Jelling Wolves/Dogs

After I embroidered the Mammen face embroideries, I did embroidered decorations for ThorvaldR's and Tofa's coronation garb. The original idea was to have black dogs with grey details on Tofa's garb and grey wolves with black details on ThorvaldR's.

We decided to go with Jelling style and I took inspiration from the cup found in Jelling that gave the name to the art style. It can be dated to 958/59.

Here is a line drawing from the original cup:

I changed it a bit to fit the required shape and to make it more dog/wolf -like. I tried to make the dog's ears a tiny bit shorter and it's teeth smaller than the wolf's, but I'm not so sure that it will register, as the difference is only marginal. This is the result which was then transfered on the fabric by tracing it against the light from a window.

I embroidered the animals with spun silk thread on the silk fabric that was to be used to make the garb. I used stem stitch. First the dogs:

Then the Wolves:

And as I still had time, I simplified the dog a bit and mirrored it to form a decoration for Tofa's apron dress. The result:

I wish I had made the dogs bite each other's tails.

The garb was constructed and sewn by Lady Alyna. And here is the happy couple... errr... Their Majesties.

I'm in no mood to write more documentation details at the moment. If you want to know my sources, feel free to ask for them.

Face to face with the Royal Heirs

(Picture by me, 2012)

My friend Sir Thorvaldr, inspired by his beautiful consort Lady Tofa, won the Drachenwald crown tourney this last Autumn. They were in need of some spiffy garb for their time as Their Royal Highnesses and later after the 12th Night Coronation in January. I offered my embroidery services and Lady Alyna would do the sewing.

For the embroidery on the first set of garb we produced I was given free hands. I got to choose the pattern and colors myself. Their Hignesses have viking personas, so I got to do something I have had my eyes on for a while now: The Mammen embroideries.

I have based my work on the embroidery fragment found from a burial at Bjerringhøj, in Mammen parish, in northern Denmark, dated to the end of the 10th century (Hald, 1980, 102).

The original fragment and the pattern based on it drawn by Heather Rose Jones (Jones, 2005)

The original embroidery is in a staight line, so in order to fit it on a round tunic yoke, I had to change it a little by making the smaller faces on the pattern even smaller on one side of the pattern. For Tofa’s Apron dress embroidery I used some artist's freedom and asked Baroness Estrid to design a more female face to be embroidered instead of the very masculine original face.

I transfered the pattern on the tunic/apron dress fabric by first copying the pattern on a thin paper and sewing it on the fabric through the paper with small running stitches, after which I tore the paper off leaving only the sewn pattern on the fabric. This is obviously not the original method of doing it, but I have found it very practical to have the pattern durably sewn on the fabric, not only lightly sketched after the pricking and pouncing method, which works better with smooth surfaced linen or silk fabrics (Staniland, 1991, 31). I usually carry my embroidery work with me and work on it wherever I happen to be when I have time to stitch, so durability is essential.

Pattern on paper ready to be stitched and the pattern on fabric ready to be embroidered 

(Picture by me, 2012)

The original embroidery is done with wool thread on fine wool entirely with stem stitch (Hald, 1980, 104). My embroidery is also done with stem stitch like the original. I decided to make my embroidery with spun filament embroidery silk threads, because not only do I find them more beautiful, but I also happen to have them in stock. Silk was also found in other textile fragments and threads on the same burial site in Mammen as well as in other sites (Hald, 1980, 106). Hence, the material could have been used by the original artesans. 

I chose the colors according to what coloured threads I happened to have. I tried to keep the colors as close as possible to the shade of the wool threads in the original embroidery. Unfortunately, my selection of colors was quite limited, so some of the darker black embroidery is hard to see against the black and dark green wool of the tunic fabric.

Still not finished... (Picture by me 2012)

Because the embroideries had to be done in haste, I’m not totally satisfied with them. In the future I would use thinner thread, although the original embroideries were done with wool thread thicker than my silk. I’m not used to this style of embroidery, so the whole work was learning by doing.

When the embroideries were sewn on the garments by Lady Alyna, they looked much better than on their own, and I could be satisfied with my work.

Finished pieces! (Pictures by me 2012)

Sources:

• Hald, M. 1980, Ancient Danish Textiles From Bogs And Burials, A Comparative Study of Costume and Iron Age Textiles, Publications of the National Museum, Archaeological-Historical Series Vol. XXI.
• Staniland, K. 1991, Medieval Craftsmen - Embroiderers, British Museum Press, London, 4th Ed. 1997, ISBN 0-7141-2051-0

Picture of the original embroidery found on:

• Historical needlework resources - Mammen Finds, http://medieval.webcon.net.au/extant-mammen.html (last visited 24.12.2012).

