Merry Christmas

In Sweden we celebrate on the Christmas Eve, so this is the last day before Christmas. I have just finished up a new festive skirt and I want to wish you all a very, merry Christmas.

The skirt was a remnant I found in a fabric store in Uppsala, it's alot more emerald green and blingy in real life. I've simply made a wastband and pleated the whole length of fabric to it. I was lucky and found a green zipper. The fabric doesn't ravel so I haven't even hemmed it.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Building your historical wardrobe

By now I have a lot of historical clothes in my wardrobe, and I usually talk about having what I consider a good 16th century wardrobe and a good 18th century wardrobe. On the way there are some things that I have learnt and here I will try to give you some advice when you plan on doing an historical wardrobe. There are plenty of advice out there on the importance of fabric choices and the right underpinnings, I'm going to talk more about other choices you can make when building your wardrobe.

1. When will you wear your historical clothes?

 Will it be for a fancy party or will be clothes that you need to wear a full day and do chores in?

My 18th century wardrobe grew out of my wish of going to fancy parties. I started off with silk gowns and fancy trims. This also means that I had no problems making tight corsets, or stays, and bumrolls and panniers. Those are underpinnings that I can wear for an evening, but it's nice to get out of them after a couple of hours. It's also the kind of clothes that are a bit complicated to put on, it definitely helps to have access to a fullbody mirror and a friend or two.

On the contrary when I've made my 16th century clothes I know that the events that I am most likely to attend are fairs and markets. At those events I will be in my clothes for a lot longer time, and I will probably do more than just stand around, sit or dance. I have chosen to do clothes that are not quite as tight as my 18th century clothes, and I am staying away from the silks and fancy details, preferring to make clothes that are more working class or lower upper class compared to my 18th century wardrobe.

My instinct for 18th century clothes is still "Oooh, that's pretty I want to wear that", while my 16th century  is more along the lines of  "I need this to be comfortable".

2. Make more shifts and chemises

When starting an historical costume you should always start with the underwear, but once you have done that first layer, you should make another one. If you are just going to an evening event one shift or chemise is enough, but as soon as you start attending events that are longer than that it is so nice to be able to change your shift every day. For Medieval week in Visby I brought four shifts with me, which also made it possible to wash and dry one while I was wearing the others. A basic shift can be worn during many eras as well, the Viking shift that I have made can work up until the 16th century, and my oldest 18th century chemise, with a drawstring around the neck, has doubled as a 16th century shift just as well. In fact both the Viking and 18th century shifts are constructed the same, it is just a matter of different arm lengths and how big the head opening is, and if you have a drawstring you can adjust that size.

Since the shifts are usually under all the other clothes I have no bad conscience when sewing them by machine, and zigzagging the raw edges instead of felling the seams.

3. Mix and match and make separates

I like to vary my wardrobe, and think it's boring to show up at events in the same clothes. Instead of making a full new outfit every time I have now built my wardrobes so that I can mix and match pieces.

For the 18th century this is pretty easy, since the gowns and petticoats are separate. As it is I only have two different skirts, and a white petticoat that can be used as an outer skirt.

 The same skirt is used with both my 1760's pet en l'air and over pocket hoops, but I've also worn it my 1780's anglaise, over a bumroll. Pocket hoops and bumrolls are totally different, but with some creative use of safety pins, and enough width in the skirt, it can be use for both.

Two of us are wearing pinned on sleeves

For earlier centuries, when it was still a matter of full gowns instead of separate gowns and skirt it is
trickier but still possible.  I can transfer my social class to a working woman and just walk around in my undergown, which means that I have two outfits, even if only planned to make one full outfit with both undergown and outer gown.

Loose sleeves that can be pinned onto the gown are great to add variety to your medieval wardrobe. They are easy to make and don't need a lot of fabric.

Sleeves can be seen as an accessory, which brings me to my last point.

