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1642 women's clothes
As some of you may know, I've gotten involved in English Civil War Re-enactment. It's an interesting period, and social history is interesting in almost any era.
At the moment, I'm making myself a proper costume. Hand-sewing it all - which is an interesting experience in its own right - and using authentic materials as far as possible. ie. Wool linen, period fastenings, etc.
I'm currently having fun with coifs. Coifs are what women wore on their heads in this era. Part practicality - kept all the wood smoke out of your hair, and added a bit of warmth in the little ice age. Part fashion, and, possibly, part modesty. (there's a biblical thing about women keeping their hair covered in church and Bible reading was getting quite wide-spread at this time)
I've got patterns from several sources, and my friend Pat let me take some photos from one of her books, and there some good stuff on the Marquis of Winchester's site (they’re a regiment of the English Civil War Sociey - http://www.marquisofwinchesters.co.uk/living-history-guide-coifs-and-hair/, and Pat's blog https://costumehistorian.blogspot.com/search/label/coifs
I decided to start with some scrap fabric to see which style of coif I liked - gradually altering the fabric, gathering it in different places, etc.
I learnt a surprising amount from the things I did with bits of old sheet!
Quite revealing. I now know why some of the patterns have curvy edges round the face.
I thought originally the curvy edge was just to look pretty, but if you cut the edge straight, you lose quite a bit of sideways vision. The curve solves that, dipping back close to the eyes.
The coif was often worn with a forehead cloth - rather like a very broad Alice band that covers the bottom of the hairline.
At first I though they were an extreme form of modesty, but having played aound making and wearing a couple, another reason jumps out at me - the coif stays on much better if you have a forehead cloth. (even without pins, it makes a big difference, the pins make it even more secure). Who knows, maybe women only wore forehead cloths if it was windy? (lots of art shows women with just the coif).
And the pointy coif?
It's the easiest one to sew. That alone might count for it being popular
The garment round my shoulders is a 'kerchief'. It's surprisingly practical. I've taken to wearing it around the house on cold days. It's just a square of linen (made from an old tablecloth bought on ebay) folded into a triangle. It's fastened with a single pin.
I was sure the pin would fall out, but in fact, it stays comfortably in place all day. The garment adds warmth around the next and shoulders and never gets in the way. I used to wear shawls a lot, but this is far more practical and also easier to wash!
I'm constructing a web site for the Regiment I belong to - the Norfolke Trayned Bandes - the Trained Bands usually fought in their local area, as they were notoriously reluctant (for obvious reasons) to go and fight in, say, Scotland. They were basically a form of militia.
Feedback on the website, always appreciated.
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I recall one thing I'd read- an experiment had been set up with volunteers to live in a Medieval recreated village for a year. Among other things, they were provided with chickens of the breed that would have existed back then. The volunteers were a bit disappointed to discover that the 'heritage' chickens only laid eggs once a year.
The scientists were all excited when they came to examine the site and found the same mysterious circular depressions in the ground that they'd seen at so many archeological sites. What is that! So excited.
The volunteers said ... that's where the chickens do their dust baths. :^)
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I guess chickens all like a nice dry patch of soil. Just inside the door, maybe?
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I like to imagine the look on the scientist's face when the volunteer tells them the *secret*. :^)
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For example:
We have many skilled people who can provide support on more specific aspects of the hobby, such as making authentic clothing.
Authentic techniques for making period costumes and props are a specialty of our group. Members happily share them with anyone interested.
Your discoveries with the cowl and shawl are really interesting.
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Thanks for checking :)
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(I'm not seeing any pictures in this blogpost either :-( )
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What are you viewing the Norfolk's web site on? There should be a visible menu on the top page, but clearly it either doesn't like your device or your browser...
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I eventually managed to get into the site by disabling everything and forcing the browser to use the screen-reader mode, which indicates that the coding does at least degrade gracefully to plain text :-)
Some quick proofreading:
On the 'Roles' page - "Drums were used historically to relay instructions on the battlefield, and you’ll be taught any necessarily patterns"
On the "About us" page - "This helps to create a strong community atmosphere" (the word
atmosphereis being displayed within monospaced <code> tags)On the "Members page" - "if you’ve decided that you would like to join, just contact Francis"
On the "Jargon" page - "She was duely awarded the title Queen of the Ring"
On the "Resources" page, you've written "I’ve got a ten year old who was a bit bored at the start", which is not an error as such but will rapidly cease to be accurate ;-)
It might be more future-proof to write something along the lines of "I knew a ten-year-old who was a bit bored at the start...."
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I'm not sure how to improve the top page (I'm a novice at Wordpress)
Clearly, if you can't access it easily, then others may be not able to either...
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The most obvious 'solution' would be to have a clickable link to a separate menu *page* rather than a pop-up (?) menu, but since I couldn't work out from the HTML why it wasn't visible in the first place I couldn't see how it was intended to be implemented.
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I like my browser windows to default to portrait format rather than landscape (I'm used to reading documents).
The site code assumes that everyone is using a single 'tabbed' window that occupies the entire width of the screen, and if the window width is less than what it deems to be desktop size then it attempts to serve up a version of the page tailored for mobile phones instead of the one with the strip of links across the top of the page.
If I resize the browser window to the maximum possible horizontal width and reload then the site serves up the links....
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I used to do Roman re-eneactment as a legionary (I was the legion's vexillarius) but there aren't any groups down here so I sold everything but my sword.
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Roman sounds like fun!
I can see why you kept the sword. THere's something about swords...
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It is surprisingly satisfying.
I've just been trying spinning with a drop spindle. I thought I'd get bored very quickly, but it's surprisingly relaxing. In spite of me being a crap spinner!
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Used to do a little mathematics-based workshop for kids, and new costumers, to explain why folks old enough to toddle used to spin as they went, and why spinning was one of the few skills that offered medieval women a shot at upward mobility.
The number of yards of yarn or thread required to make a yard of even a crude fabric is stunning. And the rate of escalation as thread counts rise is a real eye-opener.
So, no, that peasant persona would not be clad in 1,000 thread per inch luxury fabrics. No, nay, never. And even royalty would use and reuse every scrap until it perished.
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I belong to Little Woodham - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Woodham
They recreate life in the 17th century.
Looking at the warp (never mind the weft) on the loom, and looking at how much one spinner could spin in one day, gave me that same revelation.
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