Regency: Crocheted Fingerless Gloves/Mitts

 I've been meaning to sew myself some [fabric] fingerless gloves/mitts for some time now, "whenever I get a minute" - whenever THAT might be.  You know?  

I did recently find the time to make these, though: 

These are crocheted, in #10 black cotton crochet thread.  There's no thumb, just a thumb hole, mostly because I was already 100% DONE with making itty bitty tiny things with itty bitty tiny thread and an itty bitty tiny hook (size B).   I love the way they came out, though. (In case anyone wants to know, each glove took me about 2.5 hours).  

Is crochet period for the Regency?  Eh, one could make the argument.  Crochet was developed as early as 1820; the first examples we have are crocheted purses from England.  It was originally called "Shepherd's knitting" because the crochet hook was called a Shepherd's hook, and could date 5-10 years earlier in England and Ireland, but nothing 100% documentable has been found.  So it's possible.  I was going off the idea of netted purses and gloves, and the possibility that someone, somewhere, might have crocheted instead of netting.  Maybe...?  

I made them to wear with a dress I haven't made yet. Isn't that always the way?  

SCA: Return of the Cotehardie : A Dress Makeover

 I’m in love with my new 14thC bycocket, but I had nothing to wear with it to the next event. It’s been years since I busted out ye olde cotehardie - and while I am no longer young and thin, I’ve seen plenty of larger women rock a cote and look fabulous doing it, and so I shall be among them. 

So. 

I took a ride through all of my old costumes, and I found one that actually *almost* fit. Luckily, it had HUGE like 2” seam allowances from old alterations taken to make it smaller in previous years, and I was able to take almost all of it out and re-shape the dress so that it fit me again. Success!! 

The next problem was that it was pea green. It was a neat color, but totally the wrong tone for my skin - it makes me look really pink, and not in a good way. More like in a carbon monoxide poisoning way. So I overdyed it with Rit’s dark green, and voila - it came out a dark, warm, sort of hunter green: 

I order to spiff this dress up, and because the old polyester thread didn’t take the dye, I: 

• removed all the visible hand and machine stitching and replaced it with hand stitching in the correct color 
• removed the machined buttonholes and replaced them with hand stitched buttonholes 
• removed the buttons and re-sewed them with dark green thread, since for some strange reason I had  originally attached them with orange jeans thread (see pic above)
• removed the neckline binding and re-stitched it by hand, repairing a rip in the binding in the process

With the stitching and dyeing out of the way, it was time to make some new sleeves for this dress - it has half sleeves on it with long pendants, but I had no dress to wear underneath it. So I made a pair of half sleeves out of a blue cotton drapery fabric I had on hand, which I basted into the insides of the green short sleeves: 

 I also made a “medieval sports bra” sort of under-bodice thing out of the same fabric to wear underneath.  I had no modern or period contraption to make my bust look the appropriate shape and placement for this dress, and the dress itself, being unlined linen, would stretch out of shape as soon as it warmed up and not hold me correctly without supporting undergarments. So I made basically the sleeveless top half of a cotehardie out of the same fabric as the sleeves, which will support me, bring my waist in a little,  smooth out my back, and - along with the half sleeves - make it look like I’m wearing two layered dresses: 

All put together, it goes a little something like this: 

Bonus:  along with this dress and the blue bycocket I trimmed up last week, I made some new jewelry to go with it.  I had a purple and silver costume piece (plastic and pewter) which was badly tarnished and the plastic setting was chipped in a couple of places, so I took the whole thing apart and put the beads on new gold metal, and painted the plastic centerpiece setting with gold leafing paint to make it gold:  

Tada!  Now I just need somewhere to wear this.  I'm posting this in the hopes that nobody I know is reading it, because I want this to be kind of a surprise - I've been a Viking ever since I came back to the SCA in 2018, and whenever I wear this ensemble will be the first time I've worn anything but Viking since then.  I can't wait to wear my new hat and dress!  :) 

SCA: The Blue Bycocket

 So, I was at coronation yesterday, and a friend of mine busts out this huge box full of felt bycockets she’d made, and gives one to another friend who was sitting nearby.  And I said, “That’s f——-g cool! I want one!” AND Y’ALL, SHE UP AND GAVE ME A HAT.  It’s been years since I rocked The One True Century*, but I’ve always wanted a bycocket to play with - and now I had one. 