4. Accessorize, accessorize, accessorize

Or simply learn how to style your clothes in different ways to create variety. I skipped on the accessories when I made my first costumes, it was the gown that was the main purpose with a costume project. It was thanks to the Historical Sew Monthly that I started to make accessories, and realized that it was fun to switch them around and style outfits differently. For the 18th century wardrobe I have 3-4 different caps, 3-4 hats and two aprons. For my 16th century wardrobe I have two hats, 2 different veils and a wulsthaube, and can play around with them. Here it is also possible to make a few generic accessories that work over several time periods, I'm using my plain linen apron for everything from the 15th century and onwards, while a smocked apron or an apron made of printed cotton is more limited in use. The veils can be used for all things medieval, and even double as an 18th century fichu in a pinch. When it comes to styling different head covers, whether it is a veil or a cap, are great for hiding your hair so you don't have to worry about making a complicated historical hairstyle.

Here is an example on how I have styled my base 1520's wardrobe in three different ways.

My full outfit represent lower nobility and landed gentry. I wear a smocked shift, furtrimmed gollar, a hairnet and the skirt is long. The undergown doesn't show.

I changed from a smocked shift to a lownecked gathered shift. I switched the hairned for a wulsthaube with veil and added a hat on top. I hooked up the skirt of the outer gown so that the undergown is visible. Now I looked more like a trossfrau than a respectable lady.

Finally I took off the outergown and only wore the undergown and shift. I also removed the wulsthaube and just wrapped the veil around my head. Now I look more like a working woman.

 So to summarize here are my advice on building your historical wardrobe.

1. Adjust it to the kind of historical event you will wear it to. This affects how comfortable and sturdy you want to make the clothes.

2. Make more than one shift/chemise. You can never have too many, and if your wardrobe is made for an era where the shift is visible, it is an easy way to change your outfit.

3. Mix and match pieces. If you are making more than one outfit, make the pieces interchangable so you can create combinations of the items that yo have.

4. Add accessories. Different caps, veils, fichus, purses and other accessories are great to bring variety to your wardrobe, and are usually cheaper and more easy to make than a whole new outfit.

Faking 1695

Every year my work organizes a big Christmas fair. This year I got the mission to come up with an historical pair that could act as hosts for the fair. The challenge of course was that we are not a museum with a big costume department or budget. What I had to work with were some things that have been collected over the years for other projects, what I had in my private costume wardrobe and some small things that I could buy. I realized that the hardest thing would be to find something for my colleague Carl. After all I have enough historical clothes that I could probably wing something together for most eras. There was also the little challenge of having to be outdoors in the Swedish December, when most of my clothes are for summer events.

One thing we have in our storage is a big black wool coat, and I decided to build the couple around that.

This is an illustration from a map of the Falun Mine in 1683, or rather it's a water colour copy, but I have access to a very high resolution image of the original, and it's very close to this. I have said for years that I want to make a costume based on that woman, but now I had to come up with something without the time or budget to make a totally new outfit. The couple in the illustration are a well to do master miner and his wife. The master  miners were upper class, but not nobility and they were hard working, meaning that the master miners were expected to know and be able to work in the mine or foundry and the wives were organising and working on their estates. From the 1690's they were very strongly influenced by pietism, and we know that they kept a fairly low profile and were not into showing off by wearing too fancy clothes, except for visits at the court and similar events.

I decided that our couple should be Harald Lybecker, who was a master miner and appointed as head of the whole mine, and his wife Emerentia in 1695. There are a lot of reasons why I picked the year 1695, and not the year of the illustration, one of the biggest is that the mine drastically changed in 1687 when two smaller open cast mines collapsed and created the Great Open Pit, that is the hallmark of the mine still today. It would have been hard to make a believable interpretation, and pretend that there isn't a big gaping hole in the centre of the area. We wanted to place our interpretation in a year when the rebuilding after the collapse was going on, things were improving, and the family life of the couple was quite good as well.

This is our version of the couple. For him we used the black coat, I bought a long wool cape, a pair of wide linen pants that we could fasten around the knees and a pair of knee socks. From the stash in the museum we found a felt hat and a long white shirt. The cravat is simply a long piece of cotton voile, and the shoes were his own. The most important thing is his walking stick/probing axe that only master miners were allowed to use. The museum has a replica of it that he could use.

I'm wearing a mix of clothes from different eras.

I started off with my 16th century low necked smock and undergown. In the museum I found a white apron. I had my new mitts, and the cap is one of few things that is actually a 17th century model.