Pattern drawing:

• Jones, H.R. 2005, Embroidery from the Tenth Century Viking Grave at Mammen Denmark, http://heatherrosejones.com/mammen/index.html (last visited 24.12.2012).

My New Eye-Dazzling Silk Tent

I'm slowly getting started with my new "garberobe". Here is something I finished yesterday after some stitching frenzy.

First a basic under layer. Wool. The pattern is Herjolfsnes nr 39 with lacing added to the front. The sleeves are done without gussets, a mistake I will not repeat. The next one I'll make shall be more tight-fitting. This one doesn't give any support for the bust.

Then the outer layer. Machine embroidered silk, linen lining. The pattern is somewhat similar to the one above, except for the sleeves, of course. I had to cut it differently to get the embroideries parallel to each other, though. I was so careful not to make it too small, that it became way too big and is like a tent. It's too wide under the arms and at the back. I wonder how could I best fix it. Do I have to open it up and take it in at the seams or would some lacing on the sides be enough? Would that even be period for an outer layer? Or should I just get a pretty belt?

Here you can see the sleeves a little bit better. The veil is a fast fix for the pictures, usually I wear a little more elaborate one with a chin piece.

This must be the most comfortable garb I have ever had. Perhaps I shall keep it as it is, the tent and all?

Renaming the Brown Silk

Here is the first sleeve embroidered. I hereby rename "The Brown Silk" as "The Gold Garb".

I embroidered all the flowers in all of the pieces first, because I'm not sure if I have time to embroider everything in time. Now I do the sleeves first and assemble the garb before embroidering the rest. The garb will not look too incomplete if I do the embroidery symmetricaly. I might not use this at Aarnimetsä Academy though, because I would like to reserve the wow-factor to when it is all done.

Oh. How long will this take? If I work hard and don't do much else, I can embroider a sleeve in two to two and a half days. That means that I'll be doing some embroidery for a long time, even though I know I'm fast.

The Brown Silk - Vol II

I'll post about the progress of my Brown Silk Garb here.

So here is a picture of the silk fabric. The colour is a little bit off, it should be dark chocolate brown. See the pattern? It is (machine)embroidered in chain stitch. (Click it to make the picture bigger.) I'll put more gold on it, first the flowers, them stems and as much of the leaves as I have time for. One pattern section is about 30cm across.

Here is 1/2 of the pieces I cut today. The front piece is quite wide, but so am I. The sleeve is made from three parts, the small ones go to the sides of the sleeve. The tip of the gore will be set between the small corners of the sleeve under ones arm, creating a W pattern. That one is very usefull, as the seam will stretch. There will be only one gore on each side, so the hem is not very wide, but it will be an early period garb, so it doesn't matter. The sleeves are not going to be buttoned, since I want to be able to dress myself without extra help, but I can always make them tighter later, if I want to. This one being the outer layer, the sleeves should actually be wider and maybe lined.

Which reminds me, that I should start thinking about that under layer too.

New garb on the making

So it is time for a totally new garb. I searched the internet for fabric, but all suitable matherial was too expencive or I just didn't like internet shopping. Anyway. Yesterday I ran through every fabric store I could find in Nürnberg. The last one (Maderer) was the best, and I could find embroidered raw silk, even if they didn't have any silk brocades. The embroidery on it is quite simple, so I can improve it with my own. I think that that chocolate brown (my favourite colour, though not the best one for garb. They didn't have enough of the yellow version, which I still couldn't leave in the shop. I can do something with it later!) can benefit from lots of added gold.

They had only 2,2 meters of it, so I had to play some tetris. I'm planning on a garb based on the Tunic of St. Elisabeth of Thuringia. Mine will not have buttoned sleeves, and the cut is slightly different due to shortage of fabric, but something in that direction.

I made a test sample of my cutting plan from a plain cotton bed sheet yesterday, and it worked well. Only the hem was a little short, only to my ankles, but I'll add a border or a broad trim on it to fix that. (Propably with some embroideries.) Now I have cut the silk as well. I'll fix the edges first so that they will not fray, and then I'll do the embroidery. The pieces are easier to handle when they are not put together yet. I'll put the sleeves together first, though, since they are made from three pieces each. Unfortunately it was not possible to position the sleeve pieces on the fabric so that they would both have the same part of the embroidery on them, so the other sleeve will have embroidery in the middle and the other on the sides. Tough, it couldn't be helped.

And the picture in the beginning of this post? That is the leftover pieces of the 140x220cm fabric. I wonder if that is enough to make buttons for the sleeves, if I deside to make them tighter later?

