas, in Spain. Unfortunately, I am too poor to afford handwoven silk brocade in bright colours with arabian characters brocaded into a broad strip on the fabric, or something similar.
Thus it is made from blue wool twill, sewn with linen thread, and the upper part is lined with rabbit fur (there was rabbit fur lining found with one of the royal surcots, though, so this at least is similar material).
Should this prove not warm enough, I will add in more fur, but for the moment, I am quite content.


Since I dragged the unfinished piece around folded together, it still has some creases that will gradually hang out. And, of course, there's still lots of rabbit fur clinging to the fabric. But all that is left to do is shake out the garment and brush it down once, and then maybe hang it into the damp bathroom for a few hours to smoothe the creases... and so I can tackle the next thing on my craft projects list.

Which is? Let's call it "simple precision tablet weaving" for now.

The end of last week was very successful sewing-wise for me, since I managed to get a lot of work done on two projects. Number one was the pair of mittens, lined with rabbit fur, to keep my fingers from freezing.

Those were roughly orientated on the pieces from Mühlberg, but no copies or reproductions. I used blue wool twill and rabbit fur. Since I have very small hands, one single rabbit fur, of normal size, was just enough for the pair of mittens.

I made the fur lining first, stitching it together from smaller bits where necessary. I worked from an outline of the hand and with forming a piece of fur around the thumb for the difficult bits. It is no perfect fit nor a good-looking pattern of fur bits, but as this is only the lining, I spent no time on making it look nice.



The wool covering for the mittens was again traced out on the fabric, cut and stitched together with a very simple thumb set into a slit at the appropriate place. It is a tight fit over the leather, just as I intended.


The mittens were wearable just before the weather got warmer again - from -17°C to more than 3°C. They do a wonderful job in keeping my fingers snug and warm, even the thumb in its single compartment.

Making them took several hours, mostly due to the fact that I was a) not aiming for speed, but instead trying them on often to enjoy the soft fur and the warmth, b) taking my time to find out how I could best use the fur and not waste anything, c) not having worked with fur for quite a while, d) stitching small pieces together around the heel of the hand and the thumb (think jigsaw here).

Handsewn or machine sewn? For normal modern people, that is no question - a machine is faster and will almost guarantee you even, smooth stitches. When going into the living history field, things are different - machine sewn garments are then a sacrifice to modern style, to laziness, or to the fact that nobody has enough time for all those enticing projects and all the clothes needed. Or is that so?

When I started sewing for living history events, I was seventeen years old and had just gotten into the "medieval market" scene. My first piece was a hood - what else? It took me ages to stitch together the two halves of a hood (cut after a pattern drawing in a journal, not after an archaeological find). Even worse, the cloth was a mix of wool and polyester. But I had my first deep experience with hand-sewn clothing then, and I found that it really makes a difference.

Unlike modern patterns for clothing, medieval patterns are not designed with a sewing machine in mind. On the other hand, sewing technique is such an important thing in medieval tailoring that fabric, sewing thread and seam type were carefully matched together to get best results - this can be seen when comparing the extant medieval garments.

Choosing the right fabric for a pattern, and the right seamtypes for that fabric, is an essential part of historical tailoring and sewing. Which already answers part of the question that I hear regularly: Why do you sew by hand?

Historical patterns are not designed for sewing with a machine. Many stitches cannot be reproduced with a common household sewing machine at all (and not even a high-end one). In addition to that, hand stitches are much more versatile than machine stitches, and the beauty and functionality of good hand stitching are astonishing. On the Viborg Shirt*, up to eight layers of fabric are stitched together into a join that will lie absolutely flat - and this is even possible with thick, homewoven old linen. A hand-sewn seam will always look, fall and drape differently than a machine seam. And last but never least, it is much sturdier - as everyone who has ever picked a hand-seam apart will know.

Sewing by hand does of course take much longer than just running it through the machine. For an authentic presentation, however, handsewing is essential, and I can promise each hopeful beginner that he or she will have a wholly different attitude towards the hand-sewn garments, compared to something quickly machined together.

