A Bluestocking Knits

David, stout fellow, said that he was game for pretty much anything, Faire-garb-wise, and so I decided to combine two of my interests, genealogy and historical clothing, and kit him out like a 16th-century Swede.  My inspiration ended up being mostly this —

which happens to be Nils Dacke (ca.1510-1543), leader of a 16th-century peasant revolt in southern Sweden.  The jerkin is almost exactly, bar the red piping, like the one in The Tudor Tailor, and the location and period are spot on.

I used Sew-Classics Linen-Look again for this jerkin, this time in "Calla Green", about 4 yds altogether, I think. The amount of fabric given in the book was not enough by about a 1/2
yard, but possibly this is because David is noticeably bigger, upon
reflection, than the Tudor Tailor model — that Swedish ancestry again!

I had more problems with this jerkin pattern than the girls' kirtles, not sure why.  Maybe it is because David's shape and size is more different, as it were, from the Tudor Tailor model than the girls' are.  I ended up drafting a completely different sleeve pattern, using a tutorial from The Curious Frau, which gave me less trouble than the Tudor Tailor one, but David and I both decided that we like the shaped sleeve a little better, and so I slashed and curved the workable straight sleeve pattern to make a shaped one.

The lining is unbleached muslin — I liked the way that the sandy-beige of the muslin contrasted with the calla green.

I added a collar at the last minute when David said, "Is there a collar? I like collars" — so this one is a very simple folded strip of fabric attached to the rounded neckline of the jerkin.

The skirt is about 1.75 times the width of the waist, roughly the proportion of the pattern in the book, but it looks to my eye a little too much, a little girly perhaps. I suppose one needs a good bit of room in the skirts to move one's legs, though, so the proof will be in the wearing.

I sewed all sixteen buttonholes by hand. This was not entirely my original plan, but for some reason, the machine or me, I can't do good buttonholes with the machine. The zigzag stitches tend to overlap in the middle, despite being well within the parameters given in the manual, and pop right out the moment the slit is cut. I made all of the buttonholes on the machine, then decided to hand-sew over them, one at a time, and cut only what I was going to do immediately, so that if I didn't have time or it was a howling failure, I could simply leave them uncut, as I expect David will wear the jerkin mostly unbuttoned anyway. This was in fact a very good plan, as I didn't feel compelled or daunted by the thought of sixteen hand-sewn buttonholes in front of me. The first one, after a few experiments on a piece of scrap with the same number of layers, took about an hour, and is pretty wonky, but I got noticeably better and quicker on the second one. I do recommend strong light and strong tea to hand, though. I also had the unpopped stitches as a guideline to help both in stabilizing the edge of the hole and to measure my stitches, as well as a dab of Fray-Check to keep the random threads at bay. Next time I will make the stitches smaller.

They won't win any prizes, but I didn't think I could do it at all, and so I'm fairly proud of the results since in that light they're really not too bad.

The buttons are 5/8-inch forms from Dritz — I got sixteen buttons out of three packages of five each, because one package had an extra back and another had an extra button! — and so I decided to go with the paired-buttons arrangement instead of laying them out evenly spaced, although this is not quite the usual for jerkins, apparently.  I just like it.

There is great debate in historical-costuming circles as to whether trousers are acceptable, but the gist of it seems to be that for the most part only peasants and soldiers wore them, as if a man could afford hose, that is what he wore.  Nils Dacke was, of course, both peasant and soldier, in a way, and according to the author of a Swedish historical costuming blog I've recently discovered, Swedish peasants used to wear buckled garters on the outside of their trousers, just below the knee — just like those in the drawing of Nils Dacke.  So, considering that Mikael's focus in traditional Swedish costume being in the Mora/Orsa area of Dalarna, where David's Swedish ancestors were also from, I made some very quick garters from pieces of sky-blue grosgrain.  I regret that I haven't had time to make some proper trousers, so David is wearing a worn-out pair of chinos instead, but the jerkin covers the most non-period part, the zipper and waist!  Those attention-getting garters may distract anyone from noticing, anyway.

I also made him a carry-sack to the instructions posted by Albrechts Bössor, a Swedish re-enactment group, which mediaeval carry-sack is based on this charming detail of the 14th-century carving of the "Flight into Egypt" at the church in Martebo, in Gotland —

For this carry-sack, I used a piece of 100% linen from Fabrics-Store.com — I think it's the IL019 mid-weight in "Blue Bonnet", a beautiful deep blue that I had originally intended for an apron.  I used some leftover white linen for the facing, which I'm sure will be quite impractical in a carry-sack, but I didn't want to mix linen with something else that might not wash in quite the same way.

I've really enjoyed this project of clothing my family for the Renaissance Faire, both the research and the decision-making, and the sewing.  I've learned a lot about myself,

as well as about sewing and clothing construction.

