SCA: Summer Project, Part 1 (Pleated Serk)

 My big summer project (which I’m hoping will be my Kingdom A&S project) is not only begun, but partway finished: 

That needs ironing, sorry 

I’ve always wanted to try my hand at making a pleated-neckline serk, and now I have  The serk took me 11 hours almost exactly; that’s including drafting the pattern and making a couple of mock-ups to test the fit in the shoulders.  

Pretty decent side gores (outside)

The whole thing is hand sewn, using linen thread the same color as the fabric (it’s a dyed fabric, but it’s a natural linen color).  

Gathering the neckline

The only exception is in the neckline, which I gathered using mercerized cotton sewing thread, because it slides through the fabric better than the linen thread  the blue cotton thread was removed once the neckline was completed. 

Neckline binding strip at the slit

The Pskov serk, on which I based my overall design for this project, has the front made in two panels cut along the selvedge, with the selvedge edge in the center so that the neckline slit doesn’t need to be hemmed. I…forgot to cut it that way. Oops. Rather than doing a tiny rolled hem here like I usually do, I opted to finish the slit with a thin (3/8”) bias strip to protect the edges against wear and tear.  I don’t know if this is necessarily a period-accurate technique - but the neckline binding strip is made in the same way, so they knew HOW to do it at any rate. 

Inside view

You know how I feel about armpit gussets…but this one came out fairly nicely, if I do say so myself. 

So now we move on to the next phase of this 4-part project: the smokkr/apron dress that goes over this pleated serk. It’ll be simple and straightforward - for once the smokkr is not the star of the show…but we’ll get to that in another post. 

SCA: Quick and Dirty "Peplos" for Quick and Dirty Work

Now that Bjornsborg's spring event is over, there's only one more event between me and the summer lull*, and that's Steppes Warlord.  Warlord is a fun event.  It's a HOT event. It's a FAR event - up in north Texas just east of Dallas, which is about a five-hour drive for me.  It's got all the usual fun and games that events have, but for me, it's WORK.  

I'm part of a group called the Ansteorran Longship Association, which is an SCA-adjacent (not actually SCA) group that builds Viking longships for fun.  Sadly, I live about three hours away from where all the boat-building action happens, so I don't get to be near the ships very often; but I do help out with the fundraisers as much as I can. 

Enter Steppes Warlord. Every year at Warlord, the ALA hosts a breakfast fundraiser where we make omelets by the hundreds on Saturday and Sunday at the event, and the proceeds go to - quite literally - keeping the boats (and the ALA) afloat.  It's four hours at a time for two mornings in a row, of extremely fast-paced kitchen work.  It's grueling, exhausting, and SO MUCH FUN.  I'm not a huge cook on my own, but I love working in a busy kitchen - usually prepping stuff in the back out of sight to help keep the front line going smoothly, which is what I do at Warlord.  I come out of it greasy, messy, covered with eggs, and thoroughly exhausted. 

Thankfully, Warlord has showers.  

The only problem is that working at the Longship breakfast is seriously dirty, sweaty, and hot.  I don't want to wear my regular garb to cook in, it just gets ruined; and more often than not sleeves and jewelry and things like that just get in the way.  It's also not safe - nobody wants your tortoise brooch falling into their omelet, right? Ew. 

So. Cleaning out my garb closet a couple of months ago I found one of those cotton tapestries that are so ubiquitous at renaissance festivals and which we all had at least 3 of back in our early 20s for some reason.  I decided that would be the perfect thing to make a simple peplos out of that I can cook in - it's tough cotton fabric with a busy pattern that will hide stains, it has no sleeves or jewelry to get in the way, and I can just wear it to the shower and back after the breakfast is over.  

I basically just folded it in half lengthwise, folded over the top, and stitched it together along the open side and at the shoulders.  In a "real" peplos the shoulders would be held together with brooches or fibulae; I sewed the shoulders closed instead so that I don't have to rely on jewelry alone just to keep this thing on while I'm running around cooking.  I can wear brooches or fibulae over the sewn parts and it'll look fine, so I'm pretty pleased with it.  

