SCA: 2026 Summer Project Complete!

 At last, my project is complete!  

This is my impression/adaptation of the outfit from the woman in grave G12 at Bryndum, Denmark.  The grave was discovered in 2016, and the first article on the find was published in the Archeological Textile Review journal in December of 2025 (link).  

The outfit had several components: 

1. a"duvet" which covered the body
2. a short, striped wool jacket lined with linen
3. an unlined wool apron dress with tablet woven straps
4. a pleated linen serk worn under the apron dress

For my project, I'm not concerned with the duvet.  My project was comprised of: 

1. the jacket,  linen lined with a lighter weight linen 
2. the apron dress (not blogged)
3. the tablet woven straps 
4. the pleated linen serk 
5. the wooden stand used to display the jacket 

I started this project in late March.  I originally used wool fabric for the jacket, but the wool I purchased turned out to be too thick and stiff for the project and would have looked awful, and because purchasing new wool fabric was far, far out of my budget, I decided to switch to using all linen instead, making this  an adaptation of the outfit, instead attempting of a copy of it.  (A complete copy would not have been possible anyway, given the lack of detailed information in the original ATR paper).  The finished look approximates the original outfit, and the fabric choice will also help with climate issues (105º today in Ansteorra, anyone?) and it'll be machine-washable, which is a plus.  

A note about the apron dress:  I don't have a separate blog entry about that because I didn't feel it was necessary.  The focus of this project is the three unique components of the outfit: the tablet woven straps, the jacket, and the serk.  The apron dress...is just a normal apron dress, which you've seen me make a hundred times before.  It's made of the same blue heavy linen as the jacket, is unlined, and is undecorated except for the woven straps.  I suspect I'll get questions about why there's no decoration on it, so I made it clear as day in my documentation that there was none on the original dress.  

My plan is to display the serk and apron dress on my dress dummy, and the jacket on the wooden stand on the table.  I need to build out the rest of the table display - props, paperwork, photos, all that.  

Overall I'm super happy with the way this project came out. I fretted over the fabric substitution a LOT, but in the end I'm satisfied with my choice.  KAS is the second week of September, so I'm done a bit early, thankfully.  I have plenty of time to get my display together and fine-tune my documentation, and, most importantly, REST before I start the next thing.  

I also put together a set of beads for the Bryndum outfit. The find contained turquoise-colored glass beads and some amber beads, as well as a carved amber ring that was likely used as a pendant.  I don't have a carved amber ring, but I had some turquoise-colored glass beads in my stash, and some faux amber beads as well, so I strung some of those up on a thread which I can loop around the neck of my dress dummy for KAS, just for a little something extra.  

*

It interests me, the way other kingdoms do A&S.  I've heard that in the East, at their version of Kingdom A&S, you actually get to sit at your table and speak to your judges about your entry.  Wouldn't that be nice!  We have a more "drop your stuff and run away to hide until it's over" kind of approach, and the Peer Fear is LARGE at this event.  I wish it wasn't like that. I liked hiding a few years ago when I was new at this, but now I would LOVE an opportunity to talk about my projects with my judges - answer questions, clear things up that might be a little muddy in my documentation, that kind of thing.  That's one of the reasons I love Laurel's Prize (January) so much - it's a whole day of sitting with your work and geeking out about it with visitors who're interested in your and your stuff.  It's exhausting, at the end of the day, but it's SO much fun.  

Anyway, onwards to the next project!  It never stops...but I think I'll take a break for a couple of weeks before I jump into the next thing.  It'll give me time to work on some little background side projects that I haven't touched for a few months.  Bye for now! 

SCA: 2026 Summer Project, Phase IV (Tablet Weaving)

The fourth component in my summer project is the tablet weaving.  At Bryndum in grave G12, a wool apron dress was discovered which had straps and loops made of tablet woven bands - the first time tablet weaving has ever been discovered to have been used in this way.  That BLEW MY MIND and I've been super excited about this project just because of that ever since I read the original ATR article in December.  

The thing is, the tablet-woven straps from G12 were so mineralized and degraded that no chemical analysis could be done on them.  Which means that while we know a lot about how the straps were woven - number of threads, number of threads per card, direction of the cards turning - we don't know what colors were used, and we can't tell what the pattern was because the colors aren't there. 

Here's what we do know: 

• There were at least 13 cards:  10 central pattern cards, and 3 border cards (2 on one side and 1 on the other, and there may have been a 4th border card which has disintegrated but there's no way of knowing) 
• The 10 pattern cards moved both forwards and backwards; the  border cards only moved forwards
• The border cards were threaded with 4 threads each; the central pattern cards only 2 threads each - it's a skip-hole pattern!  

