For my local SCA Kingdom’s A&S Championship I created and entered the shirt presented in this article. Below are excepts and pictures from my supporting documentation. I will be adjusting…
Thank goodness for Rate the Dress! It means that I have a definite excuse to focus entirely on historical fashions at least once a week! We were having such a good run on Rate the Dress: so many 8+ ratings in a row! And then I posted the pink, pigeon breasted, ruffle-dy, smock-dy, totally over-the-top 1900s frock-dy last week. Pop! There went the high ratings bubble! It wasn’t too terrible: there were a lot of 6s, and just enough 8s and 9s to bring it up to a nice, round 7 out of 10. For this week’s Rate the Dress, we’re looking at a period I’m not such an expert on, and going back to the mid 16th century, to a ‘Portrait of a Lady’ by Peter de Kempeneer (Pedro Campaña). Though de Kempeneer was Flemish, he mainly worked in Spain or Italy, and this portrait probably depicts a wealthy Italian noblewoman from Ferrara The sitters gown makes striking use of gold striping to emphasise the cut of the gown, and the fashionable features. The …
This dress is based on the types of dresses found in the art of Nuremburg and surrounding areas in the mid- to late- 15th century. Its most striking feature is the raised pleats along the front and back, and the grande-assiette style sleeves. I have made two similar dresses, but finally created a pattern that fits me. Here are some examples of this dress style in art: Pair of Lovers, Gotha 1480-1485 The Furlegerin with Hair Done Up, Albrecht Durer, 1497 Departure for the Hunt, detail, by the Master of the Housebook, date unknown. You may have noticed the different sleeve styles, one style very full and long, one fitted and shorter, and one with openings along the back and shorter still. There are also differences in the necklines. However, the overall silhouette of the dresses is similar. For my dress, I chose a middle weight linen in Sea Green, a light turquoise color. My fitted pattern pieces: The front and back panels, which will be pleated. They are longer than the skirt panels to allow for the pleating along the top: Back panel, mid-pleating. I padded the top 4 inches or so with light-weight wool, and rolled the pleats. These are the only pictures I have of the process. I got so excited, I forgot to take pictures! Here are pictures of the finished gown: This dress is "waisted", meaning the bodice and the skirts are attached by the waist seam, as opposed to a kirtle-style gown with long continuous bodice and skirts. This allowed me to line the bodice fully, including the sleeves. The pleats are attached to the outside of the bodice, not set into a cut-out, and sewn as long panels into the skirts. The front is closed with eyelet panels sewn into the inside front along the pleats, and hooks and eyes above them. I found metal filigree buttons and made a silk fingerloop braid for the front tie. I will be making another dress like this in purple wool over the winter. When I make it, I'll be sure to document the entire process!
When I made my new plant dyed 16th century German dress I knew that I would need to make a new smocked shirt as the old one was so fancy. So I decided on a medium weight unbleached linen fabric. Th…
In which I am stymied by sleeves, but have finally found what I’m looking for.
Night on the Town in the Barony of Lochmere, March 22, 2014 Teacher: Lady Amie Sparrow, [email protected], Purpose: In this class you will learn some very simple stitches: counted cross stitch,…
A simple English late 16th century linen coif and forehead cloth, worn by women and girls across the classes. Many years ago, I made an elaborate blackwork coif. Since then I have made several of these coifs for other people…
Exploring 16th century Germany by recreating clothing and accessories
I finally finished off my wool kirtle, which started out as the Lady with a Unicorn dress. It slowly evolved into something a bit different thanks to some mishaps with the pattern layout I was using and some over enthusiastic scissors. I am wearing it over my Tudor shift as I have yet to make
Sprang is a technique of making a fabric on a vertical frame using only warpthreads. The warp is fixed around a cord at the upper and lower end of the frame. The threads make crossings with each other by pulling the back ones to the front and dropping the front ones to the back. Because the warp threads are fixed at both the top and bottom the pattern occur at both ends at the same time. The technique gives a stretchy, very netlike structure and was therefore used for hairnets, among other things. The technique has been used when a stretch fabric was required. The technique can create a very tight weave, especially if they were made by wool. This technique is very old. The period which these hairnets flourished lies between c. mid-4th and mid-8th century AD, according to a publication made by the British museum. Sprang fragment found in excavations were often thought to be woven. But! The sprang technique was not uncommon during the 16th Century either. In Olaus Magnus Historia om de nordiska folken from 1555 the nordic woman is praised for her knowledge about textile work and especially the "whitework, that is called sprang" (my translation). There is also examples from the artworld, a lady working on what could be a sprangframe in a Lucas Cranach painting. This is a part of a painting