A good pattern and a good fabric will get much better results than indifferent ones.

Rushing is almost always a bad idea. 

In fact, I think that this is the best lesson I've carried away from this project — that although I could literally feel myself wanting if not instant gratification, then at least in-less-than-an-hour, taking my time and doing this carefully is much more satisfying, and saves an enormous amount of bother and disappointment.  I have much more confidence in my abilities than I did when I started — though there is still a long way to go, certainly!

I regret that I didn't get a photograph of all four of us together — but there is always next year!

This is the first of three posts about my adventures in making a first set of Renaissance Faire garb for my family.  David said a few months ago, "Who wants to dress up for the Faire this year?" and the girls both shouted "Me!" so I pulled out my copy of The Tudor Tailor and got to work.  I had already made the kirtle and waistcoat described below, thinking that only David and I would be up for it, but the girls actually got excited.

The Tudor Tailor, by Jane Malcolm-Davies and Ninya Mikhaila, is thrilling and dangerous and daunting all at once.  The photographs are beautiful, and the erudition impressive, but you must scale up and draft the patterns yourself.  I bought the book a few years ago at the Renaissance Pleasure Faire,
in anticipation of sewing my own gown, on the reassurances of the woman
running the stall that the patterns were relatively easy to draft and
sew oneself. Well, it is not for the faint-hearted, to be sure.  If you are stubborn enough, though, you might get through all right.

(Yes, the Tudor Tailor website now offers full-size patterns.  I had already spent some $35 on the book; I didn't feel I could justify the expense of a rather pricy pattern in addition to fabric, notions, etc.)

The instructions are pretty basic, and assume a goodish amount of sewing experience.  There is no advice in the book about where boning should go, for instance, so I had to kind of make it up, with reference to a few pictures cobbled together from various sources on the internet.  I'm sure it is different for different women, but a few guidelines would have been helpful.

I made things more difficult for myself by falling in love with the side-opening bodice, which turned out to be quite a trial.  How deep do you make the overlap?  If it is only an inch or two, where do you put the boning?  How do you accommodate the skirt opening?  Etc. etc. etc.  Lots of trials with self-fitting a bodice (not easy to do, but most of my sewing was done while the girls were at school) and stupid mistakes like attaching the boned interlining the wrong way round so that the bones were curving away from my body!  But my mom and David were both on hand for the last tweaking of the pattern, and I managed to solve or disguise most of the problems, and get a wearable kirtle.

The fabric is Sew Classics Linen-Look from Jo-Ann's, in, I regret to say, "Potent Purple".  This name does not do it justice at all.  It is, I fancy, what the Elizabethans called murrey (mulberry), a rich reddish purple.  Quite lovely, especially with a touch of black velvet ribbon trim, one narrow, one wide.

(The boning, I regret to say, does not hold up my bosom as well as I had hoped.  This, I gather, is a common problem as many historical costumers refer to "slippage", which describes the effect perfectly.)

The bodice is self-lined with muslin interlining, and drill inter-interlining on the fronts only.  I attached the skirts with box pleats, which I know now to be much more of a chore than knife pleats, but there was so much fabric, since I used three widths of fabric on my skirts, that I'm not sure knife pleats would have worked.  Anyway, it looks really nice.

I also very much admired this waistcoat in the Tudor Tailor book —

this is a front view of it, from Ninya Mikhaila's website — so I chose that to go over my kirtle, and used a black midweight cotton/poly blend, and a light black cotton lining.  After the kirtle, this seemed a walk in the park.  The godets went in very nicely with only a little bit of fuss at first, and I really like the effect — here is another view of the Tudor Tailor one, since the black of mine is difficult to photograph —

The part that took the longest was in fact sewing the 21,748 pairs of hooks and eyes along the front of the waistcoat.  No, I exaggerate a little — but I really dislike sewing hooks and eyes, and although I really like the look, I will think twice about making something with this many again — and not with black thread on black fabric in a hurry, either — although I "cheated" sometimes and used brown thread so that I could see it!  I probably could have got away with a smaller number of hooks-and-eyes, but there was little indication in the book about quantities, and the only photo of a finished one is this back view, so I wasn't to know.  It took me from last midsummer to March to do them all!

But I am really enormously pleased with it.  I like the wings and the godets, and the way that the collar of my smock shows above the lower rounded collar of the waistcoat, and the weirdly charming buttonless sleeve cuffs.  It seems to suit my figure too, so that's definitely all right!

I also made a "Henrician brimmed coif", with the IL020 handkerchief-weight linen from Fabrics-Store.com.  I suppose that the shaped-brim one would be more flattering, but I figured that this one would be better with the hat I had bought at the Faire when I first thought "I can sew myself a Ren-Faire costume!" 

The hat is one of the more sober ones from Cora Hendershott of Wheat Goddesses, who has a booth at the Faire.

More kirtles to come …