I had been accumulating information on Viking clothing over the last six months or so and I spent Saturday morning sorting through this to choose my design and pattern. Thankfully, I found perfect fabrics in the stash which saved me a trip out to Spotlight. I spent the afternoon mocking up the apron dress.
On Sunday I finished my cousin’s shirt – because I hadn’t actually finished everything, but I knew I was going to, and that’s the important thing.
On Monday and Tuesday I cut my fabric and did all the machine sewing. I did some of the hand-hemming after work on Wednesday and Thursday. Friday was dedicated to packing. We left on Saturday and during the evenings of the next week (while we were travelling and staying with family) I finished the hemming, attached the straps and did the row of decorative embroidery.
On the first day of the festival, I wore my Venetian gown again. From one of the stalls I bought the beads and mjolnir which I attached to my apron dress in the evening. It was finished and ready to wear on Sunday.
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| Eagles make an excellent accessory for any outfit. |
The Details
My underdress, or kyrtill, is made using this design (on the 1st page). The fabric I used is some sort of gabardine and was lovely to work with. The resulting dress is very comfortable.
My apron dress is made from some blue I-don’t-know-if-it’s-linen-but-it-looks-like-it fabric. And going by the Viking population at Abbey, dark blue is the colour for apron dresses. Of the many apron dress patterns floating around the internet I chose this one for two reasons: I could figure out how it worked (but not how to explain it, so you’re on your own), and it didn’t waste any fabric – which is an important feature of a lot of early garment construction. The shape of the pattern essentially comes from four rectangles and draping.
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| Apron dress or hangerock. |
I decorated the hem with double herringbone stitch (or possibly a novice’s re-interpretation of herringbone stitch – I’d never done it before and it didn’t turn out quite the way I expected). I was going to look at getting or doing some tablet weaving for the top edge, but now that the outfit is done I think I prefer it as it is.
Both these dresses are put on over my head without any closures. This outfit is actually not too different from what I wear everyday so it seems a bit weird to have it categorised as a costume.
For my brooches I used two medallions that started life as serviette holders from the Vasa museum in Sweden. The medallion design is probably 16th century; a bit too late for Vikings, but they come from the right part of the world. I plan to replace them at some point, or at least not leave them on the dress, because I like to wear one as a pendant.
I also plan to redo the bead strings. I was able to talk to one of the early-Scandinavia re-enactors at the festival and she said that the beads should be more random as items would only be bought (or found) one at a time and would often have personal significance. At the moment my bead strings have a lot of repeat beads which would be unusual. While this was necessary to get the outfit ready in time to wear on the Sunday, I now plan to collect bits and pieces so I can redo it for the next wearing.
I did my hair in this style, as found on the Elling woman bog body.
