Medieval hand spun and hand woven wool over dress

Awhile back I made a Medieval style dress for the historical recreation group I'm part of. It was made of my hand spun wool yarn, hand woven into fabric and sewn together into a tunic based on an extant piece from about the 1300's. I promised a couple of folks a picture if me in it, but it has been too hot in Arizona to wear it...until today. We had a cold snap last night, and an event today. I finally got to give it a go! I found it very comfortable, and quite cozy.

So for those of you who asked, here is a shot of me in the finished outfit. It is: a hand made wool over dress and linen under tunic. Hand braided belt, and a belt pouch of hand woven fabric with a bead work heraldic overlay. Shoes from http://www.garbtheworld.com/. Carved stone medallion from http://www.gemartist.com/. The only bits that aren't hand made on this ensemble are bits that you can't see...and I'm starting the research on those.

A wrap up of previous posts about this project is here: http://tangibledaydreams.blogspot.com/2011/06/historic-hand-spun-hand-woven-tunic.html

Historic hand spun, hand woven tunic based on the Bocksten Bog Man's outfit

I'm part of the Society for Creative Anachronism, a group that studies the Middle Ages and Renaissance by doing it. I displayed this costume at an event we had today. It is finally done! It has been a long time in the making.

First, I spun the yarn for the over tunic:
http://tangibledaydreams.blogspot.com/2010/12/wet-finishing-singles-hand-spun-yarn.html

I dyed the dark blue weft yarn with indigo at the Griffin Dyeworks Retreat:
http://lissamc.livejournal.com/275345.html

I wove the fabric:
http://tangibledaydreams.blogspot.com/2011/01/estrella-weaving-project-warp-is.html
http://tangibledaydreams.blogspot.com/2011/01/progress-on-warping-up-estrella-weaving.html
http://tangibledaydreams.blogspot.com/2011/01/estrella-project-actually-weaving-now.html

And fulled the fabric:
http://tangibledaydreams.blogspot.com/2011/02/fulling-and-finishing-estrella-weaving.html

I sewed the under and over tunics based on the Bocksten Bog Man tunic. (The under tunic is linen.)
 http://www.kostym.cz/Anglicky/1_Originaly/01_Goticke/I_01_31.htm
I used these directions among others for inspiration:
http://www.virtue.to/articles/tunic_worksheet.html

The trim at the neckline is a finger loop braid:
http://tangibledaydreams.blogspot.com/2011/02/tutorial-basic-finger-loop-braiding.html

And the belt is finger woven:
http://tangibledaydreams.blogspot.com/2011/06/tutorial-finger-weaving-beginners.html

It is done!! And it is surprisingly comfortable to wear. The full skirt swirls out beautifuly when I spin around. And it will be wonderfully warm when I go to outdoor winter events with the group.

This one, I'm proud of.

Link to Coppergate book, and a gratuitous picture

This blog post is mostly to jot down a link so I can find it again in the future. A friend pointed out to me that the York Archaeological Trust had some free downloads available, including "Textile Production at 16-22 Coppergate" by Penelope Walton Rogers (1997). It is a wonderful scholarly resource for Medieval textile information. You can find the link here:

http://www.yorkarchaeology.co.uk/resources/pubs_archive.htm

I bookmarked the page, and now I'm going to have to go buy a ream of paper because I want this one in tangible form, for when the download disappears again.

But just so this post isn't entirely full of text, here's a picture I took on my hike in the White Tanks this evening:



That is a barrel cactus in the foreground, a teddy bear cholla in the midground, and a saguaro in the background. Cactus are weird! Beautifully sculptural...but weird.

Still spinning for the Estrella project

I'm still spinning away for my weaving project. I did the calculations, and assuming about a 1/3 shrinkage/take-up rate, I'll need to put 11 yards of 28" wide warp on the loom to make enough wool fabric for a 1200's style over tunic. At about 12 epi, that makes 3696 yards of warp needed. I just finished up another skein of white, which brings my current total to 3453 yards. One more skein of white should do it for the warp. Then I'll start on spinning some more blue for the weft yarn.

In and among spinning, I tried one of the free projects from Beading Daily. http://www.beadingdaily.com/media/p/98161.aspx



Isn't it cute? It is a 3D cube, peyote stitched together from Delica seed beads. I put a jingle bell inside of it. The project suggests making several of these cubes, and hanging them off of a chain for a Gift Box necklace. But I think if I make some more, I'm going to do something different with them. I think I might write down the joys in my life on little slips of paper, and put the papers inside of the cubes. Then I'll display the collection of cubes in a bowl, and when I'm down I'll look at it and have a visual, tangible reminder of just how lucky I am.

Either that, or I'll make dice! I wonder what it would take to make up a full set of D&D dice out of beads...

