The Jorvik Cap - 10th C

 I generally leave my head uncovered, except at outdoor events where there is not a lot of shade available. At outdoor event I wear a straw hat with a length of thin linen down the back to protect my neck.

I agreed to teach a couple of classes on sewing and embroidery to some of our newest members and thought a simple head covering that could work for different eras would be a good choice. Easy pattern, simple stitching, and then decorated with the basic embroidery stitches to personalize it. And for new members it would also be their first complete piece of garb, a win win in my opinion.

While looking through the vastness of the Internet I came across a website discussing the Jorvik cap. It looked to be just the thing, and it was only a century or two out of my preferred period to play ( 7th-9th C Anglo-Saxon).

The original was made from silk but I opted for linen for a few reasons.

1. I do not play a Lord or Lady. I play a peasant or a craftsman class persona.
2. I had linen on hand.
3. I have a tendency to overheat easily and decided linen was far more breathable and cooler than the other option of wool
4. I am allergic to most wools and it would have to be lined anyways, increasing its heat factor.

A couple of websites suggested there was embroidery on the original but looking at the image of the extant item, located at the JORVIK Artefact Gallery, I could find no indication of embroidery at all. The only evidence of embroidery were other people's hoods and the decorations they added.

I decided to try to learn the long armed cross stitch and use it as decoration on my hood along the front edge seam. I had tried the long armed cross stitch before but had failed and moved to something easier.

This effort was no different except after the fourth time of starting and removing the stitching, I placed dots every 1/8th inch. I used a ruler so the line was dots was straight and used a soft lead pencil so the marks will disappear in time and with a gentle washing. With the markings this stitch became much easier to do and get even along the entire length.

I opted for 2 strand tapestry wool, 4 strand separated into 2 strand, for the decorative stitching. Once the crosses were done I decided to go back over the X's with a bit of wool to give it a little extra punch. I chose green and yellow as those are the primary colours in my SCA heraldry.

Now that I have done this hood, I am thinking about making a pointed hood just for some variety. I have seen them referred to as the Dublin Viking Hood or the Dublin Cap. I have found several pages that discuss them and show the site owners recreations but have not, yet, found an image or the original or the recreation in a museum. I will, of course, keep looking.

Thorsberg Pants: Final

Finally, my Thorsberg pants are done. The most recent changes to the pattern for the footies worked well. I find the footies to be a little tight, being used to modern stretch socks. I am also finding the seams under my foot to be annoying. Like the seams in  legs of the pants I suspect it is a matter of getting used to them.

As you can see from the photos, the pants legs are quite baggy. So much so that when I sewed the footies onto the legs I actually had to over lap the fabric. Luckily, with the split in place it was fairly easy to overlap and does not impede my use of the pants at all. But, because of the overlap, 2 inches on the right leg and 3 inches on the left, I do not feel the need to add the ties to the backs of the legs at all.

Speaking of the ties. The Spouse had an idea for the purpose of the opening in the back of the leg and the ties. He suggested that anyone wearing this style of pants would not want to get them wet or muddy so the slit in the back allowed the wearer to put his feet through and pull the pants up out of harms way. The ties could have been there to tie the raised pants up and out of the way so they wouldn't have to hold them in place or risk them slipping down anyway. It is a possible reason and is as likely as any other theory I have seen on the subject.

A theory I came up with is that the split is there to make it easier to get the pants on. If you have ever tried to put on non-stretch thigh high boots, especially very snug ones, it is kind of hard to get the foot down and into the foot section. It could be something similar for these pants. If they were as snug fitting as the original documentation suggests it could have been hard to get them on with out the split in the back of the leg.

I've watched the Spouse put his leg wraps on and loose fabric can be tricky, causing the wraps to not tighten correctly and slide off during the day. Maybe the ties were there to  close the material to make it easier to get the leg wraps on and stay on during the days activities. Until we develop a time machine to go back and view the pants being worn by their original owners, we will never know for sure but we can make educated guesses based on our own observations with reconstructions.

Thorsberg Pants: Part 6

The most recent edition of the footies for my Thorsberg pants are much better but still not perfect.I used the same pieces from my first tries, but cut the gore down so that it only reached to the arch of my foot.

I did two things wrong on this effort. First I forgot that I needed to open the back of the pants, which of course changed the size of the opening on the footies. You can see the row of pins indicating where the opening of the pants legs ends when the footies is pinned to them.

The second mistake, and not a big one, is the way I cut the gore. You can see that it is not level with the top edge of the foot. Since I have to take both the feet apart to make a smaller gore, I had planned on cutting a fresh piece so that the top edge of the gore is level with the top edge of the top of the foot. But, as I look at it I wonder if matching the edges up will create excess fabric that hangs at the back of my heels.

