Project specs:
This outfit comprises a linen underdress, a simple linen apron dress, a tablet woven belt, and a linen shawl for headwear.
Fabrics: detailed in each individual piece as well as yardages
First event attended: St. Paddy's in July 2021
Each March, Ponte Alto hosts St. Paddy's Day Bloodbath. It's a fun little fighting event that's loosely Irish-themed. Makes a nice break from Ponte's usual amorphous Italian. In 2020 and 2021, due to COVID, those events had to be canceled. As a barony, we came to the conclusion that with the correct precautions, 2021 could instead be postponed to July that year.
For the A&S coordination for this event, I wanted to do something engaging that would get people thinking about stuff other than the usual, as well as tie A&S activities into a normally not A&S-focused event. Between some friends and I, we came up with the idea of doing a "Hiberno Vs. Norse" theme for the event. The premise is rather simple- we're a 7th-century Irish village fending off their first Viking attack. Participants will choose a side for "war points" for the day, and at the end of the day, a victor will be declared.
Part of the A&S for this event is going to be a class and 10 day-long sew-along to allow people who don't normally do Irish or Viking a way to participate, as well as being excellent sewing projects for newcomers and new garb makers. I'll be the first to admit that I don't do Viking or early period much. It has little to no draw for me, but I also try to be a "put my money where my mouth is" sort of person so here we go.
I decided to go a very general Viking route while choosing a couple of pieces (namely headwear) that would make it more focused on the British Isles and Ireland. An apron dress and underdress are fairly simple, but fairly comfortable and versatile garments, so they'll be decent additions to the wardrobe. I did find a lovely, simple outfit on Etsy that I liked the look and colors of, so I'm sticking with a lovely mint green underdress (not a period choice but pretty) and a dark blue overdress, with a loose linen headwrap.
For the underdress, I'll be using a pattern found here. I did not decide to deep dive on sources for this, because it's not my persona kit, so I'll take the 10-foot rule on this one. For this, I bought 4 yards of lightweight linen from Fabrics-store in a color called Meadow. I'm really excited about this color honestly. Minty and sage-y greens tend to be my all-time favorite colors, so getting to make a piece in one of those colors is always a good time for me. I have a yard more than I need, so I'll have to find something to use that for my regular kit.
For the apron dress, I used a pattern generator built by one of our local Laurels, Mistress Drea di'Pellegrini. I cannot recommend her website highly enough. It was one of the first resources I found when I was looking into the SCA and made the big jump into garb making it much easier for me. I elected against an apron dress that uses the large turtle brooches or beads. I was determined to keep this outfit comfortable, understated, and easy. For this piece, I bought a middle-weight dark blue linen, also from Fabrics-store, in a color called Insignia. I love the two colors together, they really make each other pop.
The underdress is fairly rectangular construction, and I used it as a starting point to get more comfortable with run and fell seams, which I plan to use on my bragas. I don't know how period or not it is for Viking, but it was a learning opportunity I wanted to take advantage of. I also use it as an opportunity to test out directly sketching out my pattern onto the fabric instead of just using cut out guide pieces (see picture below) I did each side individually for each step, then moved on to the next stage so seaming, then felling, then hemming, left to right. I think if I had planned it slightly better, I would have actually started off at where all the gores join up to get better fitting seams, but I started at the bottoms and worked up. The original drafting had really baggy sleeves and that's not my thing, so once the sleeves were constructed, I took them in to be more fitted.
The apron dress was an 11th hour attempt that got put off because mundane work travel truly screwed me over. It was completed, with the same running stitch as the underdress, but the seams were not felled. Tbh, I was luck to get it hemmed because I ran out of spoons for hemming very quickly. I did att the straps, but they're about half an inch too long to be truly well fitted. Straps were made by felling one short side and a long side of a 2" wide tube, turning it, then whipping the other short edge, before sewing onto the dress top. It's a shockingly sturdy construction, considering how utterly done with this I was by the time it happened. The neckline on this is a bit of an issue- I made the same mistake I always do and instead of making the circle smaller for seam allowance, made it bigger. Someday I will avoid this pitfall, but it is not this day.
I will admit to being lazy with the headwrap- I just bought a red linen scarf off Amazon. I looked around a few places, but I wanted to for sure stick to something 100% of natural fibers for comfort as well as period practice, but I also didn't want to fuss myself with cutting and hemming a veil on top of making an underdress and an apron dress. I also bought the belt, but from a wonderful SCA artisan and it's gorgeous. My minor foray into tablet weaving doesn't really need to be repeated at this point I don't think. To top off the look and make myself more COVID friendly, I also purchased a facemask with the badge of the Ministers of Arts and Sciences on it so people could quickly identify me.
I didn't end up wearing that facemask. It was so hot we had to stop fighting by 11 am and I was schvitzing starting at 6 am. I also am definitely convinced this will be a regular addition to my garb wardrobe. I found myself needing to adjust a lot more than I normally do with my Spanish kit. I don't think I fitted it poorly, I just think it's designed to move around more than I'm used to and I don't know how I personally feel about that. That said- it did absolutely what it needed to with heat dissipation. I drank a lot of water, but once I sweated through my base linen layer didn't feel clammy anywhere but my head. The headdress didn't ended up being wrapped like the picture above, but was actually tied to contain my hair, which was even more helpful. I still had it covering the top of my head, and it retained a substantial amount of cold water to help me stay cool enough in the heat.