In fact, I liked the way this came out so much that I made a second one out of a blue sheet that someone gave me as part of a huge bag of sheeting and other fabrics that they were de-stashing recently.  

Tada!  Casual, easy garb for working in.  And it'll make a good shower dress for BAM and Gulf Wars, too.  

SCA: Side Quest: New Casual Tunic Dress

Sometimes you want to dress down a bit, you know?  Work days at camp, slow afternoons before court, and days when I just don’t feel like wearing 90lb of jewelry. I didn’t have anything like that. 

So I made this quick little tunic dress: 

It’s linen, and hand sewn with cotton sewing thread. The color might be a bit bright for historical accuracy, but I love it. It took me about a week to make this, working 2-4 hours per day. 

The sleeves are extra long so that they’ll bunch up on my forearms, like this cute little bronze figurine: 

The darker blue binding on the neckline and sleeves is made from linen scraps from another project. I was going to add some tablet weaving to just the front slit, but I didn’t have anything already made that I liked for this, and I don’t feel like weaving à tiny piece just for this. 

And with that out of the way, I’m moving on to my next BIG project for Kingdom A&S in September.  I have six months to make three pieces and weaving all the things. 

I’ll be doing more little side quests in between working on it, though. I still haven’t figured out what to do about embellishing thst wool hood, so that’s one. I also have a tablet weaving project I want to work on in my spare time, too. More soon! 

SCA: Small Stuff To Do

 I'm going to be starting on my Kingdom A&S project at the end of March, but in the meantime I'm working on a few small things:  

1.  A New Skjoldehamn Hood

These things have become like the Hedeby bag for me -  I love making them, and now I have three of them.  I threw this one together at Bjornsborg's spring event last weekend. It's cut from the last scraps from Ivar's coat which I made a few months ago.  I sat at the event and sewed it by hand from start to finish, and now it just needs embellishment - I'm not sure whether to do tablet weaving or some sort of decorative stich (I hate the "blanket stitch" that the original extant hood has on it and I refuse to do that because ew, LOL).  So here it is right now, finished but undecorated: 

2.  New key hanger strap

I used to wear my Viking key on a tablet woven cord that I made aeons ago, but I had put it onto a linen tool strap for my Kostrup dress display at Bjornsborg.  In the meantime, I wove a new "cord" for it - it's a tablet woven band of only 4 cards, two borders and a central V.  It's very thin, but it's stronger than a linen strap for sure.  So I put the key on the new one just the other day: 

3. A New Tunic Dress/Gown

I typically only wear a serk (underdress) and smokkr (apron dress) as the base of my Norse kit, but there's a third layer that goes between the two: a tunic dress or gown, same shape and design as the serk but usually in a heavier fabric which can be worn with or without the apron dress.  Since I don't always want to wear the apron dress and brooches, I decided I needed a new tunic dress to wear by itself for "casual days" at events.  It can be worn over a serk, and dressed up with a woven belt, necklaces, and a brooch at the front neckline.  Simple, attractive, and accurate (except for the material choice, since this one is linen instead of wool).  

The pic here is of a similar tunic dress I made long ago and re-dyed last year; the new one will be light blue with a darker blue band on the neckline and sleeve cuffs: 

4. New Winingas Ties

I really, really like the look of a long tie/band wrapped around the bottom of Norse pants on a guy.  Since I dress as a guy periodically, I wanted to adopt that look, and so I'm weaving some looooong (120") ties to wrap around my legs, either over just my pants, or on top of my winingas.  I'm not sure about the colors, but I think it'll go well with my blue and red-trimmed Norse tunic and gray pants.  I'm also not sure when I'll ever finish these - I'm only halfway through the first one and I started it like three weeks ago.  I just haven't had a lot of time to weave lately.  

5. Got Wood? 

I also have two woodworking projects going on right now:  the first is an upright loom that my teacher Haraldr is guiding me on.  It's kind of like the Oseberg loom, but a little later-period in style and look, but it'll function the same way.  I'm working on chiseling out the mortises for the cross beam right now. 

I also want to build myself a very simple T-shaped garment stand that I can use to display shorter things on a table top, like tunics, jackets, hoods, etc.  For an event next year I'm going to be displaying both a complete female outfit on my dress dummy, as well as a male tunic/jacket that I'll need to put on a table, so I'll need a stand.  