Wet finishing singles hand spun yarn

Yesterday, I posted the above picture of a skein of yarn hung to dry with a bit of weight on it. I got another bobbin full spun up today...



...and figured I'd show you why I do the step about wetting the skein in hot water and hanging it up. I'm making single ply yarn for a historic weaving project, and single ply means the yarn is by no means balanced. Given the chance, singles fresh off the bobbin will cork screw up into little tiny twisty springs!



See that? Those skeins are wound to be the same length. But the one on the left is the fresh batch, and the one on the right was soaked down and hung to dry overnight. Makes a difference, doesn't it?

If I wanted my yarn even smoother, I'd put it on a niddy-noddy and suspend it over a pot of steaming water for half an hour. But I just want to make the yarn manageable until I get around to dyeing it, so this treatment is enough for now.

Fiber in Arizona

The Phoenix, Arizona area is a strange combination of urban and rural. I live on the west side of the valley, within walking distance of the stadium where the Super Bowl was held a few years ago. Yet, as I drive around on my daily errands I get to see what is growing in the farmers' fields that still dot the landscape. And I am fascinated by fibery things in their raw form.

For instance, the cotton crops are coming ripe and are being harvested. For a Midwest girl, cotton took a little of getting used to. (Fields are supposed to be full of corn.) Now though, I realize that the fields dusted with white fluff right before Christmas time? Not snow. Cotton. And if I keep my eyes open, after the fields are harvested I can find handfuls of it just blowing around, piled on the roadside.



And today while I was on my way to the grocery store, I passed a field full of mother and baby sheep. So cute! My sweetie was very patient with me while I pulled over to snap a picture.



Fiber on the hoof!

Back in the studio, I spent the afternoon listing the juggling balls that I made yesterday. They're up in the Etsy shop now. And then I finished spinning up skein #3 for my historical weaving project. Freshly spun singles yarn is very springy stuff! So to tame it until I can pop it in the dye pot, I soak it in hot water and hang it to dry with a little bit of weight on it.



No, hanging it on the back of the door and dripping all over the floor is not the optimal solution. But my patient sweetie was still in the shower when I was ready to hang the yarn, so this was my temporary solution. The skein is now hanging from the shower head, to drip dry with no mess.

All in all, a nice, fiber filled day!

Figuring out the distaff

Ah ha! If you load your distaff with the rovings parallel to each other, instead of winding them round and round the stick, it is much easier to spin from. I think I'm getting the hang of this. Now to comb out some more wool, so I can load it up again. But here is the first spindle's worth of yarn, ready for the next step in the process:

Tutorial: First try at wool combing

The fleece I washed the other day was dry tonight, so I started experimenting with how to process it for spinning.

The Icelandic sheep's fleece has a longer overcoat, called the tog, and shorter, finer undercoat, called the thel. I'm thinking that I want to take advantage of these two different kinds of fiber. I'd like to use the longer tog for my warp thread, and the shorter thel for the weft. But how to separate it out? Here's the experiment.

First, I pulled at the butt end of the lock, where it was cut off of the sheep. There were some very short fibers there. I pulled those out, and put them in a 'felting' pile.










Then I loaded the butt ends of the locks onto the wool combs, filling about half way up the tines.







Holding the Viking comb in one hand, I brushed the other comb sideways through the locks of wool, first away from me then (carefully!!) towards me. This opened up the locks, and transferred them onto the moving comb.



There was some short nubby wool left on the comb. I pulled that off, and put it in the felt pile. Then I switched the full comb to my left hand, and started the process over again.






After a couple of repeats, the wool looked like this. That is quite a difference from where I started!







I pulled the tips of the wool into a point, and started pulling. I'd pull my fiber out a half inch or so, then move my hand forward and grab from the main bunch again.










This had the effect of pulling out a long, continuous roving. This is ready to spin from now. The current plan is to spin this on a reproduction Medieval drop spindle, worsted style. This should give me a fine, strong warp thread.





I stopped pulling the fibers when the bunch left on the combs were only an inch or so long. I figured that would be the thel that was left there. I pulled that off the combs, and ran it through my carders









Here's the rolag off of the carders. The current plan is to spin this wool on my antique Great or Walking wheel, using the long draw. This should give me a fluffier yarn for my weft.









And that 'felting' pile? When it got big enough, I went to the bathroom sink and made a felt ball for my cats to play with. They love these!

The next step will be to spin up the couple of combs full of wool that I processed this evening, and see what the resulting yarn looks like.

