Purple Smokkr

About a year ago, I aquired a lovely piece of wool twill, in a color I like to refer to as "plausible purple," with the intention of making myself a second smokkr, of the un-pleated variety, to expand my somewhat scant wardrobe. My black pleated smokkr is, at this point, more than three years old, and has made the rounds of many, many events. It's beginning to show some wear, and to be frank, I do get a little tired of wearing the same thing all the time. With the massive rush to get us ready for camping events last year, I did little to expand my own wardrobe, aside from necessary new undergowns and fighting gear. But this winter  I wanted to add a couple nicer pieces to my wardrobe, made properly, not in haste and out of absolute panicked necessity. With a kaftan and a second smokkr, I would be set for any events for the next few years, until my old things started wearing out at least. It would be a relief to just not have to worry about my own garb, and be able to focus on keeping the gremlins in clothing that actually fits.

As far as historical reference, I could go on at great length, but that would be reinventing the wheel, instead I would like to direct your attention to these two fabulous articles by Hilde Thnumen, who has gathered all of the primary source material, translated as necessary, and discusses the conclusions that may be reached at length. I cannot do better.
Viking Apron dress: Smokkr
 haithabu smokkr interpretation

Silver-gilt Viking pendant, Oland, Sweden,
6th century

I am going to be basing my reconstruction on the Haithabu smokkr, which is closest geographically to my persona's residence in what is modern Scotland, and on this wonderful little figurine, usually interpreted as a Valkyrie. I love the surface detail of the braided decorative bands. although this figurine seems to be wearing a separate trained garment over the top of her smokkr (we assume it is a smokkr, although we cannot see the turtle brooches) the slightly trained silhouette seems to be a theme among the figurines, and, as I find it graceful personally, I have maintained it in my recreation.

I started out by pinning the wool around my bust, to a comfortable tightness. that gave me a measurement of 41 inches (without seam allowance) separating half to the front, and half to the back, and adding seam allowance, gave me two panels of 21" Measuring down from where the top of my smokkr sits now, to where I wanted it to start to flare, gave me a measurement of about 8"

Then it's a matter of fitting the pieces onto the available fabric in the most efficient way possible. there are a number of hypothosized layouts for the fitted style smokkr, and you can make one work for almost any size and shape piece of fabric. I made the first cut with the front and back, then unfolded the leftover square to make the side gores. I did not curve the bottoms of the side gores because I wanted a train effect, the longer, diagonal side will go towards the longer train side. This also keeps the front relatively flat while flaring the back out, which matches with the shape of existing figurines.

With the rough seams sewn, I popped it on. I had the usual problem in the back, and had to take a large pinch out. I have an extremely curved lower spine, and it makes for a funny fit for almost all the basic layouts. One of the advantages of the pleated front smokkr is it alleviates this issue. I will probably have some horizontal wrinkling on this dress almost no matter what  I do, although cutting the back top down some helps, as does not trying to fit it tightly through the waist, which would be unflattering on me at present anyhow. with it on inside out I placed pins for the darts at the front, and also for the loops to hang my brooches from.

although I did run the long seams by machine, it was easier to run the very narrow darts (no more than a quarter inch at the widest!) by hand. Although the original piece, the ridge appears to have been set to the outside, then covered by fine braid, I had an oopsie here, and went on autopilot and put them to the inside. This is incorrect, however I plan to cover them with braid, so it will not be obvious.

Then I overcast all the seams by hand with contrasting thread, which is a period approved method of seam finishing.  I used blue DMC floss, since my ball of blue linen has gone walkabout. I'm not... entirely thrilled with the results. it's not as tidy as I'd love it to be, although certainly it's just as tidy as the overcast stitching on the dart of the extant garment.

 A number of the smokkr fragments found have been lined, or faced, with linen. It's impossible to know whether they were fully lined or not, since no full length garments have been found. because I ended up cutting the back of my smokkr down quite fat to make up for my curved spine and prevent unsightly wrinkles, I had a long bias edge from brooch to back. I wanted to stabelize this and keep the weight of the gown and pulling it on and off, from distorting the edge, so I used a partial lining of a natural colored linen. I also used this linen for the bottom brooch loops. Linen is actually more common, particularly for the hidden lower loops, than wool on extant smockkrs, probably because it wore better. I sewed the long hidden seam by machine again, doubling seaming it along the armpit/back portion.  Then flipped it into the inside of the dress, hand top stitched with purple wool, and used threads pulled from the selvedge of the linen to whip stitch the loops, and hem the lining down to the shell of the smokkr.

Fragment from Sarnanger b 10722 showing corded hem

Then remained hemming. I had my imagination caught by a fragment of twill, edged with a cord overcast with woolen thread. this seemed tidy, and like it would give the hem a beautiful shape. According to the article about the find (Thnumen covers it in her paper about smokkrs) it's a braided cord, whip stitched over with a two ply thread. I extrapolated that the cord was probably wool, since it still remained, although it could have equally been linen. I had wool, so I braided a 3 strand cord. The easiest way was to baste it to the edge of the smokkr, which kept it even, then overcast it with 2 ply wool, as seen in the fragment. you can see that the stitches are close, but not crowded. I attempted to recreate that, as well as the scale of cord/fabric. Of course I ran out of thread with an small section left in the center front. I was left with a few options. I could use another color to do the front section of the hem. I could undo the braid for the darts and use that thread to finish the hem, then make different braid, or I could find a way of decorating the front that hid the block of missing hem. Number one would have been the most historically accurate, and in the end, the least time consuming. Of course I chose the less historically accurate, more difficult, and super fancy option, and decided to make the front block purple, and root an appliqued tree into it.

My original plan had been to tablet weave wide trim and apply it in horizontal bands like on the valkyrie figurine. That plan is completely authentic and documentable (by viking standards) The new plan was less historically proveable. We do know that the vikings did use applique, the Osberg ship find included a wool gown with blue animals applied to the hem. Valkyrie figures show bands of decoration on skirts, but there is not real evidence for large scale blocks of decoration of this type. Even so, I liked the idea so much I ran with it. the best tree image I could find, was this one from a church in sedestal (for people with so many trees in their mythology, they sure didn't use tree images that much. Or my google fu for viking stuff has gotten weak), it's 12 century, so later, but the art has the proper shapes. I loved the acanthus like tree leaves. Acanthus shaped embroideries were part of the Mamman find, which is 10th century, so I felt the use of acanthus shapes was not out of context for my persona.

Also at Mamman was a embroidery showing two beasts (perhaps leopards?) facing a tree in the center. This was a common motif in oriental textiles of the period, which we know the vikings had access to, particularly from the pskov find that Thnumen goes over in her articles. It is thought that this motif was a reproduction of that style of artwork. Working from this base, and digging through my wool stash, I decided to use an appliqued tree with two Eastern Tygers facing it. Making my dress both a reference to the extant embroidery finds, and a nod to the east kingdom.

I drew the tree onto some aqua wool, and pinned it onto the gown. and then I started basting. And basting. And MORE basting. Followed by stitching it all down. I used small whip stitches, spaced out slightly. I've seen this technique used on early surviving applique pieces, and it was the most apt for the material I had to work with. The wool was more loosely woven and less fulled than is ideal for applique, so the edges required more stabelization, and I needed to cover more of the edge to keep the applique from just tearing out of the stitches.

That done, I sketched a quick Easter Tyger, slightly simplified to be more in line with the style of the mammen embroideries, and the extent oriental textiles. The extreme detailing of the EK tyger is much more in line with later artistic styles, so I just dialed it back a bit while trying to keep it recognizeable.  I cut that out of a gold wool skirt that I had for upcycling (moth holes) and pinned/basted it down. and by baste I mean overcast the edges with very tiny whip stitches to keep the little points from flying apart when I tried to applique around them.

Then I couched blue cord around the Tygers. Technically the Eastern Kingdom Tyger is blue on a field of yellow, but this looked good, and was still a nice nod at the East.

With the embroidery done, and thoroughly steamed (Even being careful it gets a little lumpy while you're working it) all that remained was to baste the braided trim (six strand braid in two colors like
in the Haithabu fragment) over the darts, and make the shoulder straps. Although there are plenty of examples of Smokkrs with both the upper and lower loops out of linen, I decided that I preferred the look of the matching straps, and made the upper straps/loops out of a remaining scrap of purple wool.  these were whip stitched down to the lining with my newly found blue linen thread, and my new EK Smokkr was done! and in plenty of time to wear to Birka. Of course Birka then didn't go as planned due to car trouble, and I missed the fashion show and only got to wear my new getup for a little bit. I did however, get to wear it with all my other fancy for walking into court at a part of my friend's pelican procession this weekend at dancing fox. I had the privilege of being the person who got to put together all the bits of his regalia cloak (it was a group project which a lot of hands worked on), and they asked me to carry it into court, which was a surprise and an honor! so I was happy that I had my new fancy EK Smokkr to wear. Now I just have to get an eye bleeding gold Serk to wear under it!

Of course there are no actual pictures of me wearing it in which you can see the garb.
Edited 4/19/18 to Add: Someone took a picture of me in it!

A couple final notes: because it's more fitted through the body, it makes my serks shorter! ACK. So I will at least make my fancy court serk to wear with this longer. Also, this lay out doesn't lay as gracefully across my back as I would like, due to the previously noted curvature of my lower spine. I think I need to add a small center back gore to alleviate this problem and make the gown flow gracefully from top to hem. Possibly I could also flip the center back pieces so the angled edge is at the center back, and the straight edge at the side back and get a similar effect, although that would effect the side flare (which I like) some.  As it is cut, there's a little wrinkle lump in the small of the back now, and there's not much I can do about it. I'm going to take the gown to my mom's and put it on inside out and see if with another set of experienced hands I can somewhat sort the problem, but alas, the only real solution is to put at least a small gore into the center back seam. Again, the pleated front smokkr doesn't have this problem. it's actually much more modest in fabric use as well. It's interesting the things you discover about fit while doing this sort of reconstruction work. I wonder if one of the reasons for the pleated fronts was because it provided good fit with less fabric. We'll never know of course, but it sure is fun to speculate!