Pskov Shift--Second Thoughts

I took another long look at the picture of the surviving fragments from the neckline of the Pskov shift and now am inclined to agree with the reconstructors that the shift probably did open in the front, after all.

It's a bit easier to see in Peter Beatson's sketch of the neckline fragment. There is a short bit of pleated neckline, then the end strip/string, which is knotted to a end bit/string on the other side, which leads to a longer pleated bit in the back.

What has changed my mind is the short pleated bit. In the photo or sketch it shows up on the left-hand side, at the bottom, At that point, there is only a short bit of pleating (about a centimeter) before the rest of the fabric strip securing the pleats extends into a tie string. That tie string is shown knotted to another tie-string piece on the other side. Meanwhile, to the right of the small pleated bit is another piece, only loosely connected to the small pleated bit, which is a larger pleated bit, about 4-5 centimeters long.

It occurs to me that you could make the shift in one of two ways that may give such an effect. First, you could use three pieces of fabric; one extra-wide (i.e., much wider than the wearer's shoulders) for the back of the shift, and two other pieces, each half as wide, for the front. The front pieces would be seamed together up to the point where you wanted the slit to begin. Then you bind the slit (or perhaps just turn it over and give it a tiny hem), sew the shoulders together and pleat the sides and hem to neck size. If you used two separate strips to pleat the sides and become tie-strings, and a third strip to anchor the pleats in back, the result might have the segmented look of the Pskov fragment. Alternatively, the same approach might work if you took two extra wide pieces of fabric, sewed them together at the shoulders, cut a slit down the center front, and bind, pleat and anchor as above. The beauty of this approach is that no armpit gussets or gores are required; only the front/back pieces and two sleeves. This may be what the reconstructors had in mind, judging by how wide the shift is in their sketch.

The only questions are how wide you need to make the shift to make this all work, and how big the shoulder seams need to be. Or, to put it another way, how much of the fabric needs to be pleated into the neck. I suppose I'll take the widest sections of fabric that I can given the amount of linen that I bought and experiment.

Any other thoughts? I'd love to start a debate on this.

When I get the shift together, I'll post pictures, both before and after I get the red silk trim at collar and cuffs sewn on. EDIT: Ooops! I mean, I'll post pictures both before and after I get the red silk trim at hem and cuffs sewn on. The neck is gathered, of course, so no silk trim there!

Pskov Re-Creation Project--Planning The Shift

I have already purchased the fabric I plan to use for my reconstruction of the Pskov costume; the photographs you see here show the two fabrics, and in my opinion give an excellent idea of the effect they will have in the final product, even though the silk, if not the linen, is a significantly darker shade than the photographs show. For the shift, I obtained a light-weight, light blue linen, because the shift is believed to have been blue (although the surviving shift pieces are now a light brown, as the Pskov pictures show). The shift fabric picture appears on the left.The surviving loops from the apron dress portion are a much darker blue; however, I think it likely that the shift would have been lighter in color and weight than the apron dress, so I have planned accordingly in obtaining my fabric. I bought a dark red silk broadcloth to trim the cuffs and hem. A picture of the silk appears on the right.

Some aspects of the reconstruction will be simple, because the surviving bits provide a good deal of information. It is clear, for example, that the cuffs are long and fairly narrow--the measurements of the fragments tell us that, just as they tell us how wide to make the silk strip that trims them. Similarly, the width of the strip at the hem is known, though we don't know how far down on the wearer's body the hemline came. The reconstructors have assumed that the shift was ankle-length, and having no evidence on the point I'm willing to accept that assumption for my purposes.

But the neckline raises questions. We can tell from the neck portion that survives that the neckline wass gathered into sewn pleats, which are anchored with a folded strip of the same fabric. That strip extends past the ends of the neck opening and apparently served as a tie string. However, this means that, that unlike the neck openings of many tunics of the period, the neck opening of the Pskov shift was not cut out of the center of a larger piece of fabric. If that had been done, there would be no need to pleat the fabric to neck size. Clearly, the neckline was done by pleating much larger pieces of fabric to neck size, sewing (or perhaps only tacking) the pleats in place, and then sewing the strip of fabric that would become the neck string over it.

