A Wealth of Tutorials

Recently, I learned that the Handcrafted History blog contains a wealth of free tutorials--51 to be exact--for projects of various complexity and length. The blog is a wonderful place to explore, particularly if your costuming interests lie in the medieval period.  

Many of the tutorials are in English, though some are in Swedish.  Many of them are for 15th century clothing, though by no means all--there are a few tutorials for Viking age clothing. and one for a "bathhouse babe" type of sleeveless shift.  All are well-illustrated with color photographs.  I suspect that the ones in Swedish could be adequately navigated by English-speakers using Google Translate.

Linda, the blogger, runs a small (mostly) historical clothing business.  You can find her on Instagram (where I first found her), Facebook, Etsy, and Patreon.  Her Etsy site sells kits which consist of patterns and instructions to make small projects.  Note that if you decide to contribute to her Patreon account, she will be able to make more free tutorials available on her blog.   

EDIT:  12/22/2020 Corrected description about Linda's kits, which include patterns and instructions but NOT materials.

A Bit More About Skoldehamn

Today, I found yet another Skoldehamn hood tutorial.  This one is geared toward people interested in attempting to make their hood as faithful a copy of the original as possible.  The tutorial was prepared by Eleanor Deyeson, an SCA member.  Her tutorial may be found here. 

Eleanor's tutorial is specifically geared to people who are not only planning to use the pattern of the original but are also prepared to use the correct types of handstitching that the original employs. (Note that Eleanor makes hood "kits" with pre-cut fabric pieces for making your own hood; they are available here; however, the ones available at present do not include wool fabric, which the original used.) She sees the particular stitches used in the original hood as eminently practical, as is clear from this comment from her tutorial:

I hope you enjoy learning about these various finishing techniques. Each has a functional effect, with any decoration as a bonus secondary effect. The stitching on the gore and back seams helps the hood lay flatter and the hood just looks better. The cord that is couched along the face opening helps stiffen the opening, and prevents friction from affecting the cut/folded hood edge. The “mohawk” on the top stiffens the hood, and possibly provides some comfort benefits while wearing in a cold, windy environment. Remember that the original location is on the same latitude as Point Lay, Alaska or Murmansk, Russia. 

The last point made in the above quote is particularly relevant, as many Viking reenactors and SCA participants are making clothing to wear in areas much warmer than Skoldehamn, which is located inside the Arctic Circle.  There is nothing wrong with making clothing for historical events based upon original finds, but it can be important to keep in mind that the conditions you will face at your event may differ radically from the conditions in which the original item was used.  

More Web Resources

Regular readers of this blog know that I've posted several lists of "one afternoon tutorials"--projects which can be completed in a single afternoon by people with different skill levels and yet generate wearable items, or other kinds of useful items that can be part of a historical costume.  

In doing that, however, I have deliberately ignored other tutorials, which might be of equal interest to my readers, either because they require too many steps to be completed in a single afternoon or a higher level of starting skill, or both.

It occurred to me that I might do a useful service by suggesting places on the Internet where tutorials for more complex projects can be found, so that interested readers could search for tutorials, patterns, and other information about more complex projects that might suit their interests and needs.

Then it occurred to me that I need not mention those sites that have been the source of my lists of "one-afternoon tutorials", since having checked out those sites before, interested readers can simply return to them in search of new material, if they are so inspired.  But there are sites I have found on the Internet that are gold mines of information; I just haven't discussed them in my blog because they relate to historical periods in which I am (presently) less interested.

Some of my favorite sites for information on historical costume, and/or historical costuming, are listed under the heading "Resources" in the column to the left of this blog. Many of them have been around for nearly 20 years--yes, they go back nearly to the beginning of the World Wide Web--but they still contain extremely useful information and are worth exploring if you are interested in costume for the relevant period/s of history.  The following sites are not quite as old, but do contain much valuable information.

• YouTube.  Do not underestimate the power of YouTube.  It can be searched, like Google (which now owns it), and it contains a multitude of videos about historical costuming, makeup, and hairstyles, including a vast array of video tutorials.  Many of them are excellent.  Some of them qualify as "one-afternoon" tutorials, but others don't.  In recent blog posts, I have embedded links to some YouTube videos of interest to me, including tutorials by Janet Stephens, the "hairdressing archaeologist", and lectures by archaeological scholars such as Neil Price.  
• Your Wardrobe Unlock'd.  This is mostly a paid subscription site (there are some articles available for free). However, it contains excellent information from long-time historical costumers who do very good research. It has especially useful information for Western world costuming for the 16th-19th centuries.
• Historical Sewing.com. This site is all about 19th century costume and sewing for women's wear. I wish it had been around when I was last interested in making myself 19th century costume.
• Susanna Broome. Susanna has produced a number of pamphlets on how to craft Viking Age clothing for men and women based upon solid research into the archaeological finds and the recent theories about what those finds tell us. She even sells booklets on how to recreate known Viking age nalbinding finds and tablet-woven bands that do not require knowledge of brocading.  Look to her blog for information about her booklets and research, and to her Facebook page, Viking Age Clothing, to purchase her booklets (and learn which merchants are  also authorized sources of those booklets).
• La Cotte Simple. A wonderful site, full of detailed tutorials about fitted late medieval fashion, for women and men.
• Koshka the Cat. She has a great collection of tutorials she has written on how to make a number of different garments, mostly from the 18th and 19th centuries.

Caveat emptor; not everyone who posts a tutorial will be interested in obtaining a high degree of historical accuracy, and some such posters may be unaware that their approach will not result in a garment or outfit that is period or close to period in appearance, materials, construction, etc.  But that's part of the fun of exploring the Internet; unexpectedly finding a source of information for an area of sewing, or of history, that you thought nobody in the world but you cared about.

Go forth and explore!  And have fun.

EDIT: (8/29/2016) Fixed the broken link to Koshka's tutorials page.