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          2.2.1 Cut off another piece of your string to use
          2.2.2 Make the loop

 How to make the loop:



          2.2.3 Slip your loop over the top of the tassle, then pull to tighten down. The loose threads become a part of the tassle.





Tada ~

The second garment we learned to make in class is the Viking Apron dress. Actually, it's called a hangerock. An apron might go over the outside of this outer garment. Your Viking dress would go on over an undertunic, as did just about anything worn in the middle ages. Here is the recap of what Marsali taught, in my words!

She mentioned that the "right" colors for this, by the way, would be off white, white (it could have been bleached), a golden color, or blue (dyed with woad) because that's the colors linen would have come in, and it wouldn't hold dye in other colors. Of course wool could be dyed in other colors but linen was most common.

Measurement:
1) Measure yourself, all the way around, at your widest part. Add 3 inches to that (that's your seam allowance). This is the size of your starting piece of fabric. Cut that.
2) Now, to determine the size of the front panel part, ladies come up from your chest area just a bit and then make it wide enough to cover modestly, and that's the front width. Measure how wide that is and add 1 inch (which gives you seam allowance, a half inch, on each side). Cut that.
3) The remainder of the fabric you'll cut exactly in half, vertically. One of those panels is the back.
4) The other panel you'll cut into diagonals and use as the gores.


Sew one gore to the left, and one to the right, of your front panel. If using linen sides don't matter.


Now repeat for the back.

Now sew those together. When you're sewing one of the gores in, stop when you have a half inch of the top of the fabric left. That's the seam allowance when you go up the other side.
Add a thin strap over each shoulder.

Bling it and done! Not all Vikings would have worn all the bling, but hey, in the SCA we can all be a Princess, right? "Assumed minor nobility!"

This is a sub-post with Marsali showing us a little bonus - how to make a keyhole neck interfacing for your tunics, in my words as captured from class:

Make your facing as such:

Cut out a rectangular-ish piece of fabric.

Use the neckhole template you  made in the last post, and cut out a second piece of fabric like this. This can be some pretty/decorative fabric if you want it to go on the outside later.

Now lay them them together, with the right sides together, and pin.

Then sew! Make sure you sew really close together down this part, in two lines.

Cut out the neck hole. Also cut the slit down between the two lines you made, very carefully.


Now you need to cut the ease around the middle ring so that when you turn this inside out, it will lay smooth and pretty.


Now flip the top piece out, like this.


You can do one of two things, here. Put some decorative trim over the raw edge of your facing and sew it down.  Or turn it under and sew it down.


Alternately this can be the inside/backside of the facing. Whatever you prefer.

Every time I take a class, I pick up something new, even if I've learned the same topic in the past. This month's A&S class night at the barony was no different. I have learned how to sew a tunic before, and even a Viking "apron" dress, but I learned a lot more this time!

I learn and remember best by trying to save my notes as if to teach someone else so as I typically do, I am regurgitating what I learned here, both for myself, and for you. ;)

1) First, Mistress Marsali taught us how to make a Norse Sark. Basically this means a shirt.

Everything here was done in rectangular form, so you start with a big rectangle of fabric. The width is as follows: measure widest part of your body, divide by half, and add 4 inches. (This allows 3 inches of room, plus a one-half inch seam allowance on both sides.)

(The sad sketch below is supposed to be a rectangle of fabric, folded over in half. The neck hole would go at the top.)

The length is one long rectangle, like I mentioned. You make it as long as you want it to be. You'll want to fold this nice, long rectangle in half and mark the shoulder and the neck hole. -- We'll get to that neck hole shaping later.


Now you'll cut out the sleeves. For the length of the sleeves, measure from the "arm's eye" to your wrist, and add 2 inches. The arm's eye is the biggest part around your armpit to your shoulder, basically. The biggest part. (This makes sense if you look at where sleeves are inset in other (even mundane) garments you own...)

The width of this sleeve is the widest part of your hand (with your hand extended) (because you'll want to be able to get your shirt over your hands!) plus 1 inch for seam allowance.

