Siege Arts & Sciences Challenge!
I went to Avacal/Tir Righ War with the intention of finishing the lacing holes on my trunk hose and then wearing them at the same event. Instead, minyata and I decided to participate in the siege arts & sciences challenge.
The challenge was to make an a&s project using two items from the challenge table, two items from your own camp, and at least one item you found on site. We decided to make a 16th century barett/bonnet, which is common both in German and English costume of the 16th century. From the challenge table we took the wool that was the fabric for the hat, and the wool thread that we used for accents. From our own camp we took some beads from a couple of bracelets I had, and the feathers from Francis' hat. From the site we picked daisies for a daisy chain that went around the brim.
The a&s point for the war went rightly to a person who had dyed some linen from mosses and various other things found on the campsite and then put together a banner displaying the arms of Avacal and Tir Righ, but we had fun anyways!
This type of hat is described in Janet Arnold and I can't remember right now if the crown of the hat is made from a circle and a donut, or just a very big circle that is gathered or darted into the brim. Usually I make a hat like this by cutting out one circle and three donuts, and for ease of drafting that is the way we cut this one. I usually draft my circles using dinner plates, which are nice and round, but we had no dinner plates handy so I put Francis' hat on top of the fabric and cut a freehand circle, which ended up not being quite so round. I cut the circles for the donuts using the first circle as a guide, then folded them in quarters and measured 2 1/2" in from the outside of the circle to cut the donut holes. The band measurement on the inside of the donuts (the brim) ended up being quite large, so for future hats I would measure further in, like 3 to 3 1/2".
minyata sewed the outside of the circle to the outside of one of the donuts, while I sewed the outside of the other two donuts together in 8 sections. I then slashed the brim from the outside to the inner seam allowance in the spots I had left unsewn - this way each of the segments between the slashing stays sewn together. Because we were working with a fairly thick wool, we did not need to finish the edge of the slashes.
minyata embellished the seam on the crown with straight stitches using the wool thread we took from the challenge table, while I used the same thread to sew the beads from my bracelets to the brim. I had a few false starts with putting the beads on the wrong side of the brim, or getting the pattern backwards, but eventually I got it right.
I then sewed both edges of the brim along the interior edge to the interior edge of the donut on the bottom of the crown, and covered the raw edges with a blanket stitch. I tacked one part of the brim to the crown so we would have a place to stick the feathers from Francis' hat, and we made a daisy chain to go around the brim from daisies we picked on site.
Detail of beading and daisy chain. The orange beads and the pearl beads are just plastic, but the turquoise beads are glass.
Brim and crown of hat, showing various embellishments, including slashing on brim:
Detail of interior brim with navy stitching and green wool finishing stitching:
minyata models the hat. After the competition closed we gifted it to ya_inga:
The challenge was to make an a&s project using two items from the challenge table, two items from your own camp, and at least one item you found on site. We decided to make a 16th century barett/bonnet, which is common both in German and English costume of the 16th century. From the challenge table we took the wool that was the fabric for the hat, and the wool thread that we used for accents. From our own camp we took some beads from a couple of bracelets I had, and the feathers from Francis' hat. From the site we picked daisies for a daisy chain that went around the brim.
The a&s point for the war went rightly to a person who had dyed some linen from mosses and various other things found on the campsite and then put together a banner displaying the arms of Avacal and Tir Righ, but we had fun anyways!
This type of hat is described in Janet Arnold and I can't remember right now if the crown of the hat is made from a circle and a donut, or just a very big circle that is gathered or darted into the brim. Usually I make a hat like this by cutting out one circle and three donuts, and for ease of drafting that is the way we cut this one. I usually draft my circles using dinner plates, which are nice and round, but we had no dinner plates handy so I put Francis' hat on top of the fabric and cut a freehand circle, which ended up not being quite so round. I cut the circles for the donuts using the first circle as a guide, then folded them in quarters and measured 2 1/2" in from the outside of the circle to cut the donut holes. The band measurement on the inside of the donuts (the brim) ended up being quite large, so for future hats I would measure further in, like 3 to 3 1/2".
minyata sewed the outside of the circle to the outside of one of the donuts, while I sewed the outside of the other two donuts together in 8 sections. I then slashed the brim from the outside to the inner seam allowance in the spots I had left unsewn - this way each of the segments between the slashing stays sewn together. Because we were working with a fairly thick wool, we did not need to finish the edge of the slashes.
minyata embellished the seam on the crown with straight stitches using the wool thread we took from the challenge table, while I used the same thread to sew the beads from my bracelets to the brim. I had a few false starts with putting the beads on the wrong side of the brim, or getting the pattern backwards, but eventually I got it right.
I then sewed both edges of the brim along the interior edge to the interior edge of the donut on the bottom of the crown, and covered the raw edges with a blanket stitch. I tacked one part of the brim to the crown so we would have a place to stick the feathers from Francis' hat, and we made a daisy chain to go around the brim from daisies we picked on site.
Detail of beading and daisy chain. The orange beads and the pearl beads are just plastic, but the turquoise beads are glass.
Brim and crown of hat, showing various embellishments, including slashing on brim:
Detail of interior brim with navy stitching and green wool finishing stitching:
minyata models the hat. After the competition closed we gifted it to ya_inga: