Spanish Traveling cloak (or the cloak of poor choices)

I decided in January that this was going to be the year when I finally entered SCA arts and sciences competitions, and to pursue that goal, I was FINALLY going to work on some more difficult fleece to garment projects. I've had a few of them lurking half researched in the corners of notebooks for a few years now. I tend to be so buried in Needs sewing, that i don't get around to doing projects that force me to work to my capacity, stretch my skills and grow as an artisan. I've been doing that in a small way, by learning new embroidery things for Athena's thimble, and it's been very satisfying, but I wanted to do it with more than embroidery, which kind of necessarily means larger scale projects. Competing gives me an excuse for that.

The first of these projects was my planned winter project for this year, a hand woven, hand embroidered hooded cloak for the husbeast to wear at chilly events like 100 minutes. My plan was to make as exact of a reproduction as possible of this "spanish style" cloak in the Germanisches National Museum.

This cloak is white twill wool, heavily fulled, embroidered with couched work in brown wool, and decorated with tassels and "bobbles" on the hood. Because white isn't a really PRACTICAL color for a cloak at events that may be say, muddy, I decided to do mine in natural brown wool with madder dyed accents.

Because I started it later than I wanted to and only had 6 weeks to work on it before the competition, I finished this with scaled back embroideries for entry into Keepers of the Central Flame, an East Kingdom arts and sciences competition that was hosted by my home barony, concordia of the snows. For that I did a VERY comprehensive write up of my research and the process. So if you want to read a 20 page research paper about it, Here's a linky! I'm hoping to finish the embroideries and enter it in the display at pennsic this summer, so keep your eyes open for "finished" pictures of the husbeast modeling it! Here's a bunch of the process photos and pictures of my display for your enjoyment. this was a real stretch project and I learned a lot. I can't WAIT to take what I've learned and start something new!

weaving in progress, you can see my measuring tool pinned to the left selvedge, just a strip of fabric a yard long that helps me keep track of larger projects.

Entire project may be hell, but that's a fine straight selvedge!

Cut from the loom, but not yet fulled.

Fulled down, I used an entire inch per foot of width in shrinkage and could've used more (or used more ends per inch in the sett to begin with.)

edge blanket stitched in weaving thread, and the 6 strand braid being applied

Starting the crossed blanket stitch hem. You can see the front facing flap that will be turned back along the line of crossed blanket stitch. This doesn't serve the usual purpose of a facing (to cover a raw edge) but rather firms up the front edge so it hangs nicely.

spacing all the "rays" which are self applique pieces, and basting them down.  I was confused. why applique something in a way in which you can't even tel lit's there? Well those pieces are all cut on the straight of the grain with the grain running vertically through the ray. sewn onto the partially bias semi circular cape, they act like a support scaffold and force it to hang evenly all the way round, and drape beautifully from the neck. 

Starting the hood marking. 

Rays all appliqued. 

This is cross stitch worked over 3 strand braid. some of the points are wonky. if I had it to do again I'd baste both sides of the rays down with the weaving thread (so it didn't have to be removed) and THEN do the cross stitch. That'd keep everything from getting funny. 

Hood totally marked and working on the couching.

Hood finished and lined with the bobbles mounted! Getting there! 

The home stretch, marking the fronts: first with prick and pounce, then with thinned whit gouache.

On the stand at competition! 

The finished hem. You can't see the stabelizing blanket stitch in the weaving thread under the crossed blanket.

Some of my display. The husbeast made me the wonderful wood display cards for my threads.

Tablet weaving traditional viking trims

SCA demos are a wonderful thing. They cause you to dig through your que of projects and decide which ones might be portable enough to trundle along with you and interesting to the general public. We recently had a demo at a local library, and not only did it encourage me to finish up my Skjoldehamn hood in a timely fashion, it encouraged me to start weaving trim for various things. I haven't tablet woven since I was a teenager, when I did it as part of a 4H project. My memory of that experience is somewhat hazy, other than that we used a backstrap style loom, and it wasn't very portable. The finished product from that was a belt that held up my Revolutionary war skirt for several years, and is now holding up my husband's Thorsbjurg trousers. Needless to say I'm far from an expert!

If you do any kind of early period work though, tablet weaving is indispensable. In various styles it is the single most common decorative touch to clothes, more common from what I can see even than embriodery. It also puts in showings as belts, fasteners, and later hose garters. Strap weaving in all its forms was an indispensable part of early fiber arts, but particularly tablet weaving. Our own idea today of what tablet weaving can accomplish is hilariously limited by period terms. Certainly repeating geometrics can be found, but there are a wealth of fabulous period finds, from geometric (normally not repeating, or if repeat several patterns) to solid colored bands decorated with soumak, a kind of woven in surface decoration rather like embroidering you wove, to full on brocaded patterns with animals and plants done with silks and metallics. Bands seem to be often stylistically simalar, but rarely be the same, as if weavers rarely reapeated patterns, instead seeming to view each new project as an opportunity to devise new combinations and patterns. This seems to be particularly true of the warped in geometric patterns.