Gussets go into the armpits. Marsali had a much more elegant method for installing gussets than what I have done in the past. You -gasp- plan for them, and insert them as your're sewing, not rip open the armpit of an existing shirt and add it after the fact! :)



Gores go into the sides. Make sure these go from the waist, to the end hem. When you sew in the gore, leave a 1/2 inch seam allowance at the top end, for when you sew down the other side. This is what makes it lay down nicely without puckering!


On the neck, you don't need facing in shirts. Tunics however were typically faced. But see the next post for facing if you want that neat keyhole look. This can be more comfortable for some.

For the neck hole. Take a tape measure and measure around the wearer's neck. Now draw out an oval on a piece of scrap fabric, as wide across as their neck was around, to make a neck template. Mark the shoulders, and the middle at the top/bottom. Notice how the neckhole is offset just a bit down past the center mark, and is not perfectly centered on the shoulders. That's because the neck hole on a garment comes down lower on shirts in the front than it does in the back and this is how you shape that.


Now you can put your neck template on the fabric where you marked the shoulders, and cut out the neck hole.
Sew up the garment pieces.
You can see here how first she attached the sleeves to the rectangle (this is when the gussets go in).

Next the sleeves would get stitched together.

Sew in the gores while stitching the body together.

Cut out the neck hole. Finish off the neck. (If you want to put facing in this garment to finish off the neck, I'll show you how she did that in the next post.)

Hem up all the raw edges.

So, you are thinking about entering an A&S competition.
Great! Where do you start? Well, that's a great question.

The goal of an A&S competition is not to compete against others, but yourself, in a manner. A faire gives you the opportunity to document your work and get feedback from judges. Your judge list will be comprised of Laurels and OVO members, and sometimes also "Shadow" judges who are watching and learning the process but not giving feedback.

First of all, it's all about the research and documentation. While you can enter an Open without documentation, it is a MUST for a Regional faire. So, if you want to make a project you can document, it's wise to do a little research FIRST. It's never fun to get started only to realize after the fact that maybe that's not something they did within our time period. If it's after 1601, it's too late. If you can find it documented within period, great! It is also helpful to do this research before making your project because you may discover techniques or materials you weren't aware of.

Sources. You need to use good sources. Primary sources are great! What's that mean? Books that were actually written in-period. This is not to say that modern books written about medieval topics are off the table. But the author needs to have credible sources, references, and information. If you find that the author has no sources, well... their material just might be questionable, so you'd better research it deeper before using it as truth. Sources like Wikipedia are not academic resources, and any University will tell you the same. (I'm not going to tell you that I've never gotten a general idea from it though, then gone and found actual, reliable sources to back up that idea and use it as a launch point. :) (NEVER source Wikipedia! It's a fallible source of information which is often lacking sources, and can be edited by anyone.) If you find a secondary source, that means it's a non-period source referencing a period source. That's also fine! Sometimes you can't get that primary source.

Documenting.  How do you reference all those great sources in your paper?  Pick a style and go with it.  Just be consistent. Footnotes, MLA, APA, whatever you want.
Try these: http://www.citationmachine.net to generate citations you can add to you paper.
And the Purdue Owl https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/

Obtaining sources to use for reference. You don't have to go out and spend a lot of money to get a reference library for your project. A lot of people in the field may have resources or have suggestions to point you at, so do not be afraid to ask. You can also get some really surprising, hard to find materials through inter-library loan, so check into that if you have access to a University library.  You also don't want to go out and purchase a whole bunch of books that you later discover really aren't so great after all.  Search and ask around within SCA communities for what's hot and what's not!