called Education of the Virgin Mary and was painted between 1510-1515. There is also this drawing " Planet Venus and her children", from the early 16th century, shown in the book Die textilen Künste, by Leonie von Wilckens. Its a lady that is possibly doing sprang on a sprangframe. I attended a net knotting class at an SCA-event almost a year ago. It was fun but it did not really feel like something that I would put the effort needed in to master. But sprang could be something that I could do! So for a handicraft exchange I asked a friend to make me a sprang frame. I saw this picture on pinterest and thought that she was working on a sprang frame. And I showed my friend that was going to make the frame for me. She is not. She is doing sprang on a weaving loom from the Osebergsship. The pictures comes from here. That was not what I thought I asked for. But to have a copy of the weaving loom from the Osebergsship is not bad either... And it is obviously possible to do sprang on it too... Here is my frame. After I got it home it did not take long before I tried it out. I started with a small warp with 30 wool threads. At first I did not understand the meaning of the sticks. Until I made and error, and because of my lack of stick I needed to redo the whole thing. The sticks helps you separate the warpthreads and you could just take up the latest part you did wrong. If you do something wrong you will see it in the next round or in the next after that. Therefore, use the helpsticks. Next try went better. It worked fine, but there is a couple of errors in it. How long do you think I waited until I put up another? It was...maybe 15 hours. This time I tried linen. 60 threads. And I made it longer. If it worked I might be able to use my trial and error-piece for something. The helpsticks is good to make the rows even too. Here you can see it clearly, when I made a row without one. It worked! There is a couple of errors in this one too, mostly around the edges. For the next one I need to be more careful, to see that all the threads is in order. But it is actually big enough to make a net out of it. A good thing with this technique is that you dont need a speciall frame for it. Any kind of squared frame would do. Hairnets were common among the higher social classes of the 16th century in Germany and nearby countries. Here we see one on Queen Ann of Hungary and Bohemia. And one on this lovely lady painted by Christop Amberger 1522. And here from a drawing made by Urs Graf 1514. I dont know who this lady is but she is so clearly show that it is possible to have a wulst underneath so I wanted to show her picture anyway. Im not saying all of these hairnets are made by the sprangtechnique but I say that it possible to make nets with it. And that it was done. So, out of my squared piece of linen sprang I made a hairnet. Many of the ladies in the paintings looks like they have a wulst underneath. This theory is also presented in the article Nets-Knots-Lace Early 16th century headdress from East Tyrol by Beatrix Nutz. So I made a separate one that is possible to use under a see-trough net. I made a fingerloop braid to pull three of the sides of the net together and ty it around my head. Next time Im going to try to make the net smaller, both the whole garment but also the holes in it. And maybe try a more difficult pattern! And threads that are a bit more stiff, the net is a bit soft and dont get the exact look. Maybe some kind of metalthread. Sources: https://www.academia.edu/5403707/Sprang_Hairnets_in_the_Katoen_Natie_collection?sm=b https://www.academia.edu/24731033/Radiocarbon_dating_of_linen_hairnets_in_sprang_technique?sm=b https://www.academia.edu/37891586/ATMSII_Linen_Sprang_from_Lengberg_Castle.pdf http://www.stringpage.com/sprang/sprang1.html http://housebarra.com/EP/ep07/11sprang.html Tutorial http://honorbeforevictory.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/sprang-tutorial-handout.pdf https://sashweaver.wordpress.com/tag/sprang/page/3/ Socks! http://www.spranglady.com/blog/previous/3 Nets-Knots-Lace Early 16th century headdresses from East Tyrol by Beatric Nutz. Die Rekonstruktion eng anliegender Bekleidung aus Antike und Renaissance by Dagmar Drinkler Historia om de nordiska folken by Olaus Magnus Språngning by Tine Abrahamsson
My friend is working on a kirtle class for Pennsic. I am made some pictures for her to use, trying to demonstrate the possible uses for a kirtle pattern once you've made one. We aren't pushing it as a period correct method of pattering, only as a possibility. Also trying to keep it as simple as possible: it drove me crazy wanting to include notes on proper accessories like aprons, hats, coifs, purses, belts, sleeves, under dress, shifts, etc. My website for more costume goodness: www.morgandonner.com/
The medieval tradition of covering the hair with a haube, a hood, as a sign of marital status continued during the 16th century. In the firs...
For my local SCA Kingdom’s A&S Championship I created and entered the shirt presented in this article. Below are excepts and pictures from my supporting documentation. I will be adjusting…
Portrait of Charles IX, n.d. by Francois Clouet. Top-Quality Giclée Canvas Print 5887-CLF by TopArtPrint. Customization Options and WorldWide Shipping!
Throughout history, Catherine de’ Medici has been considered something of a sorceress, a 16th-century French queen and banking heiress adroitly trained in...