I found the Marquess of Winchester's guide to living history Which is concentrating on the English Civil War, it's a bit earlier than our late 17th century goal, but I decided to make the cap nr 4, which seemed like a rather good common cap. It's handsewn from cotton, and to up the status a bit I also added some lace to the front. The lace is a modern polyester lace, but it was needed to give the cap a bit of flair.

In the mseum I also found a jacket, which I would date to more 18th century, but it was fairly netural, and I was happy to find something that fit with all the other layers under. I also wore my new leather pouch, which worked perfectly for holding my phones, keys and insulin pen.

The final outerwear was a white square piece of cloth that I wore as a neckerchief, a wool cape for warmth that the museum bought, my 18th century muff and a hood. The hood is a generic 17th/18th century pattern, basically a long piece that is folded together, the back is sewn together and gathered to shape it, and it has two long pieces of fabric to tie with. The only fabric that I found to work with in the museum was a quite stiff broadcloth, I would have preferred something softer. Also to upcycle it a bit I added a piece of fake fur, it's actually the collar from a modern jacket of one of my colleagues. The fur was really needed, most of the time I wore the hood down and it was so nice to have the fur around the neck to keep warm.

I am actually pretty satisfied with the result, if I consider what I had to work with. Now having spent a lot of time researching 1690's clothing, I can't help but feeling the need for a wool mantua, but we will see what happens. I have done enough research about Harald and Emerentia Lybecker, that I hope we get more opportunities to do interpretations based on them.

HSM Challenge 12 - Finally a pair of mitts!

Hurray! I've done it. I have finished all challenges for the Historical Sew Monthly 2018, which means that I have 12 new items to wear. I will do a ful recap of my HSM projects later.

The last challenge was:

Neglected Challenge: Was there a challenge this year (or, if you’ve been doing the HSM for a while, in a previous year) you missed? Or didn’t create quite what you’d wanted for? This is your chance to make it up!

Having done all the challenges this year I wasn't sure what to do for this last challenge, and I didn't want to go through and look at all the old challenges that I have missed. I had one event left in December though, the traditional Christmas fair at Falu Gruva where I was going to do be outside in some historical clothes. An issue though is that all my historical costumes are done for the summer, I hardly have anything that would keep me warm. With that I decided to make a pair of 18th century mitts. A pair of mitts have been on my to do-list for a really long time, and going back I discovered that I had it on my HSM 2016 list under the challenge "Protection". I'm putting this project both under the neglected 2016 challenge, and under the "Hands and feet" challenge this year. I made a pair of hose for the challenge, but in January when I posted my HSM plans I wrote "gloves or mitts perhaps".  Having had mitts up for two challenges, I can definitely call them my "finally" pair.

I made these at our Craft Tuesday with Cosplay Dalarna. The downside was that I hadn't brought a pattern, so I had to wing it, and when I couldn't figure out the thumb I started sewing them together anyway, so I basically did them in a much more complicated order than I should have.

I started with pinning a muslin on my forearm to get a pattern for the main part of the mitt.

When I sewed them together I had to fit them more. I cut out the thumb hole, but it turned out too big. I think it stretched quite a lot while I was trying the mitts on before sewing. The smart thing is of course to attach the thumb first, and then sew the mitt together.

I couldn't figure out the shape of the thumb though, so that had to wait until I got home and could check the pattern in American Duchess guie to 18th century dressmaking. The thumb hole was too big when I attached the thumb and causes some wrinkling issues, but it's ok.

As an after thought I decided to add a silk flap lining. Since it was an afterthough I couldn't just trace the shape of the flap. Instead I cut out a rather large piece of silk and pinned it to the flap, sewed it on and then I cut away the excess fabric. The flap was turned to the inside, and I hemmed and attached the loose sides of the flap to the mitt.

The finished pair of mitts.

And I wore the mitts to the Christmas fair. They were really comfortable and nice to wear. Together with my muff they kept the hands nice and toasty.

Me and a colleague as Mr and Mrs. Harald Lybecker, hosts of the fair.