Here's something else I know:  I've only tried a skip-hole pattern once before and it went so miserably that I basically rage-quit and threw the whole thing in the trash.  

The problem with skip-hole patterns is the balance of the warp threads.  On a card threaded with 4 threads, one in each hole, the warp tension holds the card sort of upright and square, and it stays where you put it.  On a card threaded with 2 threads, one in every other hole, the tension wants to hold the card on the diagonal between the two threads, meaning the 2-hole cards skew out of place and won't stay square with the 4-card threads.  This means you basically have to have your hands on the cards at all times to keep them aligned.  The first time I tried this I found it to be impossible to wrangle. 

This time is going better, however, and I have to thank L. Elewys von Finchingfield of An Tir for that - her video weaving tutorials are solid gold and I love watching them.  More specifically, however, the pattern that I'm using for my project is one that she designed, and her video on it solved my problem with turning the cards - she uses a pencil or skewer stuck through the holes in the cards to keep them aligned so she can let go of them when she needs to, which is genius and works unbelievably well.   I've also found that I can use the pencil to turn the forwards-moving cards with one hand while holding the backwards-moving cards with my other hand, so that things don't get all fouled up.  Aha!  

The pattern I'm using for this project is Lady Elewys' design, called "Mammen Mia", which is based on motifs from one of the tablet woven bands found at Mammen, Denmark, from the 10th century.  I used this design because, since we don't know what pattern was used at Bryndum, it was important to me to use something from the region that someone from Bryndum might have actually seen or used.  Mammen is close by, and its designs are beautiful, so I chose this one. 

This pattern contains more threads than the original - 12 pattern cards and 4 borders - but since I'm using #10 cotton weaving thread, which is only 8/4 and far lighter weight than wool threads/yarn, the band is coming out very narrow. The original band is 1.4cm (about half an inch); my band is about .6cm - much smaller.  But, because of the way these straps are constructed, I think they should be plenty strong enough.  

You see, the original straps are not just lengths of tablet weaving sewn onto the dress.  Each strap is made of TWO lengths of tablet weaving, sewn together on the vertical to create a sort of thin tube, and then that tube is sewn to the dress to be used as a strap.  The ATR paper didn't specify exactly how the bands were sewn together or how they were pinned by the bronze brooches found in the grave; I opted to fold a single long band in half and sew it along the long sides, leaving a bit of unsewn loop at one end through which to pass the needle of a brooch.  The smaller front loops are made the same way. 

Binding off the cut end of a tablet woven band can be tricky.  Sewing through a band is not always easy to do securely, and folding the end of a band in order to conceal the cut ends creates a very bulky rolled end.  To avoid this, I  wrapped each cut end in a little square of fabric and sewed it to the strap, and then sewed THAT to the dress, rather than trying to sew the band itself to the fabric, leaving the cut end raw or folded and bulky.  Is it period? Who the heck knows.  I like the solution and plan to use it again in the future.   

And with that, this project is finally finished!  I'm so excited to be DONE with this thing and see it all put together.  I'll show you the whole thing in my next post.  

SCA: 2026 Summer Project, Phase III (Jacket)

The third component of my summer project is the short jacket.  The thing is, the authors of the 2025 paper on the Bryndum grave G12 didn't actually specify exactly what type of garment it is or how it was constructed.  They say that it's a "short jacket" reaching to about the hip, and they say that it appears to have been tailored to the body based on the way some of the pattern pieces and seams are oriented - it's not just a straight rectangular cut.  But aside from that, details are scant. So, just like with the pleated serk, there's a lot of filling in the blanks based on what I know of other, similar garments (in my head I'm thinking of this as "substituting with frog DNA" like in Jurassic Park, lol).  

So, there are two types of outerwear jacket/coat known from 9th-century Norse graves: the klappenrock, which is a rectangular-cut short (hip or thigh length) jacket that has a cross-over wrap front which is secured by a belt.  This garment has only been found in a couple of graves, and all of men.  The other type is the caftan we know from Inga Hagg's analysis of the Birka graves, which she documented as having belonged to female graves, and which is a longer, open-fronted garment secured with a brooch or pin in the center front, very similar to the buttoned caftans we see in Slavic and Russian settings from the same time period. 

My adaptation is modeled after Hagg's "caftan" garment.  It's cut with curved armpit/sleeve seams instead of the square armpit gusset you see in rectangular construction, and with sides and back fitted to the body and then tapered outwards to form the "skirt" of the jacket that fits over the hips.  We have no guidance from the ATR article on how this jacket was constructed other than the note that it was likely tailored to the body, so I've done the best I can in fitting the pattern a bit more exactly than you get with rectangular construction.  