This is a terrible drawing, but you get the idea

So that's what's going on right now.  More pics as I finish stuff; and of course I'll start boring you with all the hairy details of  my KAS project as soon as I get it started.  

SCA: As You Wish - Bjornsbog's Spring Event 2026

As per usual, Bjornsborg threw a really fantastic event this weekend.  The theme was The Princess Bride - that's right, the movie!  Not period, but who cares: it was fun, and it was really well done.  There were themed activities and foods, fencing, fighting - maybe not the torture and murder, but there might have been true love, and probably a little bit of  piracy (just a little bit).  

And there was also an Inconcievable! Arts & Sciences Championship, which I’m proud and honored to be able to say that I won. Yay! I entered my Kostrup dress, which I've been blogging about for the past several weeks (here, here, and here).  

I totally forgot to take pictures of my setup. I also forgot to pack my dressmakers dummy, so I had to display the dress flat on the table, and I was SO mad at myself.  (It was kind of a crazy weekend, my house’s plumbing exploded the morning I left town for the event, and then my car broke down on the way there so I spent half the event managing repairs and getting rides back and forth from the site to the mechanic’s shop!) But here’s a pic of my practice run that I did last week: 

I really love putting together displays like this, and I’m pleased to say I got a lot of compliments on it. My documentation is there, as well as some tablet weaving materials and a sample of the same band I wove for the dress, as well as an extra set of beads and some beads still on the mandrels. There’s a linen fabric “booklet” of all the stitches I used in the project, and a yellow linen pleating example that people could pick up and examine closely. And finally à page of photos from the project, some of which were in the documentation and some were not. 

And here’s a pic of me actually IN the dress for once: 

Plumbing and car trouble aside, the parts of the event thst I did get to enjoy were super fun, and I’m SO excited to have won the A&S competition. 

Saturday afternoon after I got my car back from the shop, I sat under the pavilion and sewed a hood out of the last of the scraps from Ivar’s coat. I finished right as court started; and I had fun talking to all the folks who stopped by to see wha I was doing. 

Now it just needs embellishment of some kind - fancy edge stitching, or tablet woven trim? Haven’t decided yet. 

Anyway, today I’m unpacking and washing garb, and resting. More soon! 

SCA: Side Quest: A New Hedeby Bag

This one’s just for fun, as I needed something to do over the weekend and had some fabric scraps lying around. 

The herringbone wool outer fabric was leftover from a larger project (Ivar’s klappenrock).  It’s a trapezoidal shape because I just wanted to try it out; it’s got a box bottom and sides; and it’s got a herringbone stitch over the seams in cotton weaving thread (same stitch pattern as you see on the “Leens Hat”).  

The lining is pale green linen from stash. The whole bag is hand sewn. My friend Waylan made the handles on his CNC router, and I finished and stained them. I love the handles - I’ve had them laser-cut before and I didn’t like the scorching thst happens on the edges. The CNC router leaves a nice clean-cut edge that just needs a little bit of sanding. 

The strap is tablet woven, an Oseberg-inspired design in black/brown/green (cotton thread). 

I really like how this one turned out. I wish it opened more at the top; but it’s a great size and will definitely hold all my stuff.  

I think I’m going to use the rest of that klappenrock fabric for a small hood. Back soon! 

SCA: The Køstrup Dress (Part III, Glass Beads)

This is the third post in a three-part series about creating the outfit from Grave ACQ in Kostrup, Denmark.  Part one, about the tablet weaving, can be found here; part two about sewing the dress, was posted here.  

The body in grave ACQ was found with 8 beads: 2 rock crystal (quartz), and 6 glass.  I wanted to make an exact copy of the beads in the find for my outfit, and I had most of the glass already in my possession (although I did have to go buy a couple of new rods for a couple of the beads).  

 

 

photo by Matthew Delveaux

This photo, from Matthew Delveaux's blog Text and Trowel, shows the ACQ beads as found:  (clockwise from left) a dark purple bead that looks almost black, a red round bead, an orange round bead, a small white bead with red figures on it, a round rock crystal bead, a square  green bead, another rock crystal bead, and a white barrel-shaped bead in the center.  