Work Baby, work!

Why I allways notice a need for new garb right before an event?

Let's make an under dress or a shirt to my Eura Garb. I had just replaced all of our old bed linen with new ones, and so I had a lot of off-white cotton material. This took 1 1/4 bed sheets, that's about 3,1 meters of fabric. The pattern is clever and uses all of the matherial, leaving no leftover pieces. I made use of my needle and finished this one in just two days. I'm very proud of myself. 11 meters of seam. Damn I'm fast!

The neck is very wide, but not from side to side. Instead it is wide from front to back, making it very practical for breast feeding. Not that I need that practicality anymore.

Two of the six long seams, the middle seams of the gores, are bag seams.

The other seams are pictured above. I have no idea what is the name of this seam type. (EDIT: The name is felled seam.)

As you can see, I could cut the fabric in a way that left me no edges to be hemmed. Sweet.

Now I'm off to bed. I'm leaving to that event in the morning, and it is already 1:17 am.

Resistance is futile, they will be assimilated.

I had made a tunic for my son. He needs one this summer, when we will take him to his first SCA event. I have not embroidered this myself. I had once bought an old dress from a small shop in the old town of Jerusalem, and since it was now too small for me, I made it to a child sized tunic and a cloak. It looks now a hundred times better than when it was a dress. It's red cotton cross stitch on thick dark blue polyester fabric. (Click the pictures to make them bigger.)

When my son had the tunic, I had to do something for my daughter as well! She has the same reason to need a new SCA garb. So one sunday morning I decided to embroider something for her. It became a collar that can be sewn to what ever dress I end up making for her, and it can be resewn to new dresses when she grows. She picked the flower colours herself! 12 days later I can now proudly present this one. Cotton, polyested, what ever threads, stem stitch and laid work on white cotton (old bed linen).

And some details, front and back:

This was very fun to make. I had not done something this free for ages! I just made up the pattern as I went, and used a bag of left overs and flea market threads. And she loves it! Perhaps I'll make other decorations to match this in the future, maybe on the sleeves?

The Panic Garb

The SCA event I wrote about is taking place this weekend. I managed to get that garb done and I'm now sewing hastely some veil pieces and a small cap.

Here's the garb. You can see a lot of small wedges on the hem and on the sides as well, to make it wide enough for me to wear. The lining on the sleeves looks pretty good.

I added some of the small badges I had made for another garb (see a previous entry about those) to this one to make it look less grey. They are easy to move to another garb if needed. Handy!

I wrote about the lining having problems. The problem was, that I did no think about the pattern in the fabric when I counted how much of it is needed for the sleeves. So I almost ended up with sleeves having patterns in different directions. I had to cut the fabric differently and add some seams in the middle, so that the pieces where the pattern is upside down are hidden inside the sleeves. Here is one of them turned inside out. Yes, there is a pattern on the fabric, French lilies. Unfortunately it does not show very well in the pictures.

It is good enough to wear, though I would have wanted to have something more elaborate.

Panic!

I'm going to an SCA event in the beginning of November. Panic! Because of our move all of my garbs were still in boxes and I dug them out of their hiding place just to notice, that they had all mysteriously got smaller while there. Must be due to contact with cardboard or something...

I got this marvelous idea of an embroidered garb in the style of The Eagle Dalmatic and started embroidering. Bad idea, as I noticed quite soon. I have no way in hell time to finish that one in time for the event. I love the idea, though, and will continue doing about a hundred or so small embroidered badges to be sewn on a silk dress sometime in the future, but I still need a garb in November!

So, I took an old garb that I had originally bought from my friend as well as my Lord's tunic, bought from the same friend and made of the same fabric. I have never used that garb, since it had a hideous polyester lining that I took away, and never finished the deed with a new lining. The fabric is very itchy wool, so I could not use it without a lining of some sort.

Ahead with the story! I brutally murdered the tunic (not my Lord's favourites, because of the itching fabric.) and cut it to pieces. The garb was opened at it's seams and I sew on pieces of the tunic to make the garb a little wider. Good, lets try it on!

Damn! Still a little tight here and there, specially around the hips. Damn, damn, damn! It'll have to do anyway. I'll not be able to use an underdress, so I just have to do with an itching garb. Perhaps I can use a corset? Now of to make lining to the huge sleeves from a fabric I bought a little too hastely. More of that later.

Pictures too might, or might not appear in this blog later.

Oh, did I mention, that I gave my sewing machine to my sister when we moved, so I have to do everything with only a needle and a thread. It would not be panic time if I hade a machine...