So how should I cut the body of the shift, and how should I make the opening that I will need to pleat down to neck size?

The Pskov team hypothesizes that the shift had a gathered neckline that tied closed in the front, and long sleeves which ended in the red-trimmed cuffs, as shown in this sketch. But I have reservations about this proposed design. The surviving piece suggests that the body of the shift was made of two pieces of cloth, with the center portions pleated to form the neckline (leaving a bit of unpleated section to form a slit to allow for passage of the wearer's head) and the rest seamed together at the shoulders. How does one make this style of shift, however, if the opening is in the center front, as the reconstructors suggest?

I suppose that it would work to make the shift out of three pieces of cloth: one wide piece for the back, and two pieces each about half as wide as the back piece for the front. The front pieces could be seamed together, leaving a slit for the head, and then the body could be pleated to the appropriate neck size.

It seems to me, though, that this type of neckline introduces extra steps (splitting and then seaming the front pieces) that aren't really necessary. It is easy enough to pleat a neckline from only two wide pieces of cloth--provided you don't intend to have the slit down the front. If the slit extends down the shoulder, no additional cutting is necessary; you seam the front and back pieces together at the shoulder and pleat your neckhole to size, leaving the slit down the top side where the shoulder will be, install your stay strip/neck string, and seam the shoulders together. Tunics with slit openings down the shoulder have been documented in early Russia (though perhaps not as early as the Pskov find's 10th century date) and in Byzantium also. In addition, the surviving neck piece from Pskov appears to show evidence of being sewn into the dress in only one place, not two as would be required with a front opening.

Am I crazy? Is there something I'm missing? Any thoughts would be appreciated (particularly before I cut my cloth). :-)

Pskov Re-Creation Project--Introduction

In 2007, shortly after reading Peter Beatson's summary of the Pskov fabric find, I decided to attempt my own reconstruction of a costume represented by a substantial collection of textile fragments found in a birchbark box in one of the graves.

The textiles included fragments of the neckline, hem and cuffs of what were assumed to be part of a linen shift or undertunic; the hem and cuffs were trimmed with wide strips of what appears to have been red silk. The other fragment was about five feet (152 cm) long and 9 inches (25 cm) wide. It was made of blue-colored linen, but was trimmed with three strips of colored silk, two of which were blue, one of which reddish and was patterned. This piece is believed to be the remains of an apron dress, because it was found wrapped around a pair of large tortoise brooches with blue linen loops still inside them.

I plan to reconstruct both the shift and the apron dress as part of this project. I've supplied links to all of the photographs because I am hoping to get feedback from my readers, both as to the viability and correctness of the Pskov archaeological team's proposed reconstruction and on my own thoughts about how to reconstruct these garments.

Note: the photos I have reference in this post were linked to by Peter Beatson, but came from the Pskov team's website, which is written in Russian. The original Russian web page seems now to be unavailable, but a translation into English of that site by Lisa Kies is available here. EDIT: I have revised the entry to show the photographs as they appear in Lisa Kies's translation of the Pskov's team's former website.

Sewing for Byzantium--Planning the Himation

My himation will be the same pattern as the Manazan shirt I'm finishing, but without the front slit and collar. It will be made from a heavy-weight linen in a delicious shade of green, courtesy of Fabrics-store.com, shown on the left. I bought the trim shown on the left from an EBay vendor who trades under the name "Celtic Trims." I plan to use the trim doubled, sewing two lengths together (with the checkered border on one piece folded underneath) so that the result looks like a border of flowers inside a row of diamonds--a design that is vaguely like a period embroidery design I've seen in one of Timothy Dawson's monographs on Middle Byzantine costume. A picture of the trim appears above. It is a bit over 1 inch (25 cm) wide.

Because the neckline on the himation is supposed to be round, and is supposed to lie neatly right up against the bottom of the shirt collar, it will have to be small enough to require a slit, and a button and loop to close it. I plan to buy some blue cord to make a button and loop from, and the slit will extend onto the left shoulder to be camouflaged by the trim around the neck. I also plan to acquire green linen thread to sew the himation with. (I already have dark blue thread I can use for sewing strips of the trim together, and also for sewing the trim to the garment, if using blue thread turns out to be less obtrusive for the purpose than using the green thread would be.)