One thing that did come up when I was opening up the back of the legs was the length of the thigh gores. The extant example has a 30 cm, almost 12 inches, opening at the back of the pants. I didn't think about the opening when I sewed the pants, which I guess worked out since I was able to wear them without the feet, so I had to cut the seams out. To cut them out to the the 30 cm, I had to cut away part of the thigh gore.

My next pair of pants, wool ones for winter wear, I'll make sure the gores are shorter, and that I leave the seam open on the lower length of the legs. I also plan to make the strips of the fabric, that make up the legs, narrower than this pair. Instead of making them as wide as my lower thighs I will make them as wide as my upper calf, adjusting all the other pieces to make up the difference. This will create a more form fitting look on my calves which I hope will lead me to some ideas as to what the cords on the back of the calves was really used for.

Thorsberg Pants: Part 5 The Wearing

The Coronation of Nigel and Adrielle II was this weekend so I decided to wear the pants I've been working on, sans footies of course. I don't know for sure what I expected but I found the pants to be quite comfortable once I got past the seams running up the back of my legs. I was able to bend, kneel, squat, and walk without any of the binding I find in most pants, modern or otherwise. I was especially pleased with the ability to squat without a single pop of a stitch or tear of the fabric.

A change I do need to make is the number of belt loops. The original had a total of six for a slim fitting waist. For a larger waist, like mine, six as not enough. I found the back of the pants tended to slip down between the loops so that the wool belt was rubbing on my skin. As the day dragged on I noticed this slipping effect happening between all the belt loops. To correct this I will be adding more belt loops between each of the current ones. This should correct the slipping problem and prevent the belt from contacting my skin directly.

I do wonder if the footies will work with my period shoes. I find the shoes to be just a tad tight across the top of my foot. So tight in fact, that even thin modern socks are uncomfortable after a short period of time. Period socks are completely out of the question, until I learn how to make super thin yarn and nalbind a pair and even then I am not sure if they will work with the shoes. While there will not be seams along the top of the foot, there will be seams along the bottom of the foot and back of the heel. Will these interfere with the way the shoes fit and make them even tighter than normal? I guess I will find out, as soon as I get the footies made and attached to my pants.

Thorsberg Pants: Part 4

I spent several hours looking at the various patterns and photos of the extant example before I started working on the feet. Even with all that time I am still no where close to having wearable footies in my Thorsberg pants.

The original pants were made on a very slim cut where as my pants are cut to fit me while using the same shape and number of pieces as the original. My recreation allows for my large calves which makes the ankle opening 22 inches around. My ankles, where they meet my feet, are only 10 inches around. My first efforts, last night, ended up in me cutting the fabric to narrow to fit around the ankle opening of the pants.

The original pattern drawn out by Margrethe Hald: Olddanske tekstiler p 341 simply shows a fat horseshoe shape that is connected to a band and then sewn on to the pants leg. The second pattern drawn by Karl Schlabow: Textilfunde der Eisenzeit in Norddeutschland, figure 165 shows the same fat horseshoe pieces but includes a small gore that goes from the ankle, wraps under the heel, and finishes very close to centre underside of the foot itself.  Looking at the two patterns I decided I would try to fix the issue with gores at the heel.

I cut the top piece, the fat horseshoe, just long enough that it would touch the ground on either side of my foot. I cut the gore wide enough to make up for the short fall on the ankle and long enough to go from my ankle, under my foot, to attach to the toe of the top piece. I did a quick running baste just to check the fit. It is a good thing, too. While the opening matches my pants leg, the foot itself was a huge bag on my foot. If you look at the photo on the page linked above you will notice the foot does not look like a bag, so back to the drawing board.

Thorsberg Pants: Part 3

I finished the waist band finally. It took the whole evening, about 8 hours, but it is done. I noticed last night that when I am fresh my stitches are fairly even and quite neat. The more tired my eyes get my stitches begin to vary in length and distance. I know it is because I start to hurry, especially if I am working on a specific goal like finishing X piece before I go to bed.

 I said in my last post Thorsberg Pants: Part 2 that my waist band was going to be similar to the extant example. I was wrong. I cut the waistband 5 inches all the way across and sewed the edges to the edge of the pants. To get the marked difference in height from side to side I would have had to cut one side 5 inches and the other side 3 inches, or sewn the side attached to the high leg piece so that when laid flat the waistband was level all the way across on the top.

