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: Some New Additions to the Iron Age Peplos Outfit

Some updates to the new peplos outfit: 

• I overdyed the brown peplos to darken the color. It’s subtle, but I like it a lot better 
• I created some new jewelry to wear with it 
• I wove a new belt 

The jewelry is two parts: an amber and carnelian necklace I made from stash parts and a broken amber necklace; and 

A string of bronze colored chains to suspend between the shoulder brooches. They’re the wrong kind of chain, but it’s a good place to start! 

I finished the belt this morning, and I’m in love with it. It’s 8/2 cotton in blue, gold, and navy, with wrapped and braided ends. 

It also just happens to be in my household colors, which I didn’t realize until I was nearly done. Happy accident! :) 

SCA: An Iron Age Peplos Outfit (First Draft)

Here's something new for me: I made an Iron Age Peplos outfit for myself.  I really loved wearing my Roman at Warlord - it was so cool and breezy and comfortable - and I wanted something that would feel similar but still be somewhat adjacent to the styles I normally wear (similar/adjacent cultures, earlier time period).  

the Huldremose peplos

This style was fairly long-lived, and widespread throughout England and northern Europe.  It's known from several Anglo-Saxon burials, and just a TON of early Medieval artwork in which the peplos is depicted often worn over a long-sleeved under dress and under a large wrapped cloak. There's a remarkably complete wool peplos from Huldremose in Denmark (Huldremose II, not related to the "Huldremose Woman"); you also see the style in later Finnish costume from the 11th century (the "Eura dress" outfit).

My peplos is made from linen, because (a) I wanted it to be lightweight and good for hot late-summer weather, and (b) linen was what I had.  In fact, someone recently gave me a piece of linen that she didn't need for anything recently, and that's what I used.  

It started out as a light lavender color, but I dyed it to WHAT COLOR you see in the pic at the top. I actually tried to dye it with black first, hoping it would come out sort of a charcoal color - but I had forgotten that Rit's black dye is actually a deep purple, and so it came out...purple.  

Oops. It turned out it was pretty easy to fix - I treated it with Rit Color Remover, which worked remarkably well  it actually removed the “black” dye as well as most of the original lavender color, and I ended up with a sort of pale band-aid pinky peach color. The stuff smells just AWFUL, though. Anyway, I dyed the fabric again with brown and charcoal gray, and ended up with the sort of chocolate-ice-cream brown color in the first pic up top. 

Anyway, in the picture above my peplos is shown over a light blue linen “Eura” style underdress, which I made many years ago and never get to wear.. A peplos is normally folded from the side across the body and left open on the other side; because of the size and shape of my fabric piece, I had to split it into a front and a back, so it's open on both sides.  There was no sewing involved aside from hemming the edges, which I did by hand. 

It's pinned at the shoulders with a pair of round bronze brooches that I've had for years. They were my first Viking brooches, although I don't know anything about the style - I was told they were "early Viking" but I don't know anything more than that about them, or even if that's true.  But they work here for the look.  

I've seen many reenactors string beads between these brooches like you see in later Viking clothing, and sometimes people wear a long unadorned chain between them as well.  I didn't have any chain on hand that didn't look super shiny and modern, and I didn't have enough beads to make a swag for  my brooches, so for the time being I'm using a few of my leftover homemade beads on a plain cord as a necklace instead. 

The belt is the same tablet-woven one I wear with my viking dresses (not a period design, but that's an issue for another post - and seeing this outfit out together I think I’m going to make a new belt just for this outfit anyway); from it hangs an apron which is a darker blue linen remnant left over from another project. I think the blue color is too strong for the other pieces; I may replace it with a gray one or something else, I’m not sure yet. 

All in all, I'm pleased with the way this came out - it’s a pretty good “first draft.”  It needs work, but it was fun to put together and I’m looking forward to making it better.