The Challenge: 12 - Neglected Challenges. (I had planned to make mitts both for the HSM 2016 challenge "Protection" and the 2018 challenge "Hands or feet"
Material: 0,5 m wool, 20 cm of silk taffeta 
Pattern:  My own,
Year:  General 18th century
Notions: waxed linen thread, silk thread
How historically accurate is it? The execution isn't perfect, but it's made with period materials and in material techniques, they are all handsewn. I would say 90%
Hours to complete: Two evenings, so maybe 4 hors
First worn: Falu Gruva's Christmas Fair, December 9
Total cost: Everything was from my stash, (the wool is a leftover from my 1520s gown and the silk is a leftover from my Gold Handmaiden costume)

An historical Christmas bake

Earlier in the autumn I had a survey on my facebook page if people wanted me to share my historical recipes on my blog, since I have been asked from time to time for them. Enough people wanted me to post them on the blog, so I will do it from time to time. The blog is not going to turn into a food blog, I will just limit it to when I actually do historical cooking.

I like baking, but I prefer soft cakes, cupcakes and things like that. I don't like making cookies, it's boring and to be honest I'm not a big fan of hard dry cookies. Also next weekend at the Christmas fair at Falu Gruva I'm going to be portraying a well to do woman from the late 17th century, and I got inspired to see if I could make some cookies from the time period.

My first cookie that I made was a gingerbread cookie. Gingerbread goes back to medieval times, if you count it as a very spicy cake or cookie. In Swedish the name is still "pepparkaka", meaning pepper cake, giving a hint of one of the spices that was used but has disappeared from modern recipes.

For the spices I used a recipe for "Små pepparkakor" from Cajsa Warg's "Hielpreda i hushållningen för unga fruntimmer" from 1755, which is freely available on Google Books. Her recipe is quite complicated though, and since I didn't feel like recalculating all the old measurments I decided to use the ratios for flour and liquid from the recipe for "Simple Gingerbread" from Townsend and Sons. By mixing the two recipes I ended up with this, I have written the recipe in both English and Swedish:

2 cups of wheat flour/ 2 kkp vetemjöl
½ cup of honey/ ½ kkp honung
1 tsp each of / 1 tsk vardera av
cinnamon/kanel
cardamon/kardemumma
mace/muskotblomma
ginger/ingefära
allspice/kryddpeppar
cloves/nejlika
cest of lime/limeskal (Cajsa Warg calls for the rind of preserved lemon and bitter orange/pomerans, but I didn't have any at home, and the recipe needs some citrus to balance the honey)
50 g butter/smör
1 tsp baking powder/ 1sk bakpulver (Cajsa Warg used potash/pottaska, but I don't have that in my kitchen).

Heat the honey with the spices until it's liquid, add the butter and pour the the liquid into the flour and baking powder. Mix it into a fairly solid dough, add water if needed. Roll it out to 0,5 cm thickness and cut out shapes. Bake in 200 degrees celsius for 8 minutes.

As the honey and butter cools it gets harder to work with the pastry. I don't know if the pastry should rest, like a short pastry, or if one should be quick and work with it while it's still soft. For this batch I tried to be quick, it could well be worth testing to let it cool for an hour the next time. This is the kind of recipe that I would have no hesitation serving at a 16th century or medieval event, if you are rich enough since all the spices and use of wheat flour is basically there to show off wealth. By the 18th century this would have been an old fashioned or traditional recipe.

The other recipe that I made was straight from Cajsa Warg and is a recipe for "fänkålskakor", fennel biscuits. This was a tougher recipe to make since I had to recalculate the measurements, or simply guess when it came to how much flour was needed. My recipe ended up as:

300 g of honey (I actually ran out of honey so I used a mix of honey and light molasses/sirap)
30 g of zante currants/ korinter
7 g of fennel seeds/fänkålsfrö
60 g of butter/smör
300 g of wheat flour

Pound the fennel seeds in a mortar. Mix the butter and wheat flour, add the honey, fennel seeds and currants. Mix into a pastry. Roll it out to around 0,5- 1cm (Cajsa calls for a finger thickness) and cut out shapes. Put it into a 200 degrees Celsius oven for 11 minutes. They turned out very hard, like a biscotti. Next time I would take them out earlier from the oven.