Each day I spend on these pants, or any hand sewing really, makes me even more aware of just how much time and effort the pre-industrial revolution people spent to have a single set of clothing. I am lucky that I don't have to grow the flax, sheep, or cotton; process it into thread or yarn; and weave it into cloth before cutting out the pieces of my project.

I think is I had to do all that work, I would be very stingy with my fabric and make sure I used every single piece, wasting nothing in the cutting and sewing of the parts. I suspect the way the Thorsberg pants are made is for that very reason. To use the smallest amount of fabric to the greatest effect while creating pants that are comfortable and less likely to tear out along the seams.

Thorsberg Pants: Part One

I always defaulted to the plain pants pattern, similar to the modern sweat pants style for my garb. At some point, no matter how loose I made them, the crotch would give out. This almost always happened when I was bent over trying to move something heavy or cooking at the centre fire pit while cooking lunch or dinner.

I've made a lot of pants since I joined the SCA and several of them have been Thorsberg or Thorsberesque pants for my spouse, Cennedig. He swears by them. He says they are the most comfortable pants he has ever worn in his life. He has never had a seam give out, now matter how tight they get stretched across his thighs or butt.

So, when I decided it was time for a new pair of pants I decided to give the Thorsberg a try for myself. Unlike all the other pants I have made I decided these were going to be all hand stitched. Why? Well, I'm pretty sure I am insane and like to torture myself. I decided I was going to make an entire set of garb by hand. I thought it would be a good idea to push myself a little and in the process find out how long it takes to sew clothes together without a machine.

This is the first piece I've hand sewn but it is taking the most time, and truly making me appreciate my sewing machine. My finger tips are sore and my eyes are strained after only 14 hrs spread over three days and I've only finished the main body of the pants. The legs and crotch are done but I still have to sew on the waist band, belt loops, and last of all figure out how the footies are sewn. Cennedig has also opted for the no footed style so this is a whole new kettle for me.

First, I had to decide what fabric to use. Cotton is a natural fabric that breathes well when it is hot and insulates a little when it is cool. I also had several metres of cotton plaid in my stash, which made that decision easy.

Before cutting the fabric I washed it. I do that with all natural fabrics. It was a hard learned lesson back when I first started making garb. A lovely linen tunic created for Cennedig shrank so much it was donated to a much smaller gentleman in our Canton.

Then I had to figure out the dimensions of the pattern pieces. To the left you can see my worksheet. I took the pattern as shown on the Viking Men: Clothing: Trousers page, drew out each piece and using my measurements worked out what size each piece should be. You can also see that I made many changes to the dimensions along the way.

After sewing the legs and crotch pieces together I figured out that I have to change the size of the pieces. As you can see in the second photo the back of the crotch pieces do not come up level with the tops of the leg pieces. I'm not sure if that is because I calculated incorrectly or if the types of seams I chose used more fabric than expected.

The seams I am using do not seem to be period but I thought they would give me the best chance of now blowing out a seam due to torn fabric or broken stitches. I'm not even sure what to call this seam. I stitch the two pieces of fabric together with a running stitch then fold the two pieces of fabric over so that all the raw edges are hidden. Then I run two parallel rows of running stitches along the edges. It creates a very strong seam but the extra folds of fabric may be causing some measurement troubles.

The problem of the legs not sewing on evenly may actually explain something seen in the extant example of the pants. The extant example has different sized waistbands on either side of the pants. If you look at my pants you can see that one leg extends almost 2 inches above the centre crotch piece while the other side is only 1 inch higher even though both my leg pieces were the exact same size.

It makes me wonder if the shape of the crotch pieces somehow causes the leg pieces to twist as they are being sewn. If my measurements had been correct maybe only the one side would be different, and I could correct it by having the waistbands be different sizes. For now though, I am going to cut off the excess fabric, even with the back piece, before I sew the waistband on.

One of the things about the Thorsberg pants I have made in the past is that the way the crotch pieces are mad there is a bit of what I call "saggy bottoms". I was hoping that hand sewing would somehow correct this problem. The picture to the left is proof that hand sewing does not fix that issue.

I believe the problem lies in the shape of the pieces. The back is wider than the crotch piece. The leg gussets sew to the crotch pieces and with the difference between the two crotch pieces it creates a fold on both sides.

In the past, to correct the saggy bottoms issue, I made the widest part of the back piece the same width as the other two pieces. My next pair of pants, sewed with a machine, will probably be made with all the pieces the same width. It will all depend on how comfortable the excess fabric in the back turns out to be.

Who knows maybe they had a really good reason for making them that way. And I will not really know until I wear them for a decent length of time and put them through their paces, preferably doing things as close to possible as the 100-300 A.D.