There is a whole world of period tablet weaving to explore, and most of it is accomplished in very different techniques than modern tablet weaving. In fact it's not really "true" weaving at all, where warp threads go over and under, catching weft threads, but instead is warp twining, where groups of warp threads continously twist around themselves, and weft threads are caught between the twists. In that way it reminds me more of sprang than of actual weaving in structure. Finished it is far denser and stronger than a standard "over under" weave.

Most of the extant patterns are quite complex, and beyond my (very) novice skill level, but on of the bands found at the osberg ship burial (a veritable treasure trove of textiles and equipment, including a tablet weaving loom, and a half finished band still attached to warp and cards.) is a relatively simple repeating pattern of squares. I am indebted to Shelagh's website for both basic tablet weaving information so I understood exactly what was supposed to be happening, historical referances, and clear patterning instructions for reproducing the band.

The narrow Osberg band. 

The orginal osberg band was worked in two colors, but since i am planning on using much of this to trim the skoldenhamn hoods I recently made the boys, I made the borders in a third color so that the trim would stand out from the blue and white of the hoods. I used the same blue and white as in the hood, and added a red to form the borders. These are all colors popular and available in period, however, since I'm currently a great believer in using what is on hand (thereby relieving the crowding in my storage areas), only the white thread in this is wool. The rest is cotton, or cotton blend. Technically the whole thing should be done in linen or wool, or to be absolutely correct to the source, silk, but I haven't got cones of those sitting about. I would like to use handspun for a future project, but I'd also like to get the hoods done, and use up the cones of weaving thread I've got lurking in my studio.

The other complication of tablet weaving is how you tension it. Obviously you can use a backstrap loom and tie off to a immoveable object, but that leaves you somewhat imobile for the duration. Or you can work on an inkle loom, but that severely limits the length of warp you can use. Looking to period equipment, a loom was found at the osberg ship burial which is very similar to looms seen in later artwork: two uprights connected by a low bar. You tied off the warp to one upright, and the finished band to the other, and worked between the uprights, advancing the warp by untying and retying.

reproduction Osberg loom and lady tablet weaving from the book of hours, 1400-1410

 The obvious problem with this solution is that while it doesn't tie you in place like a backstrap, it's simply not very portable. It also takes up a lot of room in your home, which I frankly don't have since I already have a lot of equpiment (including a full size loom) shoved into a tiny studio and overflowing into other parts of the house. An internet search provided me with plans for a sort of modern box loom, where the warp and fabric are tensioned by being clamped between wooden blocks held by bolts. My husband (bless him) made this for me in less than an hour, and the whole thing cost about $10. It's portable, you can put it down to go referee children, and it doesn't take up much real estate. it may not be period (and it's always interesting to try period tools!) but it's much better for me!

My loom (Not the osberg band warp though)

I don't have a warping board of my own, so I measured this warp by the time honored "two chairs upended on a table" technique. Which works great when you don't need a super specific length. I just wanted a long warp, because if you're going to weave trim, you might as well weave a bunch. This ended up being something around 18 feet probably, considering it was a standard banquet table. I threaded the warp onto the tablets, tied the tablets up in a bundle (to keep them from getting tangled) and chained the rest of the warp. By "chaining" the warp (making it into a chrochet chain essentially, although you don't use a hook) you much decrease it's length, making it less bulky. More importantly, chaining keeps it from tangling, and since tablet weaving is not wound onto a back beam, this is important. With the warp all ready, I put it through the loom blocks, securing the starting end with a knot. Then I adjusted the tablets so they had the threads in the correct color order, and the threads going through the card in the direction as shown on the pattern diagram (in card weaving the threads can go through the cards L to R, or R to L, and this changes the pattern produced). I finished this the night before the SCA demo that I was warping for.

The next day when I started weaving I immediately realized that something had gone wrong, because the pattern was not looking even remotely like the osberg band! Review of the pattern graph revealed that I had threaded one card with the wrong colors, 3 white and 1 blue rather than 3 blue 1 white, and this was producing a totally different pattern. Since I didn't have the warp threads with me at the demo I decided to keep weaving in the "oops" pattern for the demo, and fix when I got home. I finished enough of the oopsie pattern to make a belt for one of the boys, then took out the two wrongly threaded white threads and replaced them with blue. The extra threads can't be chained with the rest of the warp, but are butterflied up to keep them from tangling. They could also be wound onto small pieces of cardboard to keep them tidy. I wove a few inches onto waste acrylic yarn, which can be removed later to give me enough warp to tie off the ends.