This ended up as a very wet pastry, I was really unsure if I had enough flour or not. Still Cajsa calls for using flour when rolling out the pastry, which is probably a sign that it should be sticky. It ruined my shapes when I tried to lift them to the baking tray though. This also reads like a very old fashioned recipe for the 18th century, and it's last in her cookbook so maybe it's put there because it's traditional, not so much for it being a "modern" taste in the 18th century. I was afraid that it would taste too much like liquorice, but it's actually a nice and clean taste. It's funny I hate honey and liquorice, but this recipe shows that things can change when you bake them.

Finally I made kringles. It's related to the more known German pretzel, but in Sweden it's a sweet pastry. Kringles are knows since the Middle Ages, but it's hard to know what they tasted since the name has more to do with the shape than the taste. The way it's cooked, where it's first boiled in water and then dried in the oven makes them very longlasting. Up until the 19th century they were made for special occasions. For my version I used a 19th century recipe from Arboga. The 19th century is evident in that it's using yeast and sugar. To age the recipe into something more like what was done in the Middle Ages I would use a sourdough, or at least exchange some of the wheat flour for rye. I didn't get this recipe to work though and it was way too fiddly. I'm glad that I halfed the recipe so that I only had to make 10 kringles. It's from Charles Emil Hagdahl's "Kokkonsten" from 1879, and it's said to be a traditional recipe from Arboga.

100 g butter
40 g sugar
30 g yeast
50 ml milk
1 tsp cardamon
ca 400 g Wheat flour

The recipe only calls for the yeast to be dissolved in lukewarm milk and then to work the ingredients into a fairly hard dough. I decided to melt the butter, maybe that was my mistake. After the dough has proven for 30 minutes make kringles, prove for another 30 minutes. Boil a big pot of water, put the kringles into it one by one, when they rise up to the top of the water take them up and let them dry. Finish in a 200 degrees Celsius oven for 15 minutes. (I didn't get my dough to rise)

My Christmas kitchen quartet (as I call my favorite decorations) inspects the result. The kringle is at the top, the gingerbrea is the round one (I tried to stamp it but the pastry was too stiff to be able to make a nice pattern) and the fennel biscuit is the square one.

HSM challenge 11 - an ugly leather pouch

During the summer I made three different bags, two of them historical. When the HSM November challenge: bags and purses rolled along I really didn't have any inspiration at all to make yet another bag. Still I didn't want to fail a challenge when there were only two left of the year. When I organized my attic storage I had found some scrap pieces of leather, and since I need a leather pouch to wear on my belt for my 16th century outfits I decided to try and make a leather pouch or bag.

In my mind I wanted something like this woman has hanging from her belt.

Soon I realized that I wouldn't be able to do that though. The scrap pieces of leather that I had were too stiff and also I didn't have enough to make that kind of round bag with extra pockets. I was down to basically just cutting out as much of the leather as possible and assemble it into a more generic viking/medieval pouch.

This was the size that I could get out. It was based on me wanting a pouch that was big enough to hold my phone and my insulin pen, and since the pen is quite long the pouch had to be long as well. I also cut out a long strip of fabric to use as the side and bottom of the pouch.

I first sewed on the strap that is going to keep the bag on the belt. Here I discovered how hard and difficult it is to sew on leather, especially if you don't have proper leather needles. For the rest of the bag I used an awl to first make the holes before going through them with a needle. I used waxed linen thread for the sewing.

It was also a lot easier when I started using my curved upholstery needle, compared to using a straight needle.

Once I had sewed all the pieces together I wet the bag and turned it right side out. I left it to dry with a lot of plastic bags inside, so that it would keep its shape properly.

After this I discovered that I didn't have enough leather to make a flap to close the bag. Thankfully Niklas in Cosplay Dalarna gave me a piece so that I could finish the bag.

When all was done I oiled the leather with olive oil to darken it.

For the closure I used a piece of scrap leather, fastened it to the front and cut a slit in the flap. If I get my hands on a nice piece of wood or bone I would like to switch the fastening.