Here's a picture to whet your appetite for hand-sewn garments: It is one of my reproductions of St. Elisabeth's dress, sewn with linen thread from medium-thick wool twill. The hem is finished with a double row of running stitches and overcast stitching with inlaid wool yarn. Isn't this a nice thing to behold?



* There is a very thorough article on the shirt by Mytte Fentz, "En hørskjorte fra 1000-årenes Viborg" in KUML 1987; Årbog for Jysk Arkælogisk Selskab

Since my kruseler is finally finished, I have started to play around with it. It is not as voluminous as the one worn by the lady on the left, but the appropriate size and form to try things out. As a result, I feel like I'm finally getting the knack of putting up the hair and then putting on the veil so it looks like the medieval pictures show.

When wearing a kruseler, it depends mostly on the hairdo worn underneath whether it will sit nicely or not. I am sure that form and type of the hairdo will also decide whether the finished thing looks more angular or more rounded.

The updo I'm mostly using for trying things is the "logroll", one of my staples for wearing my hair. I will try to make a proper description with photos during the next days, since that is much easier than trying to describe.

The importance of the hairdo, in turn, means that putting up the hair in the appropriate (and symmetrical) way will make or break the kruseler reconstruction. Fortunately, I have long enough hair to play around with all kinds of different braided and non-braided updos, though I still have problems to fix the buns at the temples. With braids, it is a little easier to put up the hair - unfortunately, I especially like the smooth unbraided hairdo that can be seen on the Arnolfini Portrait. I have not managed yet to replicate it properly, but I'm working on it...

After a phase of almost no sewing work, things have advanced during the last two or three weeks.
I have finally finished a kruseler that is now waiting to be tried out with the appropriate hairdo underneath, and a woolen sideless surcote is finished apart from the hem. The upper area of the surcote is lined with rabbit fur for extra warmth, and I am looking forward to testing this garment, though proper wearing will have to wait some months.

While working with fur, I have also decided to sew myself fur mittens. I get very cold fingers very fast, and I have rabbit furs and wool, so why not make fur-lined woolen mittens to keep my hands warm? I wanted to make non-modern ones (of course) so I can also use them on medieval events during winter time (or in severely cold spots). For medieval handwear, both gloves and mittens are known, and in the 14th and 15th century, even "lobster mittens" (two compartments for two fingers each, and the thumb) can be found on pictures. I opted for the earlier (and warmer) classic mitten type, though.

There are not many finds of fur garments, and cut and shape are usually impossible to tell from pictures. But the bookshelf, again, comes to the rescue with Rainer Atzbach's wonderful thesis about the finds from Kempten in Southern Germany. The Mühlbach-Ensemble in Kempten is a complex of a few buildings that sported hollow spaces between floor layers and between rooms. Those were filled with remnants of daily life - fragments of clothes, wood pieces, dust, straw, coins, paper scraps, and so on. Because there was no soil environment, and because it was all kept dry all the time, vegetable fibres and furs have kept well.

Fur usually degenerates in the soil, due to the tanning process (with alum) that does not result in leather as resilient as oak-tanned (or similarly tanned) leather. Thus, tannin-tanned leather might still be found in digs with good conditions, while furs or alum-tanned leathers will have disappeared. And this is why the Kempten finds are so important: It is the largest known find of furs from medieval times. If you can read German, Rainer's book "Leder und Pelz am Ende des Mittelalters und zu Beginn der Neuzeit: Die Funde aus den Gebäudehohlräumen des Mühlberg-Ensembles in Kempten (Allgäu)" is definitely worth a look. It is not only a documentation of the finds from Mühlberg, but he also gives very well-researched, concise histories of leather and fur garments. If you need to know something about shoes and fur garments, the book is a good start to delve deeper into the topic.

By the way, the first mitten fur lining is finished already, and the second one is coming along nicely. I hope to finish both mittens, including the woolen layer, on Friday.