The only consistant problem I had after fixing my warping oops, was that I kept having weft knobs at the edge of the work. Everything that would keep normal weaving from doing this didn't work, so I shelved the loom until I could get help, since I didn't want to weave a whole lot more sub standard trim. I figured that it was some silly little detail I just didn't know about, and when I went to a recent SCA arts and sciences event took my loom with me. Thankfully one of the very experienced fiber artists there was able to help me figure it out. Turns out in card weaving rather than pulling the weft tight to the edge and then beating, you leave a loop at the end, beat, and then pull tight. This small tweak made my problem go away immdiately, and made my selvedges straighter. Sometimes you just need someone with experience to help you out!

see the weft bumps at the top edge? So untidy looking!

 Hours of weaving later.... I have finished trim! Ironing it made it consistantly flat, especially where I had reversed the cards. There are a number of options for finishing the ends if you want to leave a tassel (as for a belt) if you are not going to leave a tassel I suggest running a close machine stitch across the end of the band to keep it from fraying.

This is also the "oopsie" pattern.... 

You can knot the ends of the ties, but I don't like doing this as it makes the whole end of the band spread.

I much prefer to leave a long tail of weft thread, and then knot it across every group of four threads   (each card) makeing what looks like a strong backstitch across the end of the band. Then the excess weft thread gets woven back into the selvedge and clipped. 

All together a sucessful first return to tablet weaving. I have another band started, and even shared what I had learned at a recent arts and sciences meeting (hopefully getting more people hooked on it!) Hopefully I will be able to post the finished objects in an upcoming blog! (still have one more hood to finish up!) 

Toddlers Skjoldehamn hood, Out of your comfort zone

Earlier this year I had the opportunity to participate in a SCA demonstration at the local Ren Faire. Since there were a bunch of spinners allready coming I decided to dust off my weaving skills, warp up my mom's rigid heddle loom in plaid for yardage, and sit and weave. The plan was to use the resultant plaid yardage for hoods for the kids, or maybe a kaftan for Jade. I figured I could do the sewing part of it for the "out of your comfort zone" challenge since sewing with handwoven scares the crap out of me and is something I've mostly avoided. Alas I had a major warping problem with the loom, and then life intervened but I did finally finish the first of the hoods this week (just in time to to take it to show and tell at another SCA demo!)

Rigid heddle looms are great for portability, but unless you want to fuss with pickup work, they just do plainweave, and they only have one reed (you may be able to purchase more reeds of different sizes, I am not sure.) so you're kinda stuck with what you've got. I had been given several cones of weaving yarn, and I wanted to use those since it was a demo piece and I might be letting other people test drive it. With the combination of available reed and available yarn, the fabric ended up a little bit more open in weave than what I'd hoped for, and there were a number of small issues with the evenness of the weave in the earlier portions (before mom and I decided it was a lost cause, rolled the whole remaining warp off, and re-dressed the loom. Life lesson learned: Do not dress a loom in haste because you will repent it at leisure.) Looking at the finished product with my mom, we decided that although it wasn't 100% wool, it would probably full up some and that fulling would solve both the openness of the weave and make the few areas where the tensioning was a bit dicey less visible. So into the wash it went. It fulled up surpisingly well, and got a lovely fluffy nap. it's so nice fulled that I'm strongly considering warping up the big loom for diamond twill with the two remaining cones and making some yardage for myself. As a plus the few small problem areas where I really struggled with the tension basically dissapeared and I won't have to cut around any sections.

Fulled yardage drying in the sunshine

Before and after fulling

With my yardage done I started looking into construction methods for the Skjoldehamn hood, which is a great extant garment from the viking Era. The whole find is fascinating for viking era garment folks, because, since it is a bog body, the clothes are unusually well preserved. There's been a lot of misidentification of the era of the corpse (originally they thought it was a much later era because in the 1930's they thought no one wore hoods before the 14th century evidently?) And argument over the sex and ethnicity of the body (including the somewhat standard identification of sex by grave goods without reference to bone structure) The most current hypothesis is that it's most probably a viking woman from between the 8th and 11th century, with a later date more probable. This is a find where I am really hoping that increases in technology will allow us to have more information in the future. 

The original hood

The hood was originally made of 3 pieces of buff wool fabric woven in a 2/2 twill. One piece folded legthwise made the hood, seamed at the back and top, and slit all but a couple cm up the fold to make room for the front gore and to form the face opening. Square, or almost square, gores were inserted front and back to make shoulder room, resulting in the distinctive front and back points on this hood. The square hood top was stitched to lie closer to he head, resulting in a distinctive "cockscomb" appearance. Cords by the ears were likely used to tie the hood back from the face, or close it more tightly around the face to conserve heat.

