HSM challenge 1 - back to the beginnings

 January: Back to the Beginning: Re-make one of your very first projects. Or make something that is the beginning of an entirely new outfit.

Back when I started my 16th century costuming I of course started with a shift. It was challenge 2 in the HSM 2016 challenge. It's been my favorite shift, because it's so comfy, but this summer I couldn't bring it to Visby because the facings of the neckline and cuffs had totally disintegrated.

This cuff was held on with a few stitches. So I decided to do what I should have done ages ago and repair it. I've reattched all the facings and I also replaced the safety pins that cloaed the cuffs with new cloth buttons. 

Now I am ready to use this shift again.

How it fits the challenge: I went bak to the very first 16th century shift I made and repaired it by replacing all the facings around the neckline and cuffs that had come loose. I also added cloth buttons to cloae thw cuffs instead of the safety pins I've used the last years.

Material: scraps of linen and cotton

Pattern: none

Year: ca 1520

Notions: sewing thread,ä

How historically accurate is it? Patching and repairing is correct so 90%

Hours to complete: 1 hour

First worn: Not yet 

Total cost: A stash project, but bought new around $1

 

HSM Challenge 8: All tied up - a wool partlet

 When it's cold it's nice to have something extra on your upper body. Over the years I have mainly used my red gollar, and for really cold times my pink cape. Now it's hard to wear both the collar and the cape at the same time, so for this years Christmas market I wanted to make a partlet instead.

Partlets are visible in the art at the time period I'm mostly interested in, so 1520-1540. It seems to have been mostly popular in southern Germany and the Low Countries, which is a bit outside of my interested of Northern Germany/Scandinavia. Still there exist some examples of partlets from further north as well, not the least the famous wall painting from Åbo/Turku castle where the woman is wearing a vestlike garment. I was a bit stressed when making the partlet, so I don't have any progress photos, but I will try to describe it.

The partlet consists of three pieces, one back piece and two front pieces. I kept the armhole and front edges raw, but folded the bottom hem to create a drawstring channel.

Backside, wrong side out

Side, wrong side out

The partlet goes out over my shoulderds for width, and the fabric under the armhole is just a few cm wide.

The fur was first added to a piece of thin wool fabric and then that fabric was sewn to the partlet. I also add ribbons to close the parlet.

Front, wrong side out

I didn't have enough fur to line the whole piece, so it's just around the opening and the neck in the front. I used the strings so that I can chose to wear the partlet with the fur on the outside or the inside.

Jere I am wearing the partlet, and it was really nice and it worked fine under the pink cape as well.

How it fits the challenge: A parlet closed with ribbons
Material: wool fabric, fur
Pattern: Draped by me
Year: ca 1530
Notions: sewing thread, ribbons
How historically accurate is it? The ribbons are synthethic, but the rest is proper materials, around 80%
Hours to complete: 1 week
First worn: At a Christmas market December 10th 2023
Total cost: A stash project, but bought new around $30

HSM23 Challenge 12 - paired to perfection - a pair of medieval mittens

 With some time at home and some scrap wool I decided that I would do a pair of medieval mittens, since that would also help me complete one of the HSM challenges.

A lot of image sources for medieval mittens can be found here and Margaret Roe Designs also has a write-up and pattern for medieval mittens. Me being me I also decided that just a simple  mitten would be too boring and easy, so I decided to make a three-fingered set of mittens. Also since I know from my modern winterwear that I really like the three-fingered design a lot, more nimble than a simple mitten but still warmer than gloves with individual fingers.

I started out with simply drawing an outline of my hand on white scrap fabric. (it's the table cloths from my wedding that I've kept as scrap fabric for making patterns and muslins.)

I have extremely short fingers, after all I forced my violin teacher to teach me differently since my reach was so much smaller than most people. At this time I also thought that I was going to make the mittens for my husband so I added quite a lot of extra length.

I made a thumb piece and a slit in the palm to add it. As you can see this first version of the thumb didn't work. It was so narrow that I could hardly get my thumb into it, and you have the big wrinkle going from the split of the two fingers and towards the thumb, there was obviously a lot strain there.

The new version of the thumb was a lot wider, and I moved the slit in towards more of the palm of the hand. With this version  I was ready to cut out the proper fabric. The fabric that I used is a very green wool, I think the colour is too bright to really feel historical and it is kind of a stiff fabric, so I treat it as my "worst" wool fabric, but good for this kind of small experimental projects.

Each mitten consists of four pieces, a front and back main piece and two thumbpieces. The thumb was made more narrow from the pattern. All pieces were joined together with whip stitches, and I started with the thumb before sewing the main pieces together.

Along the way I kept adjusting the size, so I kept taking the fingers in and make them shorter.

Here are the scrap that I cut off from the mittens while working on them.

I added two fabric loops on each mitten so that I could pull a string through to tighten the gloves. I had made them fairly wide so that I could pull them outside of my cuffs on my clothes, but I wanted them to be tight around the wrist so that they fall off too easily. 

And this is me wearing the mittens, while holding a cup of hot, spiced beer

What the item is: A pair of medieval mittens
How it fits the challenge: it is a pair of mittens
Material: Wool fabric
Pattern: My own
Year: Late Middle Ages
Notions: thread, cotton string
How historically accurate is it? Accurate pattern, but the material is decent but not totally accurate so somewhere around 50%
Hours to complete: 4 hours ( I am a slow handsewer)
First worn: At a Christmas market on December 10th
Total cost: All made from stash, but bought new around $10.