All in all I can't say that I really enjoyed working with leather. It's noticable on the quality of the bag as well, in the end I just wanted to finish it. It's a usable item, but not one of the things I particularly proud of.

The Challenge: 11 - bags and purses
Material: a maximum of 0,5 m of leather scraps
Pattern:  My own,
Year:  medieval
Notions: waxed linen thread
How historically accurate is it? It doesn't really look like any bags that I have seen, but it is a generic leather pouch, I would be surprised if there aren't similar bags to this one out there, or that they were used. It is handmade with correct aterials. I'm thinking 30%
Hours to complete: 15 hours
First worn: I'm planning on wearing it next weekend
Total cost: Everything was from my stash, I even got the last piece I needed as a gift.

Some thoughts about 16th century headwear

The 15th century was the century of crazy hats, turbans and veils. Then followed the first half of the 16th century where the wulsthaube with a veil was the primary style of headwear for women wearing German-styled fashion. The wulsthaube changed shape and size, until it shrank and was replaced by caps.

One of the goals of my 1520s wardrobe is to recreate this portrait of Kristina Gyllenstierna, from the altarpiece in Västerås cathedral.

It is a hard dress to recreate, since it's so vague, but I still want to try. My main issue is with the headwear. At first it looks like a big wulsthaube, but what are those darker elements of the headwear? It is also finished in a very square edge around the face, compared to wulsthaubes.

My firsr idea was that it could be something like this portrait of Barbara Wespach, from 1500.

It is a wulsthaube with decorations, and some kind of wreath around it. Or maybe something like the love couple by the Master of the Housebook

She is wearing two pieces to her headwear, a gold embroidered piece and in the back there is a plain white veil.

I wasn't quite satisfied with these kind of styles though, but after having trawled pinterest and digital archives for German paintings with different kinds of headwar I decided to go wider. The altar piece in Västerås was commisioned in Antwerp in 1516, what if the headwear shows a Flemish style of headwar instead? The basic Flemish headwear seems to be a kind of white cap, but finally I found an interesting painting. The birth of Virgin Mary by Jan de Beer.

The painting is a goldmine for headdresses, all the women in the painting are wearing different styles, and the lady in green in the center is wearing something very similar to the altar piece in Västerås. Jan de Beer belonged to a group of artists in Antwerp, and the painting above is usually dated to around 1520, so it's very close to the Västerås altar piece.

So far I haven't found any other paintings with this kind of headpiece, which makes me wonder how common or uncommon they were. There are two grave monuments in Sweden though were the woman is wearing something very similar.

This is from Sala, and shows Bråsta-Lasse and his wife. Bråsta-Lasse died in 1515. There is a very similar, but a lot more damaged, monument in Stora Kopparberg's church in Falun. I don't know the maker of these two grave stones, but they are the only examples of this kind of headwear that I've seen. Would they have put this kind of headwear on the woman, if it wasn't recognized as something fashionable? There is of course the option that if artist that made the two grave monuments was local, that he had been in Västerås, seen the sculpture of Kristina Gyllenstierna on the altar piece and decided that was a suitable style of clothing for an upperclass woman. Or do the grave moments also come from Antwerp? It is a bit of a mystery that outside of the Antwerp painting, the style seems to only be found in Västerås diocese, and all examples are dated to within five years of each other.

Trying to find out more about this kind of headwear is also made more complicated by the fact that it's a style that is present in folkwear from all over Europe. There is the southern German/Austrian goldhaube

This style developed in the 19th century though, from an earlier softer cap.

Then there is the Norwegian la and Swedish lad that is used as a bridal crown.

Women from Malung wearing lad

The lad of Malung can also be attested down to the 19th century, but I don't know how much older the tradition is.

Then of course there is the Russian kokoshnik, in all its different variations.

I tried to find a good history of the kokoshnik, but even if it's written that the kokoshnik has medieval roots, I couldn't find any pictures earlier than the 18th century.

All in all this shows that this kind of big, ornamental headpiece has been fashionable in different time periods and in different regions, it's not necessay that they go back to a common style ancestor. 

I have two pinterest boards in connection to headpieces - German style headwear and folkwear headwear. 

If you have any other examples of this kind of big headwear please share in the comments.