Making your project. If in period they did it a certain way, this is the way you want to do it for your project.  (If the herbal recipe says they bruised the leaf in the mortar with a pestle, don't chop it up on your cutting board.)  This isn't to say that you need to cook in a copper cauldron like they might have, for a cooking project, for example. That's not very economical and you may not even have some of the same implementations in other cases. Though you should observe material specifics.  If they used a certain metal, that's what you want to use, or a reasonable substitute.  Ask a mentor before substituting because they can tell you if maybe the real deal isn't as hard to obtain as you thought. Or maybe it is and there's a common substitute. Maybe there's another name for something you just didn't know. Maybe somebody in the know about your project's area, like a Laurel, has done this before and knows where to get it cheap.  You never know!  It's always great to ask around first. Sometimes it's worth it to spend what it costs to do the project right. You're only going to be doing it once. Buy those fish air bladders and make that fish glue yourself (unless maybe you know someone who happens to have them lying around, haha.  SCA'ers just might.....!).

In cooking especially, you should always look up terms to be sure they mean what you think they mean.  You may find that what we use for a measurement now is totally different from what they did back then!  They may say to use good water. What's that mean? Check it out before you start. By the way, the Oxford English dictionary is a wonderful resource for looking up the origins of words to see what they mean.  http://www.oed.com/

Writing down your steps. Describe what you did.  Don't write it like a recipe, telling people instructions.  (First you add a cup of this, and then a spoon of that.)  Instead, tell what *YOU* did to re-create this project.  (First I folded the paper in half, and then I tore it.)

Read the documentation forms first and get a feel for what they're going to be grading you on.
Don't be afraid of your score! Don't think of a 10/20 as a bad score, by any means! It's not the same as a 50/100 on a mundane test. There are 5 categories which you'll see when you review the form. There are 5 possible points in each category. If you make a simple project (example, a tart, or a plain herbal oil) you know you're not going to score high on complexity. And that's ok! You know what you're entering, and what to anticipate on things like this, if you study up a little before you enter. You can always build later, like a comparison project on tarts from different times or places... or the way different spices used affected the outcome of the flavor... or something like that.

Remember that A&S is a building process!  You want to get some good constructive info to help guide you towards making it better and better.  The Faire circuit ENDS with Kingdom A&S.  You can enter your project many times before you get there, having taking all the advice and worked to improve your project to make it more period and learned a lot along the way, and by then it will show. Kingdom A&S is the final destination, so you can't enter the same project again once it's been there. Start elsewhere and work your way there.  Maybe you would start in Menier or Iris Faire, move on to Magna Faire, then Gulf Wars, before landing at KAS just for an example.

We are all here to learn and grow and share, so the feedback you get is not a harsh score to cut you down with a red pen like your college professor.  Nay, I say - the Laurels are here to teach and guide you, and tell you things you can do to keep getting better and better!  Please don't think of it as criticism. Your judges also love to talk about the topics that interest them, just as the topics interest you, obviously, since you made a project about it!  So seek them out and ask questions. Get clarification if you're not sure.  They should leave their contact info or names on that form and that's for a reason, so you can get additional guidance. Education and recreation is what it's all about, after all.
And if someone does grade you in a manner that you feel is harsh or unjust or flat out mean, please talk to someone else about it! It shouldn't ever be like that, so don't be afraid of this being what the scoring process is all about.  IT REALLY ISN'T.  :)  The goal is supposed to be to help you learn.

Find a mentor, and enter the Stella Nova!  This faire is designed for the novice!  You can find out more at the Kingdom A&S Website at: http://www.artsandsciences.meridies.org/

Yours in Service,
THLady Aranwen of Willow Ford
Apprentice to Mistress Alianore la Cuisinare

So, you'd like to add a spiffy neckline to your tunic without using bias tape.  OK, Let's Go!

First you need to cut out a piece of fabric larger than the size of the neck hole opening in the tunic.

It can help to put some pins down to hold the neck hole open.

You can use dressmaker's chalk to help you mark the opening, then cut a few extra inches beyond that.
***See bottom for my alternate paper method.

Now all you need to do is flip that insert into the tunic, and you're done! You can stitch the insert down on the outside if you'd like.




***If you don't have any chalk, you can try the paper method. Lay down the neck opening over a piece of paper, and trace the circle.  Cut out the circle.