| Period Clothing Construction By Katharine of Cate Hall (© Catherine Rogers-Cook, 2002) Originally published in the Kingdom of Atenveldt MOAS Newsletter, May 2002 |
| When I first joined the SCA thirty years ago, the attempts made by most members at historical clothing were like the feeble movements of infants. There were shining exceptions, of course, but even those people who had knowledge and talent mostly focused their efforts on “looking like the real thing”, not on making the real thing. When the Estrella War Arts & Science Competition categories were announced, I was encouraged and excited by the challenge of really making real clothing, not “costumes” and not even “garb.” I believe one of the reasons that a competition of this kind could even be contemplated can be attributed to the Internet, to the growth and maturing of the SCA and to the way that information and knowledge can be diffused throughout our shires, baronies and kingdoms in a way that simply was not possible thirty years ago. In addition to the diffusion of information on our period of interest, there is so much more information than there used to be! Archeology has changed from a field of study that seemed to focus only on the grave goods, treasure troves and potsherds of the Ancient World, to one that considers the mundane, ordinary “stuff” of our much more recent past to be worthy of study. And what is more wonderful, is that books and articles and websites are published to spread the information to amateurs as well as “serious students” of the field. So how do we start preparing to enter a competition where we are to produce clothing as it was made in its own time? If I had the time (and you had the patience) I could exhaustively research every time period, country, culture, age and social class to produce the definitive work on the subject, but by that time the War would be long over, and the competition would be only a memory. So instead, I hope to point the way by sharing some basic thoughts and information on the materials, techniques and mind set that went in to making the clothing of the past what it was. |
| When most people set out to make garments for themselves or others, they have a style in mind, even if they don’t perfectly envision the finished product. I imagine that each sempsteress or sempster who thinks of entering this competition (or just making clothes for fun) will have some idea of the kind of garment he or she wants to make. So my best advice is first to consider what you want to make, what its cost in time and money will be, whether it is within your level of skill and whether you believe you can document all the elements of the garment. Some historical periods and garments are extremely easy to document because examples of the actual clothing can be (and has been) exhaustively researched, and patterns for the garments have been made based on accurate measurements of the existing clothes. I am thinking here of the wonderful work done by Janet Arnold on clothing of the late 16th and early 17th centuries in England On the other hand, information about the Frankish “bliaud” for men or women, is more often speculation than hard fact, so if this is the era that interests you, you will have to work harder to document your garment’s fabric, cut, color, size, purpose and techniques. It will be very important that you to do. So where do we actually start? Lets start with the stuff. |
| Fiber, spindle, loom and cloth |
| The very word “stuff” has taken on the meaning of all manner of material objects, but stuff (in English), is the word for cloth itself. Cloth is fiber made into thread and woven into the material we use for the garments we wear, and for many other things as well. Cloth is the fabric . . . well you get the picture: stuff, fabric, material - it is basic. Before the invention of un-natural fibers, cloth was made from living things: the fleece of sheep and other animals, the inner core of plants such as flax, hemp and ramie; the filament extruded by the silkworm to make its cocoon or the woolly fiber of the cotton plant. Wool and linen are the basic wardrobe fabrics throughout our time period and over the whole of Europe and much of Asia as well. The weave, width and quality varied over time by the type of loom used to weave it, and the skill of the weaver.. The warp weighted vertical loom allowed very wide fabric to be woven since the weaver could walk back and forth as she worked the shuttle through the warps and beat or combed the weft upwards. The warp weighted loom continued to be used in the more “backwards” parts of the world and was still being used in Scotland and Ireland until the very end of the 17th Century When the smaller upright loom was developed, the weaver sat on a bench to weave, and heddle rods were used to raise and lower the warps as the cloth was woven upwards towards the top of the loom. The width of the cloth became much narrower, limited with the reach of the seated weaver. The cut of clothing was affected by the narrower cloth. This loom began to be introduced in the 12th century, and was still in use in the 16th century for home made cloth. The horizontal loom replaced the older vertical looms in the 14th and 15th centuries, and weavers (now often men) sat as the worked, raising and lowering the warps by using foot pedals. The width of the cloth was now limited to the weaver’s reach as the shuttle was thrown back and forth. A really skilled weaver, or weavers working in teams of two could produce the broadcloths for which Flanders and later England were famous. These stuffs ranged from 45 to 55 inches wide. Chaucer’s Wife of Bath was a weaver who was so skilled “she passed hym of Ypres or of Gent”, two cloth towns famous for their broadcloths The development of the draw loom, a refinement of the horizontal loom, allowed elaborate patterns to be woven as a drawboy perched in the superstructure of the loom raised and lowered many groups of warps allowing brocades and velvets to be developed. Silk weaving was a highly skilled craft that began to be practiced in Italy in the late 13th century. As silkworms were cultivated and the number of weavers grew by the thousands, Italian city-states became rich on the output of the weavers. Plain silks and simple brocades were usually 36 to 40 inches, while the velvets were about 27 inches wide. Cotton’s introduction to Europe seems to be a pretty iffy subject. Almost every history professor I’ve ever read or heard describes her/his period of interest as beginning the “rise of the Middle Class”. In like manner, it seems that Cotton was always being introduced to Europe. Unspun cotton wadding began to be used in quilted gambesons by the 12th century, cotton fabric was imported, at great cost, from India and the East, and it reached various European countries at various times. Cotton thread was spun/ woven with linen to produce fustian by the 14th century, and at some point, cotton began to replace linen as the preferred fabric for shirts and smocks. If you plan on using cotton fabric for a historically accurate garment, you may need to provide copious documentation of its use in your time and place. (By the way, the very nice linen cotton blends carried by the big fabric stores won’t be labeled “fustian” but that is what they are.) |