Where the Bryndum jacket is made of wool lined with linen, I've made my adaptation out of a heavy (9oz) linen with a lighter weight (5oz) lining.  (I started with a "medium" (9oz) weight wool fabric, but it was WAY too heavy for this application and it would have looked just awful, so I decided to start over with linen fabric instead, which just happens to be much better suited to the hot Ansteorran summers and to machine-washing anyway. After all, I DO actually want to be able to wear - and wash -  this outfit!)  

I have absolutely no idea how the Norse would have accomplished lining their wool garments;  I chose to flat-line my jacket, by first basting the lining pieces to the jacket pieces and then sewing the combined pieces together.  Why? Mostly because I just like the way the felled seams look on a flat-lined garment; we do have examples of this type of lining in newer garments from the 14th and 15th centuries, so at least it's "SCA period" if not specifically known from Norse finds. Because I was going to be removing the basting stitches as I went along, I used a cotton sewing thread to baste the lining/outer pieces together; the actual sewing is done with linen thread which just *almost* matches the blue fabric (it was as close as I could find). 

Stitches used are pretty basic:  running stitch (seams), back stitch (seam reinforcement every few inches), and whip stitch (to fell the seam allowances open). There's also a staggered running stitch which the ATR article discusses as relates to hemming the top of the apron dress, which I used to hem the edges and the sleeve cuffs of the jacket.  

So. That's my Bryndum jacket for the time being.  I'm keeping my ear to the ground on this one - I can't wait to read more papers on the find, and I hope there'll be much more detailed analysis on the whole outfit in the future.  

Oh, and yes, this is what the wooden display stand that I built in May was for.  I plan to display the serk and apron dress on my dress dummy, and this jacket on the wooden stand.  I'm going to need to get a wagon to cart all this stuff around!  

Next stop: the apron dress...

SCA: 2026 Summer Project, Progress Report

Things on my big summer project are proceeding apace.  In April I posted about a pleated serk I made; in May I built a wooden display stand for part of the project.  

This whole thing is about the woman's outfit found in grave G12 at Bryndum in Denmark in 2016 (which I posted about in December).   I'm...not "recreating" the outfit, but I'm adapting a version suited for rough SCA use - linen instead of wool, cotton weaving thread instead of wool and flax - all to make this thing able to stand up to harsh use and machine washing.  

Yes, I started out the project in wool, but the fabric I bought was too heavy, so I ordered some new linen fabric and started over a few weeks ago, and altered the direction my documentation was going to reflect the changes.  I'm MUCH happier with the way it's going now, and I think it's going to look fantastic when it's all done. 

At the moment I'm working on the "jacket" for the outfit, and when I'm not sewing, I'm weaving the bands which will become the straps for the apron dress (see the December blog post for details).  

Here's a pile of pattern pieces all basted together with the lining pieces, ready to be sewn together.  I'm sewing with waxed linen thread, although I did the basting with regular cotton machine thread since I was going to pull it out anyway and discard it as I sewed the seams.  

And here's a bit of the tablet weaving I'm working on for the straps. The pattern is "Mammen Mia" by L. Elewys von Finchingfield, who adapted the pattern off one of the motifs from a woven band found at Mammen from the 9-10th century.  Since I'm working in 8/4 cotton thread instead of thicker wool threads, the bands are a bit narrower than the extant examples, but since they'll be doubled and sewn together, they should be plenty strong (I'll get into that a bit more later when I do a post on just the tablet weaving).  I will say, though, that this is my first pattern with only two threads per card instead of four, and it is kicking my BUTT.  It's so slooowwww and tedious.  I'm really not enjoying it, LOL.  

Busy busy!  I should finish the jacket by the end of this week, and then I'll have pictures of the whole thing for you. After that I have to finish the weaving, and then sew a matching apron dress to complete the set.  

KAS is in two months, so I've got plenty of time to finish this outfit (and my documentation) - I'm looking forward to being so I can take a break, although I've already got the next three projects planned out and one started, hehe.  SO much to do, always!  

Where’s Hrefna?

Oops, sorry, everyone, it’s been a minute since I posted. Life got weird for a while there. 

I bought a new car and it’s been a nonstop barrage of small problems since day one. Everything is all fixed now, though, so it should be smooth sailing, er, driving, from here on out. 

I’ve had some medical issues, too - my asthma, which was almost gone, reared its ugly head again so we’re dealing with that. Had some skin cancer removed. Found out I have some other medical issues I didn’t know about, which I won’t bore you with here. 