I already had some of the beads I needed in my stash:  I had two deep purple beads (the very first beads I ever made!), and the red round beads.  I also had a quantity of clear quartz beads that I had purchased from the craft store many years ago.

The other beads I had to make specifically for this project: the green square, the orange round, and the two white beads.  My local glass store had the colors I needed; they'd just moved to a new location and their lampworking stuff wasn't even unpacked yet, but the store manager very kindly offered to go dig out what I needed since it was only a few pieces.  

 

 

 

Here are the 6 beads I made, together with the quartz beads.  It took me very little time to make these – I think I average about 5-8 minutes per bead for the plain round ones. The white one with the red streaks took me a little longer, since I’m honestly not all that great at laying glass on top of glass and it took me several attempts.

I already had two purple beads, two red, and two quartz; so I decided to make two of everything else so that I’d have a set of beads to put on my dress, and a second set to place on my display table for people to inspect more closely.   

 

ATTACHING THEM TO THE DRESS

The beads found in grave ACQ were loose, for the most part: there was a wool thread in some of them, but it wasn't attached to the dress, and there was a linen thread in some of them which also wasn’t attached to the dress.  So we're not sure exactly (a) how the beads were attached to the outfit, or (b) in what order the beads were strung on the thread.  So I just did what felt right to me. 

Hilde Thunem puts her string of glass beads at the top of the brooches on this dress so that the string of beads doesn't cover the band of tablet weaving, the same way as Charlotte Rimstad showed in her illustration.  I thought that was a pretty good interpretation of how these beads might've been used, so I attempted to do the same thing: 

 

The problem is, I couldn’t figure out how to get the beads to stay up there.  If I put the strings on the brooch pins, they would slide down and cover up the tablet weaving I worked so hard on.  To get them to stay I had to wrap the strings around and underneath the brooches, but I don’t know if the strings will stay in place when actually wearing the outfit. I may have to resort to pinning the string in place under the brooches.  

So, with that, my linen Kostrup dress interpretation is all finished! I'm super happy with the way it came out, especially the tablet weaving, which was a LOT of work.  I think the dress took me about 14 hours to complete and assemble; the table weaving took me about 7 hours, and the beads about 2 hours (it only takes maybe 5-7 minutes per bead, but I’m out of practice and I had to make several of each kind to get it right).

Thankfully, I got this thing done on time.  I had the worst procrastination issues with this outfit, which I usually work very hard to avoid.  I've done the "sewing in the car on the way to the event" thing to get projects finished, and it's not fun, so I usually plan way ahead and try to get A&S projects done at least two weeks before the event so that I have time to polish my documentation and put finishing touches on my table displays.  This time, I misjudged the time I had left to work very badly and almost didn't make it - the event is in like a week and a half! Whew.  

*

So what's next?  REST.  I have two big projects planned for this summer, and a few small "side quest" things in between...but for now, I'm going to go to Bjornsborg next weekend and have FUN, and then I'm going to come home and NOT work on anything for a couple of weeks!  

SCA: Plans Of Many Things

 I’ve spent the last couple of months weaving my ass off for a tablet weaving display at LPT…and it turns out I’m not going. I’m severely disappointed, but something has come up which will keep me from going this weekend, and it can’t be helped. Oh, well - Life Happens, right? 

Meanwhile, I’ve finished the sewing on my Kostrup dress (see previous post), and I’m going to be working on the glass beads for it next. 

I also just ordered fabric for my next big A&S project, which is a secret for now. :) 

Bjornsborg’s spring event is in two weeks, and I wouldn’t miss that one for the world. I can’t wait! 

At the moment I have “nothing” to do (except those beads, which will have to happen over the weekend when I have time), and so I’m going to start working on some little stuff around the sewing room - organizing the books, putting some decorative stitching into a hood I made last year, maybe making some new Hedeby bags, that kind of thing. 

I did just finish weaving a bunch of Stars of Merit. The Star of Merit is Ansteorra’s grant-level service award.

More soon!