I started out in the SCA around the end of 1992.  I was in Sylvan Glen briefly (as the group was starting up), and then moved to Atlantia.  When I arrived in that Kingdom, the first medieval reenactor I met was part of the Adrian Empire and I tested that out briefly before rejoining the SCA. 

The friend from Adria was more experienced at medieval sewing than I was at the time and I told her I was very excited about going to events and making costumes.  She looked appalled when I made that statement and told me in now uncertain terms that we wear "garb" and not "costumes".  Garb, she said, is clothes people wore; costumes are playing dress-up.

Given that I was still enamored at the time with buying yards and yards of tacky trim (and note that this friend was as well), the distinction between the two was not yet clear in my mind. 

It was a decade later, when my boyfriend ordered a giant quantity of linen, in many colors and several weights, that I finally started to understand what made some of the simplest garb stand out.  At his request, I made 8 tunics in mid-weight linen, 8 undertunics in light linen and 8 pairs of linen pants.  They were all cut using rectangular construction techniques and were completely unadorned.  We were walking about at Pennsic one day and came upon a group of his friends.  One of the guys commented that he liked his garb a lot, but that it did not look like garb, this friend joked, it looked like clothes.

Exactly.

Of course, this is the SCA, so costume garb is perfectly ok (and quite often, these items are also perfectly beautiful).   Many individuals are into research and who view this as an opportunity to recreate history often aim to produce garments that reflect what common individuals wore during these earlier times.  They recreate the day-to-day garments, clothes rather than costumes. These items stand out for their simplicity and functionality in a way that the most heavily beaded and trim laden gown cannot.  They look real.

In reality, getting to this point is often a mental process.  Early on, most of us are drawn to the miles and miles of colorful trim sold by SCA merchants.  We want to slap it on everything and "peacock" ourselves (thanks to folks from one of the Viking forums for the rather appropriate peacock term).  Eventually, those interested in really understanding the history behind clothes start to see past the glitter and look to recreating, rather than re-imagining, the past.

How do you start to make medieval clothes rather than costumes?  Research!  :-)   Look at paintings for later period items.  Look at sculptures.  Look at archeological finds to see how those items were actually put-together and decorated.

You can also carefully consider your choices in fabric - would linen or wool twill be better than a modernly patterned brocade?  Consider more realistic trimming options.  In period, the creation of decorative bands was very labor intensive.  Would one really have worn them to work in the market or even manage the home?  Perhaps there are other, simpler, ways to embellish your garb that would be more suitable.  (For example, a simple strip of silk fabric as trim at the top of a Viking aprondress is more period than a wide row of purchased metallic Celtic knotwork trim.)

And look around the work of others.  You will find some lovely things at events and online.  Some things I have seen recently that I love are below.  There are so many more, you just need to poke around a bit to find them!

• 16th C. German & Elizabethan Costuming by Amie Sparrow
• There are some lovely re-creations on Kostym.cz (I really love the German Lady, the Red Cotehardie, the Brown Peasant, Durer Dress, Kampfrau, and the Fortune Teller): http://www.kostym.cz/Anglicky/VIII_01_01.htm
• Often living history groups have strict standards for what can and cannot wear to events and they produce some lovely items (particularly those in Europe).  There are some nice examples on this site: http://www.fletcherey-hammelbacher.de/6.html
• This one is the gallery of a photographer that has some amazing images, a few of which are of people in lovely medieval dress: http://alcove.deviantart.com/gallery/
• Most of the dresses in these links are not workclothes, but they are lovely reproductions that are not over-wrought.  I particularly love Anea's dress: http://realmofvenus.renaissanceitaly.net/yourgarb/showcase.htm
• And this lady has some lovely garb, particularly her houppeland with ruffled veil! https://www.facebook.com/pages/Elisas-Endeavors/388450527889191?id=388450527889191&sk=photos_stream

Because I never believe in doing things the easy way, I decided to get a fine warp of 800 ends warped up on my loom.

To do this I had to add an additional 100 heddles to the shafts (it is an 8 shaft loom, but I only have 4 on it at the moment). 

The warp is Borgs Faro wool (6/1).  It is lovely, but very, very sticky.  I had to use a pick-up stick to help separate the warp strings every few inches as I wound the warp on so that it would pass over the lease sticks.

The weft is a green singles wool yarn that is very, very fine that was gifted to me by a friend.  I think it would have been suitable for warp, but it was an older cone of yarn and I did not want to risk too many broken threads (I've had two already but that was easily dealt with).

I had done a needle woven test sample and when finished this should close up well and still be a very light weight wool.  (Yes, that is another Birka broken diamond twill you see as the pattern.) 

