One Afternoon Tutorials--Aprons!

Today's collection of one-afternoon projects is about aprons.

Aprons appear to have been made throughout history, and could be practical or ornamental (like the bronze ornamented one found upon the woman in the Eura grave in Viking age Finland, or the 16th-17th c. lace aprons worn in France and elsewhere in Europe).

Aprons come in a wide variety of styles and fabrics.  Work aprons can be as simple as a piece of cloth with a band sewn to the top, to tie around one's waist, but can also be full length overgarments.  There are a plethora of modern apron projects to be found on the Internet also; ruffled bib or half-aprons in cheerful colors or prints; silly "chef's aprons"; pinafore aprons for little girls; and more!  Because this is a historical blog, I have stuck to patterns/tutorials for historical designs instead of diving into the vast array of modern patterns of all types. 

Please don't assume that, because I have listed only one pattern for a period, that the pattern shows the only way aprons were made in that period!  Although I have not conducted detailed research on the subject, there appear to be a variety of different apron designs for every historical period, and no reason to believe that aprons didn't vary by region as well.

Because I am not (yet!) a reenactor and have no present need for a practical period apron, I have not tried out any of these designs (except for the Eura apron, which I did a bit differently).  As always, do your own research to ascertain whether a particular tutorial suggested here will work for you.

• Viking Apron Dress:  Viking apron dress designs are still conjectural, but two types have a substantial amount of evidence and support; the pleated-in-the-front tube (Kostrup) and the fitted tube (Hedeby).  The tutorial featured here is from the Handcrafted History blog and is a fairly typical fitted tube kind of pattern (though not necessarily what was used at Hedeby).   We don't know if the Vikings used the apron dress as we would an apron (to protect other clothing) but we do know that some aprons (notably lace aprons--17th-18th centuries) were worn for style purposes, so I am adding an apron-dress pattern to this list.  Note:  Making such a garment might take longer than a single afternoon if you stitch it entirely by hand.
• Eura (Finland):  Based upon an archaeological find near Eura in Finland that has been dated to about 1100 CE.  The apron appears to have been simply made of a length of cloth, belted to the body with a piece of tablet weaving, but it was clearly an ornamental garment because the bottom edges was decorated with designs crafted from small bronze coils.  Making and sewing on the coils would likely take the making of such an apron outside the range of a one-afternoon project, but finishing the apron by fringing the bottom and hemming the other edges is another possibility and would be fairly quick to do.  A diagram illustrating how archaeologists believe the Eura apron was made may be found here; the original blog site (which was used by a Finnish college student to house her thesis) is no longer live.   
• Medieval:  Here are several different types of medieval period apron.  Edyth Miller of The Compleatly Dressed Anachronist provides instruction on a type of late medieval apron associated with midwives--it's a full body overgarment.  Edyth's tutorial is here. 
• Medieval, part 2:  The second type of apron is a smocked top apron tied around the waist; you can find it in Matilda La Zouche's LiveJournal here. (Note:  If you have not done smocking before, you may wish to look for instruction on how to do smocking before you attempt this kind of apron.  Gina's Medieval Silkwork blog gives a list of smocked apron tutorials, with links, here.  She includes Matilda's tutorial, but you may wish to try some of the others, which give more detailed instruction about doing the actual smocking.)
• German Renaissance: (15th-16th centuries)  Genoveva has a video tutorial she claims will teach you how to do a smocked apron, much like the medieval ones above, in one hour!  Find it here.
• 18th c. work apron.  Burnley & Trowbridge have a series of three excellent clear videos demonstrating how to make a basic 18th century style work apron.  The set is in the "Sew Along" playlist; you can find the first one on YouTube here.
• Regency:  The blog Sewing Empire features two different apron styles for the Regency period:  this one for a quick waist-length apron, and a second one for an apron with full-body coverage.  
• Victorian:  Sew Historically has a tutorial on how to make a "pinner", an apron with a bib that pinned onto one's clothes. Find it here.
• Edwardian:  From a blog called Cranial Hiccups comes a tutorial for a rather plain and basic, full-body apron; find it here.
• 1920s:  Also from Cranial Hiccups comes this 1920s apron tutorial; yes, it's a period tutorial, complete with an image containing the actual period pattern!

Feel free to dive into the Internet (Pinterest is not a bad place to start) to look for other possible apron DIYs/how-tos/tutorials and patterns.  Have fun!

More About Aprons, and Apron-like Garments

When I posted my entry on the possibility that aprons were a component of Viking women's dress, Pearl suggested that I look at some of the essays in a book called Folk Dress in Europe and Anatolia. To my surprise, I was able to locate an inexpensive copy of the book on line, so I bought it.

I have been reading the book with great interest, even though a lot of it has nothing to do with aprons. The book consists of a number of essays about women's costume in Europe, both folk costume and very early historic costume, particularly in Eastern Europe. The most salient generalization that can be made about the earliest costume is that its basic form consisted of only two garments; a linen shift, and a (typically woolen, and often fringed) belt.

