As I was walking from my hotel room to an SCA event in the beginning of a snow shower this past January, I realized that, while my wool apron dress and wool shawl kept me dry and the worst of the chill out, I wasn't particularly comfortable. Perhaps, I thought, it was finally time to make myself a caftan. I believe I've enough blue-black coat- ( Read more... )

If you've been looking for more evidence for hats to wear as a Viking persona, you may want to consider the Alanic hat discovered at Moschevaya Balka. There's a photo in Ierusalimskaja's 1996 Die Gräber der Moshchevaja Balka: Frühmittelalterliche Funde an der Nordkaukasischen Seidenstrasse, which is available in digital format here, along with its ( Read more... )

While I was working on my Køstrup dress, I was working with Rimstad's tables from Vikinger i uld og guld about the frequency with which different types of weaves are found in Danish Viking contexts. She quotes 2/2 twills as being 12% of the total finds, herringbone at 2% and diamond twill at 1%. Considering only 10th century samples, it makes up ( Read more... )

Thanks for the recommendations on 15th century sewing--it helped fill in the gaps in my knowledge, so that I have a better understanding of the evolution of the doublet and how to adapt it to what Ambrosius wants. I've been poking around said resources, and looking at more illustrations from De Casibus, and have come up with enough of a plan to ( Read more... )

I really ought to have been blogging about the socks I was spinning yarn for and naalbinding for myself out of some lovely grey Gotland roving, because now I need to interrupt that project! A friend is hatching as a Pelican in January, so he needs new clothes, and I'm part of the far-flung team assembling to make that happen ( Read more... )

I ended up going with 5 rows of smocking with 1 mm stitches 6 mm apart. I think it looks cheery, and gives a good shape to the top hem of the dress.


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I've gotten far enough along with my dress that I'm working on getting the pleating right, which has been problematic. Lønborg had suggested that the pleats were drawn up with a single linen thread, such that the end result looked like this, end dimensions being about 2-3 mm deep, 3 mm wide, and at least 4.3 cm long ( Read more... )

Slowly getting there.


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Even though the original Køstrup apron dress was done in a blue evenweave wool, I've chosen a red wool 2/1 twill, which is still a plausibly Viking fabric, even if I can't yet prove it was used to make an apron dress in Denmark.


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When
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