I have about 16 inches woven so far and should have a total of three yards or slightly over that in woven fabric when done.  I will start winding the warp for some mat-type rugs for the Pennsic tents soon :-)

At the Cabin I have a small garden plot that used to be a place for the baby livestock to live.  When moved in, I decided to use that space for a garden.  Unfortunately, the lack of soil (there is more shale there than anything else) and the fact that I cannot be there every day, made it very hard to grow anything.  My purple green beans did amazingly well, but everything else (that lived) was nothing more than a miniature version of what it should be.  Radishes the size of a pea, carrots only an inch long, cucumbers that should have been huge but looked like gerkins.

Eventually, I will have the time to bring in topsoil and fertilizer and do a full scale garden and do it right.  For this year, however, I just opted to test out some flax.  If the summer is too dry, it is likely not much will come of it, but I am crossing my fingers I ge

I turned the soil for two beds and added in 2 cubic feet of a topsoil/compost blend.  Over that I sprinkled flax seeds purchased from Landis Valley Farm.  The variety is Marylin, which is specifically bred for better fibre production.

The beds are staked off and I look forward to seeing if anything has sprouted in a couple of days.

Ideally, this will grow well enough that learn the entire process of turning flax into fibre - from the seed to spinning.  Below is the wet-weather pond (which would be great, I think, for retting, except that it tends to disappear in mid-summer) and team of oxen I used for my field work ;-)

Eventually, this field will be home to Icelandic Sheep!

Here are the final roving samples from the Madder experiment.  The first was the 12 hour mordant (with alum) and 3 days in the dye (left), 5 days (middle) and 3 day mordant with 7 days in the dye.  Unfortunately, the sun washed it out a bit.

I did have an oops with this.  The madder was powered, but I had sense enough to not let it float free with the roving.  Initially, it was contained in nylon stockings but at some point I accidentally poked one of the stockings when I was moving the dyeables around and ruptured it.  The madder grit invaded the dye bath and is impossible to get out of the roving.  The darkest sample in the image above actually felted during my attempts to remove the powder.  The other roving piece I set aside an only lightly rinsed twice.  It still has flecks, but will work to spin for a dye sample, even though I would not use the yarn for anything else for fear that the madder would release more dye and stain something else.

To the left is the yarn I previously posted.  This also was in the 3 day mordant, 7 day dye bath.  Next too it is a piece of linen that I mordanted and dyed with the wool just to see how it would turn out.  The pink is very nice and actually dyed evenly on the linen.  I look forward to playing with more linen dye samples after Pennsic!

Up next... Experiment #2 - Weld Revisited!  And following that I have birch leaves and bark to test.

As for what else is going on well... see below the 16 bundles of fine wool warp that is now on my loom!

I could not be more thrilled with this! 

Here is crewel wool from Renaissance Dyeing that I dyed myself with madder (the same madder bath as in the previous post, but I mordanted the wool for three days before soaking in the dyebath for 7 more days).  I LOVE the color!

This yarn, btw, takes dye exceptionally well.

Now, of course, I am contemplating a project for a hand spun, hand-dyed, and hand woven mantle f

Over the last several weeks I have been experimenting with natural dyes.  The only dyeing I have previously done was in 2009 (I think) with onion skins.  I managed a lovely marigold color with those (on wool) on my first attempt, but only a pale, dull yellow when I tried a second batch.

I have known for years that I wanted to weave my own fabric, and given that I also recently took up spinning, a more serious attempt at natural dyeing seems to be the logical next step.  So, I tried a couple of dye baths with madder and weld (and still have another madder bath going) and below are my initial results.

Now, I cannot make something just for the sake of making it, even if it is something you have to practice a lot in order to obtain a quality product.  (I actually guess that would be a period practice as well, lol.)

So, the skeins of dyed yarn are being woven into a tablet band that will start a warp for a miniature warp-weighted loom that I am constructing.  For the band design, I was inspired by the double diamond pattern of the image to the left.  This is a fragment of an extant band from Kaupang (more info can be found in Hilde Thunem's document here http://urd.priv.no/viking/smokkr.html ).  It appears from the diagram that the original might have been brocaded, but given that this is for warping purposes it is not a technique I wanted to test out on this particular piece.

I also will admit that do not truly understand the "how" of tablet weaving just yet.  I can print a pattern off of the internet, set up the weaving according to the directions and follow the turn turn/flip pattern that they suggest, but this piece is my first attempt at really understanding the process of how weaving with cards creates a pattern.  So, I drafted the pattern myself, set it up and fuddled with it until I got the weaving to show the pattern I was expecting. 

Plan to weave a bit of the band on either side of the warp, so you can see below that I have started the left hand bit of the weaving.