There will be photos, once I have gotten far enough along to have something to photograph.

Sewing for Byzantium--My Reproduction of the Manazan shirt

About a month and a half ago, I suddenly decided to make a reproduction of the Manazan shirt, the only complete garment known from the Middle Byzantine period (roughly 10th-12th c CE). The shirt was found in a multi-cave burial site in Turkey, intact except for part of the collar/neck area, still on the mummified body of its last wearer. Peter Beatson wrote up a description with a proposed pattern for the garment here.

I decided that this would be my first entirely handsewn garment. Like the original, my reproduction is made of linen. (I'm using Gutterman silk thread to sew it with, since I did not succeed in finding linen thread fine enough to sew it with before I started.) Unlike the original, it will be ankle length or thereabouts. The button is a tiny brass fake bell, bought in an Indian bead store in Philadelphia. Instead of a button hole, I sewed a small loop that I braided from coarse linen thread onto the end of the collar. A similar arrangement is found on the Skoldehamn shirt, as you can see from this closeup photograph of the shirt's neckline which was taken by Katrin Kania and appears on her excellent blog, A Stitch in Time.

To sew my reproduction shirt, I have been using a fine handmade bronze needle that I bought from Reconstructing History. While doing so, I have learned that, unlike a modern stainless steel needle, a bronze needle gets dull as you use it, and may even develop a crook or bend at the point that will catch on the fabric. The way to correct this is to resharpen the needle with a small whetstone like the ones Ragweed Forge sells to Viking era reenactors, a picture of which you can see here. No wonder such whetstones are found in Viking women's graves--they are indispensable to anyone sewing with the soft iron or bronze needles that were typically used for fine handsewing during that period.

The shirt is now done except for finishing the long seams down the body and hemming the bottom. After I complete it, I'll have my husband take pictures of me wearing it, and some pictures of the underarm area showing the side gore. For now, I only have pictures of the neck area, the best one of which I have posted here.

Since I have nothing else to wear with what is essentially a Byzantine shift, I am now planning to make an entire Middle Byzantine outfit. My goal is to make a lower class costume like the one featured on the Levantia site, here. So I will also need a gown or overtunic (called a himation in period), a mantion or cloak, and a savanion, which is a cross between a veil and a turban. I will talk about my plans for the other components of the costume in a later post.

Viking Apron Dresses--The "Front Cloth" Idea

My most recent apron dress experiment was inspired by Flemming Bau, who hypothesizes that some of the brooch pairs with three or more sets of loops indicate that a basic tube shaped or single-wrapped apron was worn with a separate piece of cloth over the front of the body (or, alternatively, with a "back cloth" that draped like a train in back). Some folk have hypothesized that the underlying apron did not close completely in the front, and that the front cloth was added to cover the gap.

Although I believe that brooches containing more than two pairs of loops is more likely to be a sign of an apron that wraps completely around the body than it is to be a sign of a dress-plus-front-cloth combination, I decided to experiment by making an apron dress that consisted of a wrapped part plus a front cloth anyway. Because my early efforts to develop a pattern for the dress by draping fabric showed that the gap in front is too large if you just use a simple rectangle for the section that wraps around the body, I added a right triangle-shaped gore to each side of the wrapped panel, while keeping the front cloth narrow. The result was attractive enough but slips around in wear more than I like. The pictures to the left and right show the dress in normal wear and with the front cloth held up to show the gap, (or, rather, the area that would be a gap if I hadn't added gores to create an overlap) respectively. My dress and its front cloth are 100% linen, and are completely handsewn.

Comments from anyone who's made such an apron dress on the wearability and practicality of such dresses would be greatly appreciated.

Viking Apron Dresses--My Interpretation of Geijer

This is more like what Professor Geijer meant, I believe.

What you're seeing under my left arm is actually a second overgarment, in light gray, wrapped so that the open side is hidden under the blue garment on top. There's a front view on the right, which looks rather like the "tube shaped" apron dress from one of my earlier posts. Both the blue and gray dresses are of linen and are handsewn, with handsewn linen straps. Both dresses are trimmed across the top with strips cut from an old table runner woven in Thailand with geometric motifs that resemble Viking period motifs.

