2025 a recap part 3 - the historical costuming

 As I said in my last post, my historical costuming projects tend to be smaller but I do more of them, since they are usually more about adding pieces to my wardrobe, rathern than creating a new wardrobe. Going into 2025 my main project when it came to historical projects was to make a Lengberg bra/supportive kirtle and a schaube for my husband. Well I did neither.

I started drafting a lengberg bra, but while doing that I realised that wearing a bra, a shift and two wool kirtles/gowns would simply be too bulky. The Lengberg bra also is more correct for the late 15th century silhouette, and after all I do mostly early 16th century. Instead I started focusing on making a supportive wool kirtle, that wouldn't need a bra under it. I did make the kirtle using Matthew Gnagy's barra system, which was a new thing for me, but something that I really enjoyed and that I think I will really be able to use in the future. It was a bit stupid to make an underkirtle in cream, since I had to be really careful when wearing only the kirtle in the camp kitchen when cooking. The full post on the kirtle is here.

In the spring I got invited to a 17th century event, a time period that I had eyed a bit but never seriously considered. At Medieval Week I also found this gorgous raspberry red wool, and I bought enough to make a jacket. I made the jacket into a very generic shape that works from the 16th to the 18th century though. The post about the jacket is here. The event also ginally gave me a reason to make one of these long, flowing headpieces that were used, but are not very common among recreators of the 17th century. The post about that is here.

Then in the autumn I felt that what I really wanted was a 16th century hairnet, and I decided that instead of buying it, I should learn how to do them myself. And thus started my adventures in sprang. This is the first craft with yarn as a base that I have enjoyed. When I also got tablets for tablet weaving in an advent calendar I also set up to learn tablet weaving. I feel that I can now make a wearable net and I see this hairnet as a proof of concept, now I need to learn to work with finer yarns, and decide if I want to make my own tablet band as a decoration, or if I should simply buy one.

And with that I have summarized my crafting year 2025, and now it's time to look into what I want to do in 2026.