A proper winter gollar

 Winter is coming, and I need something to wear with my 16th century clothes. I decided to make a longer gollar, than my short red one. I wanted a gollar, or cape, that covered the whole upper body, and I wanted to line it with fur to make it really warm and cozy. I started to look around auction sites and second hand stores for some old furcoats that I could use for lining. I don't mind wearing fur if it's old or antique, but I don't want to buy new fur and encourage the fur industry. I didn't find anything, but I still needed the cape, so I decided to start with it anyway. For the wool outside I picked a new melton wool, which is lately felted. It's from Medeltidsmode. The fabric arrived, I cut it out, and then I forgot that I had made a bid on a mink coat on an auction site and got really surprised when I got the mail that I had won the auction. I got it dirt cheap.

The pattern for the cape is fairly simple, I have gotten it from Marlein. It's a half circle for the back piece, and the front is basically a quarter circle cut in half, so you get two 8th of a circle. There is an opening in the seam between the fronts and the back piece, so you can stick your hands out through it. 

To reuse a furcoat isn't totally easy. First I had to remove the two layers of lining, and then cut it up into pieces that were as large as possible, basically most of the fronts and the back piece. I decided to use the largest pieces of fur for the front, where they might be visible. And tht is what you can see in the photo above. 

Then I got a lot of small pieces and scraps. I was worried that there wouldn't be enough fur to line the whole cape. But I put everything out and from what I can see there should be enough fur to fully line it. I still haven't cut up the sleeves, I'm first of all planning on using them for the collar, and then as reserve pieces if I can't cover the whole inside of the cape. If you are taller than me, or want a longer cape, you might need two furcoats or a furcoat and some extra pieces. 

I started with attaching the front pieces and then the biggest pieces in the back. I'm using silk thread, and big stitchies, to make as little strucural damage to the fur as possible. I sew the pieces on by hand, and I pull the thread through part of the wool, but not all the way to the other side. The seams are not toally invisible, but the there is no thread visible on the front. This would probably have been easier if I had used a dark fabri and a thread in a similar colour.

Despite trying my best to pin everything in place I noticed that the outer fabric had gotten all these folds, it had obviously moved when I sewed the large piee of fur on. The solution was to rip up the seam fixing the fur to the wool at the neck opening and then stretch the wool upwards to get rid of the wrinkles at the bottom.

I also made sure to do this when the cape was hanging on my dressform, to mae sure that the fabric was hanging like it would when I wear it. In the photo above you can see the difference from before. 

This is how much I had to stretch the wool, from the start the fur was sewn on just 0,5 cm from the edge of the wool. This doesn't matter since I will be able to over it with the fur from the collar when I sew it on.

I still haven't gotten the inside fully covered in fur, but the next step is to make the collar and line that with fur, so that I then know exactly how much fur I will have left.

Photos for an exhbition

 On December 5th the county museum, Dalarnas museum, opens and exhibition Gustav Vasa. Gustav Vasa's adventures through Dalarna on his quest to gather followers and oust the Danish king is a big thing in Swedish history, but even more so in Dalarna. It is an ingrained part of the folk memory an folk traditions in the region, no matter if they are true or not. Then of course Gustav Vasa is seen as the creator of the modern national state of Sweden, despite also being a terrible tyrant. Anyway, there are actually two exhibits. One is a travelling exhibition about Gustav Vasa and the quest for power, the other is made by the museum and is about the myths and legends in Dalarna. our 16th century guild, that is aiming to recreate the time of Gustav Vasa was asked if we could help out with showing how people would have been dressed in the time period. And earlier this week, myself, Linnea and Kål Henrik went down to the museum and had a quick photosession.

To represent the more local people in Dalarna at the time, I'm wearing my mustard kirtle, standard apron and new linen hood, over my smallest wulsthaube. We think this could werk well with a rich farmer or smaller master miner. Kål Henrik is showing off his footsoldier/farmer soldier, and Linnea is using her German town clothing to represent a woman from the top master miners' families.

We also brought our landsknecht garb with us to show off the contrast between the local people and those foreign people who were also in the country, mostly in the hunt for Gustav Vasa. 

I usually don't do landsknecht, but it was fun to dress up. I need to redo quite a few things on my green dress that I'm not happy with, but instead of remaking it into a more local fashion I'm thinking that I will keep it as a trossfrau gown so that I have an option for doing landsknecht when it's needed.

It will be fun to see how they use our photos in the exhibitions.

Finishing the gold hood

 It's time to finish up my posts about the gold hood.

In my last post I had just finished couching down thread in all the big segments of the hood. There was still some empty space before the edge though, but not enough for a full motif. Here I had to do my own design and chose to add a pomegranate motif. It's a very common motif, and it's in embroidery on the Cranach hood that I have also used as inspiration.

I really ran out of thread when doing the pomegranates. The ones to the left were finished as I wanted to, but with the right ones I had to use viner gold passing, four threads, instead of the jap gold, two hreads, and I used pearl purl 2 and more copper pearl purl to fill in the motifs.

To fill in more of the gaps I added several enamel buttons, that are copies of finds from Sweden in approximately the right time period, I also added some rows of freshwater pearls.

The backside of the embroidery is really not beautiful. But whenever I've heard experts talk about medieval embroidery, they keep saying that the backsides are bad, and that they are even glued down. Well if glue is historically accurate, why not use it. I've painted the whole backside with regular wood glue, watered down a bit to make it easier to brush over he threads. The white tape is holding the shanks of the buttons, so that they don't wobble around.

Then it was on to finish the hood so that I could actually wear it. I lined it in a layer of quite heavy white linen, but only the areas under the embroideries. The back was just the outer linen fabric, pleated into place. The hood is held in place by two ribbons tied from just where the embroidery ends, behind my ears, and the ribbons are tucked up under the hood so that they are not visible.

When I wore the hood I'm covering it with a silk gauze veil, since most portraits of embroidered hoods show a sheer fabric over the hood.

Photo by Johan Falkenström - https://www.instagram.com/jfalkenstrom/