Viking Apron Dresses--The Tea Towel Gaffe

Many works of history that discuss the Vikings show Viking women in an overgarment that consists of two narrow panels of cloth connected with straps that hang over the shoulders. I made one of these dresses, back when I knew little about Viking clothing. SCA members sometimes call these "tea towel" dresses; a picture of mine appears at the left.

This design can be traced to the work of an early scholar of Scandinavian archaeological textiles named Agnes Geijer, though it does not bear much resemblance to Professor Geijer's actual hypothesis of how the overdresses worn by Viking women may have looked. In her first analysis of the textile finds from Birka in Sweden, published in 1938, Professor Geijer hypothesized that Viking women may have put two sets of straps on a wide sheet of fabric and wrapped one or more of these sheets around the body, in opposite directions. A picture of her proposed diagram of this type of overdress appears at the right.

Unfortunately, Professor Geijer wrote in German, and many Viking enthusiasts do not read German well. So the "tea towel" myth spread, until fairly recently.

In my next post, I include a picture of a pair of apron dresses I made that are more like what I believe Professor Geijer was really trying to describe.

Viking Apron Dresses--Wrap Around Styles

My next experiments in apron dress design were with "wrap around styles" that consist of a flat sheet of fabric with three sets of loops attached. With these styles, there are three loops on each brooch pin; some actual finds show three loops.

The dress on the left, in orange, has two short sets of loops and one long set. The dress wraps around the body from back to front, with the long loops coming over the shoulders and the short loops in front; the open end is in front, near the side of the body.

The dress on the right, in green, has the opposite arrangement; it has two pair of long loops and one short pair of loops, and wraps from front to back, with the opening on the side in the back.

Both of these dresses are made of linen, and are completely hand sewn, though they use commercial trim.

Viking Apron Dresses--Tube-Shapes

Today, I'd like to show you two more recent Viking apron dress experiments.

The one on the left is conjectural; it is a simple tube of cloth with straps. It is based on the assumption that the apron dress evolved from the peplos, a tubular dress fastened at the top with brooches. The dress found in the Huldremose bog is believed to have been one of those.

The one on the right is based upon a Danish find. It is also believed to have been a tube, but has a number of pleats held down with a small strip of tablet woven cloth.

Both of these have straps that are made of a single piece of wool twill tape; they are not long loops, as is suggested by textile finds on brooch pins. My most recent recreations use loops for straps, as you will see later. Both dresses are made from 100% wool and are machine sewn but hand hemmed and hand finished.

Viking Apron Dresses--Early Experiments With Gored Designs

Now that I have a blog where I can easily post images, I intend to start by featuring some completed projects I have only discussed previously on other people's web sites.

One of my long-standing projects is to make a Viking apron dress for each major theory of apron dress design. Since these projects are complete, I can post them with a minimum of time and effort.

The first ones I made out of cottons and synthetic fabrics back in the 1990s, when I had no good sources for wools and linens and relatively little knowledge about Viking era costume. The one on the left, in cotton denim, was an early attempt to make a semi-fitted apron dress, based on the Hedeby harbor find. It originally had wide straps; I later created narrow single straps with loops to better match our knowledge of other apron dress finds.

Another early effort (seen here on the right) was based on a long rectangle, with right-triangle-shaped gores sewn on either end, creating a trapezoidal piece which was then sewn into a tube and had darts sewn into it. The most interesting property this dress has is that, if I had made it longer, it likely would have a short train--reminiscent of period artwork. Again, this dress had wide straps that I narrowed later on. It is made from a mystery polyester that is meant to imitate linen. Both dresses are machine sewn; even the trim is sewn on by machine. The seams are only partly finished; I wasn't very good with seam finishing, back then.

I'll talk about some of my other apron dresses in other posts.

CONTENT EDIT: All of the photos are clickable for a larger version. In some cases, the larger version has a lot more detail. In others, it doesn't because the original was crappy. I apologize in advance for photo quality. My current digital camera is pretty good (it's a Canon Power Shot A540), but almost all of the photos were taken by either me or my husband, Eric, and neither of us are photographers. :-)

First post

After nearly five years of having only a personal LiveJournal (without photo display capability), I've decided to take the plunge and start a costume-only blog. Here it is. Wish me luck!