Cap of St. Birgitta

As I said in my previous post, last month I took a Pennsic University class on how to make a St. Birgitta's cap. Lady Sarai Tindall taught the class. I don't think she has a website of her own, but the method she taught was very similar to the one in this tutorial. The main difference was that Lady Sarai had us leave the ends unconnected to each other, so that we could tie them in a knot or bow. Also, we didn't do the optional embroidery between the two halves of the cap, and we had to "finger-press" the linen seams instead of ironing them (fortunately, in hot and humid weather, that isn't difficult to do).

You can go to the tutorial if you want step-by-step instructions. I would just like to post photos depicting some of the stages of my work.

First, here's how my cap looked toward the end of the two-hour Pennsic class:

I had hand-stitched the two halves of the cap together and finished the gathers at the back of the head, but that's about it. (Granted, a good part of the class was an introductory talk followed by distribution of materials, etc.)

The next time I bothered to take a photo of my work, I had pretty much finished sewing the ties to the front edge of the cap, down to the gathers. The ties came in three separate pieces, including a bit of extra handkerchief linen I had to buy after the class.

I finished the last little bit of stitching only after I got home from Pennsic. Here are a couple of photos of the finished cap on my head (pardon the mundane clothing on the rest of me):

I'm not sure about that bow. Maybe I should redo the strap/tie as a long closed loop that could be wrapped around my head. Hey, I should experiment with this -- what a concept!

I think I have enough of the handkerchief linen to make at least one more of these caps.I might try the same thing, or I might experiment with doing the embroidery down the middle seam, or other embellishments such as contrasting thread for the hand stitching. We shall see.

In the meantime, I'll leave you with a few other links related to the St. Birgitta's cap.

http://www.pinterest.com/miriampike/accessories-cap-of-st-birgitta/
http://m-silkwork.blogspot.com/2008/11/womens-caps.html
http://katafalk.wordpress.com/2014/04/21/embroidered-st-birgittas-cap/
http://katafalk.wordpress.com/2014/01/16/st-birgittas-cap/
http://m-silkwork.blogspot.com/2008/08/cap-of-st-birgitta-reconstructions.html
http://larsdatter.com/birgitta-caps.htm

Garb Thoughts for a Midsummer Day

(Author's note: I started writing this on Sunday, June 24, but didn't get around to finishing it. With the big storm and power outages that canceled the June 30 SCA event in my barony, things got kind of crazy. So here is the article as I started to write it ... if that makes any sense.)

As I noted three years ago, today is Lithuania's Midsummer Day, also called Rasos, Kupolės or Joninės. The weather has been heating up around here, but I spent most of today indoors at an Italian Renaissance gown workshop hosted by Mistress Jeanmaire du Doremy. She is a Laurel primarily for late-period clothing, and by "late period," I mean the 16th century.

A couple of blog posts ago, I mentioned that I'm not all that great at making garb. Seriously, the clothing I've made since joining the SCA in 2004 amounts to a couple of chemises, a T-tunic dress, a shorter tunic for wearing over a skirt or pants, a woolen half-circle cloak, a liripipe hood (which I keep misplacing), a couple of veils, and a whole bunch of "bog dresses" or simple cotton chitons. This simple stuff is great for Pennsic. I'm not sorry I made any of it. But if I want to make some authentically Lithuanian (or Polish-Lithuanian) garb, I have two routes: the early-period stuff, with precious little pictorial evidence, or the late-period stuff, where there are at least a few paintings, such as Lucas Cranach the Younger's depiction of the Jagiellon family.

Mistress Jeanmaire's class focused on a particular dress worn in a 16th-century portrait, a print of which hangs on her wall at home. She has already made a gown for herself based on this portrait, and she wore it at the most recent Kingdom Twelfth Night. She explained in detail how to make the four layers: chemise (you must have a chemise specific to this dress), corset, underskirt, and the gown itself. We took each other's measurements and traced out customized corset patterns (after trying on the existing corset). At the end of the afternoon, we agreed to have another meeting in late September, well after Pennsic, when we can show off what we've done so far and continue working on our outfits.

Update on July 6: Since the class, I've dug out my copy of Tarp Rytu Ir Vakaru and looked at the illustrations other than the Cranach portraits. The book has one or two other late-period depiction of women wearing dresses that seem to be more like "Italian Renn" fashions than Saxon gowns. I really ought to bring this book, and the little other evidence I have, to the next gathering with Mistress Jeanmaire and ask her about this. If it turns out that Italy was as much of an influence on Lithuanian fashion in the 1500s and 1600s as the "German" regions (because of Bona Sforza and other "intermarriages" among noble families), that will make my "what to wear" conundrum much easier to resolve.

Back from Pennsic

Greetings to all!

On Sunday the 15th I traveled home from a very enjoyable Pennsic War XXXIX, where I taught two sessions of my Battle of Grunwald class and one session of "Survey of Modern Lithuania," which was essentially the same class as this.

Right now I'm just posting a short note to remind my students -- especially my students in the Grunwald class, who got just a one-page handout due to my pressing personal issues prior to Pennsic -- that I haven't forgotten about you and I'll try to get this information up as quickly as possible.

In the meantime, blogger Cathy Raymond ("Loose Threads") has posted a review of the first chapter of Medieval Clothing and Textiles 6, edited by Robin Netherton and Gale R. Owen-Crocker (not "Owen-Crocke" as the cover says!). That first chapter presents a survey of Latvian clothing and textiles from the seventh to the 13th centuries, all based on archaeological findings. Granted, the essay is about Latvia and not Lithuania, but there is some overlap. In particular, I did not realize from other sources that the soil gets slightly different as you move south through the Baltic region, so that scraps of fabric are found in Latvian digs but not in Lithuanian sites. I don't know exactly what creates the change in soil composition, but it does seem to have an effect.

Hmm. Maybe the class I would really like to teach in the future, "Lithuanian Women Through the Ages," will have to become "Lithuanian and Latvian Women Through the Ages." But that is an issue for another day.