Hi,
I've been looking at the available drawings of 10th/11th century/early 12th
century clothing in England--many of them done in the Byzantine art style Gale
Owen-Crocker calls "fussy" in _Dress in Anglo-Saxon England_, which makes it
hard to know what to take literally. But as a weaver I've always been skeptical
of the idea that those cloaks that are longer and fuller in back than in front
were made from a rectangle or oval with an off-center slit. It's an era when
fulling and waulking were not sufficient to felt up a woollen enough to avoid
having to finish cut edges; everyday clothing styles avoid horizontal seams
because they introduced structural weakness, the weight of the garment pulling
the weave apart at the seam. According to _Medieval Clothing Reconstructed_,
even as late as the 14th century, raw edges on woollens were finished
meticulously in a three-step process, possibly a belt-and-suspenders approach
to preventing raveling even on relatively un-stressed edges. So!
I just can't see cutting a slit with the grain of the fabric right where the
whole weight of the garment is going to be pulling on the cut.
So I've been messing around with a coarse handwoven woollen from Fabric Mart
after machine washing and drying it to full/felt a bit, and have come up with
something that gives me the look of those cloaks. (I'm thinking like Emma of
Normandy, but they are all over the available images except I can't find them
this morning! Oh, here's one:
http://www.uvm.edu/~hag/rhuddlan/images/970-aethelwold.html and here:
http://www.uvm.edu/~hag/rhuddlan/images/97x-robert.html and here
http://www.uvm.edu/~hag/rhuddlan/images/97x-boethius.html
http://www.uvm.edu/~hag/rhuddlan/images/1000-asti-cotcleof11.html) If you
assume that the loom-width was around 20" to 22", this can be done with only
two, relatively short, raw edges to finish; and selvage for both neckline and
hem. 2.5 yards gives me a calf-length back and wrist-length front. When it's
sewn rather than safety-pinned I'll see if I can get a photo to post, along
with a diagram. The main thing is to fold the piece so it's now 1.25 yard!
s x the 22" loom width. Sew one selvage to itself from the cut edge to within
about 10" of the fold. The seam is the center back, the unsewn part is the
neck-hole, and you end up with a cone- shaped garment that drapes very much
like the drawings. If you want to make a curve in the back hem, you're now
cutting mostly edges that are already cut, so this design detail doesn't add
significantly to the work involved. Since the necklines are almost always
concealed by drapery or women's veils, it's hard to know whether they bothered
to shape the shoulders or neckline any further than this, but they wouldn't
have needed to. Now the neckline stress is on a selvage and is pulling mostly
on the bias over the shoulders, rather than with the grain, so the weave is
less likely to separate. It stays in place, and the wrist-length front means
you can continue to do work with your hands quite easily. (I've been wearing it
around this morning since our heat is out.) If you turn it around, !
you can pull it over your head for a kind of hood. And there's!
at least one picture where a woman has thrown the long fronts of her cloak
over her shoulders.
So, I imagine I'm not the first to think of this -- has this construction been
tried and/or rejected by others?
I have some ideas about the vexing thigh-bands, too, but I haven't done the
doll-size experiments yet. AND I'm working on the soft triple pleats that recur
on a lot of veils, but I haven't quite got them yet. But I do think I'm close
on the poncho-cloak and would love to hear from others about it.
Leofwyn Weaver, and/or
Lauren M. Walker
lauren.wal...@comcast.net
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