using sewing pins to mark the position of the future embroidery

It didn’t take me long to figure out how I wanted to dress it up.  It needed feathers, and I just happened to have a stash that included some teal McCaw, Blue Jay, and some lovely brown feathers that I’d picked up over the years. I bound them together with some teal ribbon and sewed the package together. 

feathers before securing them to the hat

Now for the body of the hat. It’s midnight blue, and what could be more perfect and more me than a nighttime full of stars?  I covered the crown of the hat in gold and silver embroidered stars, and teensy pearl beads: 

Next I used some of the leftover teal silk ribbon from other projects to cover the edge of the brim, and added a strip of some old blue and gold medallion jacquard trim that I had in my stash. I also found a fabulous giant button to use to set off the feather cluster. 

Tada!! A finished starry night bycocket.  I’m in love with it  and I can’t wait to get into what’s next - this hat has engendered a whole slew of new ideas as far as what to wear with it! 

* my friend JM calls it that, and I love the phrase.  Don’t get me wrong, I love my Viking and I always will, but 14thC rocks.  

SCA: A Woven Hedeby Bag

 Had enough Hedeby bags yet?  Me, either.  Here's one that's a bit different: 

This one is woven of yarn.  I saw one made of naalbinding a couple of months ago, and decided I needed one.  I do not naalbind - I've tried multiple times, but I just CANNOT get the trick of it.  It's infuriating.  

I do, however, crochet.  After looking into the various naalbinding stitches that have been identified from extant finds, I found that a herringbone/chevron crochet stitch (a modified half-double stitch) approximates the Mammen stitch from Finland fairly well - you can find more info about that stitch, and lots of other info about naalbinding here: https://www.en.neulakintaat.fi/30

Mammen stitch example pic from  https://www.en.neulakintaat.fi/30

The crochet herringbone stitch was a bit tricky to learn; I learned from watching this YouTube video.  Here's a closeup of what my herringbone stitch looks like, for comparison to the above picture of naalbinding.  It's very similar, I think enough to pass: 

crochet herringbone stitch

I made a rectangle of about 20", and folded it in half and sewed the sides closed to make a square-ish bag about 9.5-10".  (I used a single chain stitch on the inside/wrong side to sew up the sides from the inside, then turned it right-side out).

The bag was made from bright green acrylic yarn (Caron Simply Soft in "Pistachio"), because that's what I had on hand at the time I decided to try this project.  After the basic rectangle was made, I over-dyed the whole thing with a dark blue Rit dye made for synthetic materials, because the original green was a bit too loud and bright for me.  The resulting color is a darker, more muted green, and I really like it.  

I did not line the bag with fabric or anything, because the weave of the herringbone stitch was so thick and close that I didn't feel it needed a lining.  

I made the handles out of a very thin scrap oak plank.  This time, rather than a curvy Hedeby design, I used the pointy Birka handle design - because I wanted something a bit different, but also because I thought the zigzag shape of the handles would look neat with the zigzag-looking herringbone stitch.   After cutting, shaping, and sanding, I finished the handles by applying a thin dark brown Minwax stain ("Special Walnut") and a coat of Polycrylic to seal the handles.  

I am NOT happy with the handles at all.  I have so far cut out my handles with my jigsaw, but this oak plank was too thin to support the stress of being worked with such a heavy tool, so I used only hand tools - namely, an old, rusted, dull coping saw and hacksaw, neither of which did a good job.  I messed up cutting one end of one handle so badly that I had to cut the other handle to match it so the error wouldn't be quite as obvious, but this meant I didn't have room on the handles to drill holes for a carrying strap.  So we'll call this my Hedeby Clutch, LOL.  

Why a woven yarn bag?  Why not? No actual bags like this have survived; all we have are the wooden handles, and contemporary/earlier Sami bags of a similar design to guide our guesses as to what the bags  may have looked like.  They could have been fabric, yarn, leather, who knows?  This was just a fun little experiment for me.  

Mistakes in the handles aside, I like the way this project came out overall, and I'll definitely do it again.  Coronation is this weekend; now I have a new thing to show my friends when I go.  :)