It’s been a lot. 

However, I’m still working solidly on my big project. I don’t have any pics for you just yet, but I will in about a week if things continue to go well. 

I decided that the fabric I was working with, a medium-weight felted wool, was just too thick for what I was doing, so I scrapped the whole project and started over with some nice middle weight linen, which is a huge change and required some substantial rewriting of my documentation. The serk I made in April is great, but I’ve redone the smok and am working on a third piece right now. 

I’m also tablet weaving pretty much all my free time that I’m not sewing, although it’s going v e r y  s l o w l y. It’s a skip-hole weave, which I’ve never done before, and between fiddling with the cards to try to keep them aligned, and the fact that my left shoulder is hurting every time I start weaving, I’m only managing to do about 6-8” in a 45-minute session. Yeesh. It’s coming along, though. 

Anyway, I’m still here, still making stuff. I’ll have some progress pics for you here in the next week or so. 

SCA: Blue Velveteen Florentine Bodice

 I’m stopped on my A&S project for the time being until I can purchase some new fabric for part of it - which I would be doing today but for some unforseen automotive repairs that cropped up. Soon, though. 

Meanwhile, work proceeds apace on the 1520s aqua velveteen Florentine gown: 

I’ve got the bodice almost done now, and it fits, yay! I had to alter an old pattern to make this and I was not at all sure about the resizing I was doing, but apparently I did it correctly.  

The side back openings are safety pinned together for the time being so I can put it on without the lacings for fitting purposes; the next step is to trim up the bottom to the right length and then close it up. 

I laid the gold and teal trim over the bodice today for the first time to see how they look together - I think this is going to be beautiful! I have some gold lacing rings coming to me via SCA Express (a friend is bringing me some from her stash), and then I’ll be able to finish this thing and get started on the skirts and sleeves. 

Woohoo! 

SCA: 2026 Summer Project, Part II - Display Stand

Part of my next big A&S project is going to be displayed on my dressmakers dummy, but part of it needs its own stand. I thought briefly about purchasing a second dummy, or a mannequin torso or something, but then I realized that I had an 8’ long 2x4 in the garage that I could use to build a stand for free. 

Tada! Okay, so it’s very basic and it’s not going to win any beauty pageants.  But it’ll do what I need it to do.  

The stand is 20” wide at the shoulders - my shoulder measurement - and 25” tall, which is a little shorter than my waist-to-hip measurement. It should fit a jacket or shirt or something just fine. 

Here it is with the hood on it that I’ve been playing with since February: 

I’ve now finished the pleated serk (which I posted about here) and this stand - that’s two pieces of a five-piece project. I’m halfway through the third part of the project but it’s not going well - I’m considering scrapping the whole thing and starting over with different fabric, to be honest. 

More on that soon, I hope. 

SCA: Stuff and Things

I'm hard at work on my Kingdom A&S project, but it's going r e a l l y  s l o w l y so I don't have much to show for myself on part 2 just yet.  The wool material that I bought for it turned out to be much thicker than I was expecting, which is making sewing it much more difficult and lots slower than usual. I wish I had a lighter weight fabric, but it's paid for, so I'm pushing forward with what I've got.  Slowly. 

 

Meanwhile, I took a break to go to Queen's Champion this past weekend to help my friend Cris in the kitchen (he was in charge of doing the luncheon for the event).  I was craving an SCA event to go to, so I threw on my new blue tunic dress and hopped in the car to go help.  It was a lot of hard work, but it was fun, and the food was awesome. 

That’s me in the front/right slicing bread (photo by Mistress Osanna van der Linden)

Because I'm somehow not busy enough with my current A&S project, and because I'm a crazy person, I went ahead and started something new just for fun;  a new 1520s Florentine gown to wear to the next Italian shindig that happens.  I had a huge box of aqua-blue cotton velveteen Ikea curtains in my closet, and I decided to use it for this project - all I would need is a couple of yards of contrast fabric for some parts, and a selection of laces and trims and stuff that I could get for cheap from Etsy.  So far I've got a mock-up made and a new pattern drafted  to my satisfaction, but I haven't started the actual dress yet.  More on that soon…

I did already make the jewelry for it, because I was excited about the project and couldn't wait.  I do this a lot with jewelry - usually because while I'm waiting for costume parts to come in the mail, I just happen to already have the jewelry supplies on hand.  This time I made some new mother-of-pearl earrings, and a pearl chain necklace with freshwater pearls and a blue stone (I think it's just dyed calcite) in the center pendant:  

Hopefully I'll have more about that Italian gown and my A&S project for you in the next couple of weeks.  Ta!