Aprons and apron-like garments seem to have emerged as elaborations upon and variations of the belt. The Kievan/Russian poneva (or ponyova or panova; there are a lot of different spelling variants in English) is a wrapped garment, either with multiple panels or shaped like a towel or blanket, that covers the front and back of the lower half of a woman's body. E.W. Barber believes that it served the same functions, and possibly had the same origin, as the infamous Scandinavian string skirt.

But so far as I can see, none of the essays I've read so far sheds much light on when (or whether!) the fringed belt and the doubled or tripled cloth apron transmuted into a single apron covering the lap only. Barber presents a theory that may relate to the process. She suggests that the string skirt is the oldest specifically sex-linked European garment and that it originated in Eastern Europe, i.e., from the southern Urals to the western Balkans. As time passed, the string skirt transmogrified into ponevas and other apron garments made out of solid fabric, and the original string skirt idea was transmitted farther north and west. Thus, Barber hypothesizes, "it is far more plausible to assume that the string skirt, which occurs with similar associations in discrete eastern and western areas, is the survival of an old form and the squared back-apron, which occurs in one patch in the center (i.e., part of Russian and the Ukraine), is the innovation, than to assume the reverse."*

Barber's suggestion may give us a working hypothesis for the origins of the Russian panova and similar forms of garment, but it raises tantalizing questions about how the type of apron found in the Eura grave originated, and whether it too arose from the primeval string skirt. No fringe appears on the Eura apron, or on any garments other than the shawl--which in certain regions of Eastern Europe also had reproductive and magical significance.

What might be useful is a stricter chronology, not only of appearances of the string skirt, but of other garments with fringes. That may be difficult--particularly since it cannot necessarily be assumed (as Barber apparently assumes) that the fringed folk garments observable in Eastern Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries are necessarily survivals of the Paleolithic string skirt.

*E.W. Barber, "On the Antiquity of East European Bridal Clothing," page 27 in Folk Dress in Europe and Anatolia.

Thinking About Female Images In Viking Art

Looking at the Leire statue reminded me just how common it is for women in Viking Age figurines to look as though they have a short narrow cloth covering their bodies from (approximately) waist to mid-calf. The length and width of these apparent aprons are further emphasized (as on the Leire figure) with either horizontal lines across the entire "garment", designs across the bottom edge, or, like the Leire statue, some kind of edging or design along the bottom and (or) sides.

As I thought about it, I realized that the Leire figure is not the only female figure that appears to be wearing an apron. This figure from the National Museum of Denmark, also wears a narrow cloth over her lap that looks like an apron (thank you, Pearl, for bringing this figure to my attention).

But apron-like designs on Viking Age figures of women are not limited to Danish pieces. The famous silver pendant of Freyja found in Götland also appears to be wearing an apron with horizontal trim across the bottom, under her clasped hands and her rows of beads. Some of the other female figures found in various locations in Sweden (i.e., the figure on the far left, and the third figure from the left, in the photograph under the link) show them also.

I'm not completely sure why I didn't focus on this feature of the existing Viking images before. Granted, the only evidence for the wearing of aprons (as opposed to the so-called "apron dress") during the Viking Age comes from Finland and the Baltic. Those finds survived because the Finns and Balts sewed lots of bronze coils onto their clothing, particularly onto aprons, and this had the effect of preserving parts of the apron as well as giving very exact information about its size and about what parts of the body the apron covered while it was being worn. In Scandinavia, where metal trim was sometimes sewn onto sleeve ends and bodices, but nowhere else, it is still possible that similar aprons were worn, but were not preserved for the archaeological record because they bore no metal trim to preserve them.

Nor am I the only person interested in Viking Age clothing to fail to consider aprons as a possible feature of Viking wear. In the years in which I have eagerly sought out and viewed photographs of Viking clothing reconstructions made by reenactors, costumers, and museums, I have found only one who wears an apron with her Viking garb. The accompanying photograph shows her work. Her name is Deborah Lane. I met her through the MedCos mailing list.

Consideration of the apron question may also help to answer another long-standing question about Viking women's clothing; namely, whether Viking women wore belts. Belt buckles rarely turn up in Viking women's graves and, to my knowledge, the only graves in which they have turned up are not in Scandinavia but in Viking-settled areas of England, Scotland, and the islands north of Scotland. Many have speculated that if Viking women wore belts, they must have worn tablet-woven belts, because so few belt ends and buckles have been found in women's graves.

If most Viking women wore an apron supported by a tablet woven belt, like Deborah and the woman at Eura, it would help explain why so little belt hardware has been found. Belts with buckles are usually made from leather, and it would be difficult to use a leather belt to support an apron in the manner of the Eura woman's apron (i.e., wrapping the belt around the body once, catching the top edge of the apron under it, then folding the top edge over that part of the belt before wrapping the remainder of the belt once again and tying it) because most leather belts are not long enough to wrap twice around the body, or flexible enough to hold the apron firmly and comfortably even if they were long enough.  Deborah's recreation, which shows her tablet woven belt holding her apron on in the manner of the Eura woman's apron, illustrates the point, though Deborah has added metal belt ends to her belt (I don't know of any women's graves in the Viking Age where two belt ends but no buckle have been found).

I need to think more about this issue, but an apron ornamented with embroidery, tablet weaving, or some other textile trim might be an appropriate addition to a recreated female Viking outfit.