HSM challenge 12 - community

 This weekend was supposed to be the first time our 16th century guild would do a public event together. It was going to be partially outdoors, and it's December so I needed something warm. I decided to go for a furlined gollar or cape. The event was still planned in early November, but then the second covid wave hit and  it's been postponed. 

The pattern of the cape really shows how helpful it is to be part of a costuming community. I took a photo of a pattern that belong to Marlein, she has a post about it here. It was a fairly simple pattern, so I didn't copy it exactly. I then made a small pattern, basically just long enough to cover the shoulders, and that pattern I lent to Ann-Sofie and Monica. When it was time for me to actually make my cape, well Monica had my pattern, but I was having a crafting session together with Ann-Sofie, so I could use the pattern that she had drawn from my copy, that at the moment was with Monica. All of us now have made our versions of the cape, and I had looked forward to us all wearing it together showing how you can adapt a base pattern in many ways depending on what lenghts, fabrics, and linings you use. Well that will have to wait when it's possible to have an event together again.

The finished cape with the fur collar turned to the outside.

The back of the cape.

When it's really cold the collar can be turned up and really hug your neck with some gorgesous soft fur.

At the moment I have not added any closures at the opening. When I've tried it on the cape hangs in position by itself, and I could decide if I would add the closures to get the cape to close totally, or with the fur visible. 

The side seam has a slit so that I can get my arms through and work with them, while still keeping the cape on. That will make it a lot easier when working and moving around.

The length of the side seam is 60 cm, this is a bit on the shorter side. I would probably have liked another 10 cm, but then I'm not sure I would have had enough fur to line the whole cape.

The finished cape with the scraps of fur that were left. 

I have more posts about the construction here: A proper winter gollar, and here: The collar of the gollar

Some comments on the the historical accuracy. The pattner is accurate and the fabric is a felted wool similar to the kind that would have been available. I chose a pale pink colour because I didn't want to have a brown cape, but I also wanted a cape that would be suitable for a middleclass kind of person, so I didn't want to use a colour that was too strong like red or black. In local texts from the 1520s there are complaints about clothes being "too colorful", and I didn't want to go in that territory. 

The fur that I've used for lining is from a vintage fur coat and it's mink. The mink is a North American species and would not have been available the time in Sweden. The furs that are talked about in the upper classes are usually squirrel, marten and for the really exclusive clothes sable. Squirrels were definitely hunted here in the area. Since I don't want to use "new" fur I had to go with the available fur and then I went with mink. Also about halfway into the project I got the chance to hear a lecture on the reuse of clothes in the 16th century Swedish court. And there I learnt that fur linings were always detachable, they were probably never even stored together with the outer fabric. So my version of attaching the fur directly to the outer wool fabric is totally wrong. 

In the end I have a piece of clothing that looks good, and will be really nice and warm, but I am a bit unsure on how accurate it actually is.

Anyway, here are just the facts.

The Challenge: Community

Material:  1 m of pink melton wool, 1 vintage fur coat (approximate size XL)

Pattern: A schaublein from "Drei Schnittbücher"

Year: First half of the 16th century

Notions: Linen and silk thread to sew with

How historically accurate is it? The overall look is very accurate, but it is the wrong kind of fur (mink wasn't around then) and the construction of adding the fur directly to the main fabric is wrong, the time period it would have been made as a detachable lining. I would say 50%

Hours to complete: 2 weeks, most of it was about piecing the fur scraps together to get them to cover the whole cape.

First worn: Not yet

Total cost:  $60 (half of it fabric half of it for the coat)

The collar of the gollar

 It sounds fun, but really collar and gollar are the same word, even more obvious in Swedish where gollar in the 16th century was probably called a "kraga", and collar in modern Swedish is "krage".

Anyway for a proper winter gollar I wanted a nice high collar as well.

This is the shape of the collar. The important thing is that the bottom of the collar is the measurement that you want your finished backpiece to have. The backpiece of the main gollar is then pleated to the gollar to give it the right measurement.

That the backpiece is pleated to the gollar makes it quite bulky. For that reason it was a good thing that the fur lining didn't go all the way up to the top of the backpiece. Now I only pleated the wool pieces together, and afterwards I covered the gap with a piece of fur that I put in over the gap.

This is what the inside of the gollar looked like when I had attached the larger pieces of fur. From this I had to patch the rest with all the pieces that I could get. I was also very lucky in that I could cover the collar with the collar piece from the furcoat, since that was a piece of fur that was definitely of a different and higher quality than the rest of the coat.

At about this stage I got the chance to listen to a talk on the re-use of clothes and textiles at the Swedish court in the middle and late 16th century. And I can only say that my method of attaching the fur lining is totally wrong. Originally the fur lining was sewn together separately and then quite loosely attached to the outer fabric. It was easy to separate the lining from the main fabric, and it's very probably that they were stored separately. I should not have attached the fur directly to the outer wool fabric. 

Another note about construction is that I'm using fairly large stitches when I'm sewing the fur. I don't know if that was how it was done, but it's a habit I have from sewing leather and fake leather on the machine, where all the instructions call for using large stitches so that you don't weaken the leather.

When all the fur was attached I finished by taking off the excess fur that was peaking out. When working with fur, also with fake fur, I'm using a scalpel. I've also heard from people that have used a razor blade. The important thing is that you cut through the leather, but not the fur itself. With a pair of scissors you would cut everything, and that leads a to a lot more loose fluff that you need to clean up. You still get some fluff, but it's a lot less since you haven't cut it.

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.