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.

HSM Challenge 5: Hair apparel - the finished renaissance flat cap

So in order to finish the flat cap that I started here I wanted to line it to make it warmer. I have a stash of fur pieces left, from when I made my pink furlined cape. It's old fur from a vintage furcoat that I bought several years ago on an auction. 

Just when I had finished that cape, or schaube, I learnt that the fur was usually attached to a separate layer, and I wanted to do this. This will also allow me to remove the fur if it is too warm, say in the summer. For the layer that I attached the fur to I used the pair of hose that I had made for David, but that had really split and are not repairable anymore. The fabric is really thin, but still wool so it doesn't unravel.

The fur was sewn with fairly large stitches to the interlayer and then the lining was whipstitched to the seam allowance on the inside of the cap, and sewn to the edge of the cap with prickstitches. 

We took the cap out to try it in the winter weather.

According to the wearer it's really nice and comfy, and he has enough space to put a modern thin cap under it as well if it gets really cold. 

Challenge 5, May 2023: Hair Apparel Make something worn in the hair or on the head.

Be sure to tell us the following:

What the item is: a renaissance winter flat cap
How it fits the challenge: it is worn on the head
Material: 1 m of wool, scraps but something like 0,3 m of fur
Pattern: inspired by internet tutorials for Tudor flat caps
Year: 1520s
Notions: sewing thread
How historically accurate is it? 60% - it seems as if the caps were mainly black, but I didn't have any black fabric, the main cap is also sewn on the machine while the lining is made by hand
Hours to complete: 3
First worn: not yet
Total cost: a stash project, but probably $30 if I had bought the material new

HSM21: Challenge 6 on your head - a 17th century hood

 For our little get together outside yesterday I wanted to have something on my head to keep warm. My 16th century wulsthaube and hood are made of linen, and linen does nothing to keep you warm. I really wanted to make something from wool. Without any source for 16th century wool headwear I decided to go for 17th century. This was not an event where historical accuracy was important, so I'd rather be warm than correct. One day I am going to make 17th century clothes as well, so I might as well start.

In Dutch paintings from the middle of the 17th century one can find quite a few black hoods, especially for winterwear.

Old woman reading, by Rembrandt

Winter by Hollar

The black hood also shows up on women in the series of townscriers of London, from the second half of the 17th century.

I have not done a lot of indepent research on the black hoods, so I recommend reading the Costume Historian's Women's hoods 1600-1690. Nicole Kipar also had a great site with resources for the middle of the 17th century, and that is where I found the inspiration for my pattern. Even if I didn't use it exactly.

What I could pick up from a quick glance is that the hood was worn as outerwear. It is possibly a regional fashion for the Netherlands and England, rather than a general European fashion. It is always black. In the middle of the 17th century it was not a very fashionable thing, mostly worn by older women and lower class women. The painting by Rembrandt shows that the hood could be lined with fur. For many of the black and white drawings it's hard to see if the hood is lined or not. I get a sense that they are lined, but since I did not have any dark, suitable fabrics available I decided to do an unlined hood.

My pattern was very much decided by the piece of fabric I had. It was the last remnant of fabric from when I made my Enfys Nest cape. It's a black felted wool. _The top is placed on fold. The width is 48 cm, this was pretty long but since _I was going to wear it over my wulsthaube I exaggerated it a bit. The short backside is 25 cm, and then I cut the fabric in an angle. After I had a straight angle I recut it a bit to get the little point of fabric. I would have preferred to have the point be a bit longer, but that was where my fabric ended.

For yesterday I simply gathered the back and wore the hood with unfinished edges. I felt that it worked really well though, so today I took away the gathering and redid the hood with better finished.

I hemmed everything except the back. I did a single fold and then added a dark grey wool thread as a filler thread. I do not know if this was a technique that was used in the 17th century, but I felt that it's much prettier than just the single fold. Sewing with black thread on black fabric was not fun, it felt like I had to sew more by touch than by eye, so it took the whole day to do the hems.

This is the full piece, with three edges hemmed, but the short backside is unhemmed.

The back was gathered. For all sewing I use black, waxed linen thread.

I gathered the back as much as I could and tied the gathering threads together, this made the back form a loop, with a tiny opening in the middle.

To close the opening I sewed it shut, under the gathering thread.

The finshed hood stays in place even if I don't tie it under the chin. The head is wearing my wulsthaube under the hood.

Back of the hood

Profile view

The straps are just long enough to tie under the chin. It would have been better if they had been just a bit longer.

This is what the hood looked like when I wore it, without the finished edges. 

What the item is: a 17th century winter hood
How it fits the challenge: It's a hood to wear as outerwear to protect against the weather

Material: ca 1 m of black felted wool
Pattern: My own, with inspiration from Nicole Kipar's patterns of 17th century hoods
Year: mid 17th century
Notions: grey wool yarn and black linen thread
How historically accurate is it? 75% The pattern is there, I'm just not sure if the hood should have bene lined or not, and if a filler thread would have been used when hemming.

Hours to complete: 4
First worn: Yesterday for an evening outside in historical wear with some friends
Total cost: Everything from stash, but the fabric would have cost around $10.