Cutting out handwoven is TERRIFYING. 

I decided that I wanted to come as close to the original construction techniques as possible, at least with the first hood, to see how the original would have worked as it came together. I did have some hurdles. First my fabric, woven on a narrow loom, was not wide enough to construct the hood with a lengthwise fold. Second, even fulled, my handwoven was not thick enough to make a great cold weather garment, so I was going to use some lightweight wool (possibly a wool blend, I didn't light any on fire to know for sure) I had in the stash as a lining.  

With those factors in mind I measured my older sons head, and the distance from his crown down to where I thought the hood should end on his shoulders. I also measured how far down I thought the opening should be in the front, and used a loop of measuring tape to be sure that an opening of that size would fit over his head for him to put the hood up and down. With that done I got out my precious handwoven and prepared with much trepidation to cut. Because the fabric was relatively narrow, I cut one long piece for the hood with a fold where the top hood seam had been in the original. Then I cut two square gores, matching the plaid with the hood. Then I laid these pieces out on the lining and used them as a cutting template. Working with handwoven really drives home why patterns using squares and rectangles were popular. Even the small pile of scraps leftover from cutting this out made me sad! 

The original hood was put together by folding back the seam allowances and then whip stitching over the seam. Because I was using a lining, I modified this to a technique I had seen on the wonderful inspiring blog Before the Automobile where the edges of the the outer fabric and lining are folded in towards each other, the pieces are lined up, and sewn with a tight whip stitch through all four layers. This ends a nice neat finish on both the inside and outside. Because it treats the two layers as a single layer, it is essentially the same construction technique as the orignal in finished effect. The original hood was seamed with matching woolen thread. I sewed mine with the same thread that I used for the white portion of the plaid. 

Front gore and small front seam beneath hood.

Rear hood seam and back gore

The finished effect of this method is an almost invisible outside seam, and a very tidy whipstitch effect on the inside. It also goes quite quickly, and keeps the lining from shifting or bubbling in the finished hood. The only tricky bit was lining up the plaids on the one side of the gore and at the back of the hood. Because I wove the plaid by eye, and because of some of the tensioning issues that I had, there was a little easing involved. It wouldn't have the big deal without the lining, but it was tricky to ease both layers evenly at the same time. Doable, but tricky. Thankfully it was also one of those things that is much more easily accomplished in hand sewing than in machine work.

All that remained was finishing the hood opening, the edge, and sewing the "cockscomb" Figuring out exactly how to do this was a bit confusing, because all of the scholarly works on the orignal garment are in a language I don't read, so I was depending on secondary sources, amoung whom there is some dissagreement  as to the details of the finish work. I went with what I felt was the most accurate of the works I could find, which cited the most of the scholarly works, and which I felt like matched most closely to what I could see in the photos available of the orignal piece. Alas this was the finishing solution which I found the least asthetically pleasing as well, but you can't be picksy choosy when it comes to how people decided to finsih their garments a thousand years ago I guess? I may try the second (innacurate I'm convinced) finishing option on the second hood for my second son.

The original hood was hemmed around the edge with whip stitch made paralell to the grain of the fabric, and no evidence that the fabric was folded over before stitching. I repeated this, although I kept my stitches closer than what I could faintly see in the original hood to keep the lining from fraying. The original was hemmed with matching thread, so I used the white weaving thread again to make the hems.

The only minor problem I ran into was at the front and back tips, where the stitches wanted to slide off to the sides. I reinforced this with a little darned area at the inside which is out of sight but keeps the threads from slipping.





The original hood opening was finished by turning in and whip stitching with a contrasting color of thread, or actually several contrasting colors of thread. I turned the exterior fabric over the lining, and whip stitched it down with red wool. While I was doing that I also (unauthentically but practicaly) tacked across the bottom of the face opening with the same red wool to reinforce the opening (where a child hauling it on and off will invitably get it stuck and tug to get it loose).

The "cockscomb" effect that makes this hood so unique looking was obtained by using basting stiches in matching thread. I put the hood on my son and pinned it close to his head, but loose enough that he can still push back the hood, and then stitched along the line of the pins with the same white wool. A little steaming and pressing later, and it was ready for Crash to wear. He is very excited about it and was sad that I won't let him wear it in the middle of the summer and give himself heat stroke.

I'm calling this one a sucess even if it's REALLY late for the challenge I started it for. Crash loves his hood and I enjoyed the reconstruction process. I very rarely sew anything completely by hand, and it was a really enjoyable experience. The finished product I feel like really has the look of the orignal hood (although it's missing the ties by the ears, I may add them later) in spite of the slight differences in design and construction. 

I would like to give credit where it's due, and note that this was the secondary source I chose to take most of my information from. http://www.medieval-baltic.us/skjold.html