Icelandic fleece and Distaff experiments

I had the day off from modeling, so I decided to start processing the Icelandic fleeces that I got in the mail this past week. (This is the start of a long term historical fiber arts experiment, due next February.) First thing I did was to take one of the fleeces into the back yard, and lay it out to see what condition it was in. To my pleasure, it already been skirted of the worst of the dung. You can see Kaylee here checking it out. She was most confused as to where the rest of the sheep had gotten to.
After checking it out, I grabbed large handfuls of fleece and shook them out. Some vegetable matter and a lot of second cuts fell out. Second cuts are small bits of fiber left from where the shearer had to make a second pass when she was giving the sheep its hair cut. My other dog, Malcolm, was happy to supervise this process. I left the bits of fleece to blow around the back yard and turn to compost, and loosely stuffed the rest into lingerie bags.


I brought the bags of fleece inside, and set them to soak for 10 minutes in my washing machine on hot, with a squirt of Dawn. Soak only--no agitation! I only wanted to remove dirt and grease, not make felt. I used the spin cycle on the machine to remove the water, took out the bags, and refilled the machine with plain hot water. The bags went back in to soak for another 10 minutes. I repeated that two more times before the water finally ran clear, and there was no residue left on the inside of the machine. Then the fleece went on a rack to dry for a couple of days.


In the mean time, I've been experimenting with the Medieval spindle that I put together last night. It is kind of wobbly, and doesn't spin for as long as my modern spindles do. I poked around the web for a bit, and found that this is the nature of the beast--because it was made to be used with a distaff. If you look here: http://www.larsdatter.com/spinning.htm you'll find loads of period illuminations of the spindle in use, and almost every one of them uses a distaff. One hand stays up near the fiber source to draft out the fibers, and the other hand usually hovers an inch or so above the spindle. I went back out into the yard and cut a stick for a makeshift distaff, and tried it out.

This actually worked pretty well. Within minutes, my hands were in the same position as the spinners in the manuscripts. I could park the stick with the fiber under my arms, or use my legs to brace it, and pull right from the source. The distaff keeps it under control (this will be great when spinning outside on a windy day!), and the fiber stays neat instead of getting wadded up in my hand. And with my right hand so near the spindle, I can flick it every 5 or so seconds and keep it moving. This gives me good control over the speed of the twist. Keeping control of the spindle will take some learning, though. I lost track of the number of times I accidentally undid the half hitch around the top of the stick and dropped the whole thing.

I'm thinking I don't have the notch in the top of the twig carved correctly, which is why the yarn is coming undone. And I'm also a little worried about the fact that this spindle whorl is made of lead. Lead poisoning is bad. To fix both of these issues, I've ordered a pewter reproduction Medieval spindle from the Woolery, here: http://www.woolery.com/ . It looks very similar to my actual artifact. We'll see how it works when it gets here.

Anyway, I found that the stick I was using for a distaff was also kind of poky, a little rough, and slightly curved in a way that made it harder to feed fiber from one side. So I hunted around for a 'real' distaff. I only found them for sale at Dragonfly Farms, and they were a little out of my price range right now. I thought for a bit...then went out to JoAnne's and bought a two piece wooden flag pole and a small step stool. My husband drilled a hole in the stool. I wound the wool roving around the top of the flag pole, and tied it down with a lucet cord I had lying around.



So far, this is working. When all three pieces are together, I have a self supporting distaff for when I'm sitting in a chair. And I can unscrew just the top half to tuck under my arm when I want to spin while walking around. I think I'm going to cut about 6 inches off the bottom pole though, as I'm feeling some arm strain reaching up so high to draft out the fibers.

I'm having great fun trying to puzzle this out. Here's to experimental archeology!

Putting old equipment back to work

I had to trim the Chinese Elm tree the other day, because branches were bending down too far over the sidewalk. I love this tree--it is very fast growing, evergreen, and I don't have to water it here in the AZ desert. I could do without the seedlings it sends out everywhere, but I can deal with that for something that actually looks like a tree.

Anyway, I was looking at the branches, and noticed how nice and straight they are. And I got to thinking about the long term historical weaving project I have planned.




So I went out with my clippers, and found a good sized stick. I whittled the bark off of all but the bottom couple of inches, tapered the top, and carved a notch about an inch below the top.

Then I pulled out a treasure from my stash. A few years ago I bought a Medieval decorated lead spindle whorl from Gaukler Medieval Wares, when they had a booth at Estrella War. The whorl was found in Suffolk. I bought it because I love holding history in my hand (and because it was only $30). Given my SCA involvement, and my love of the textile arts, it had to come home with me. At the time, I was only planning on tucking it away. But...I also love putting old fiber equipment back to work. And this whorl definitely qualifies!

I stuck it on my twig, grabbed some roving, and tried it out.



The resulting drop spindle is a little wobbly (the whorl is not well balanced), but it still spins beautifully!

Here's a closer look.

This and that

Well, I was going to be weaving on my antique rug loom to test it out over the past several weeks. But I've been up to my eyeballs in life drawing modeling! I love the paycheck, but modeling 4 or 5 days a week really takes it out of me. There has been some awesome artwork coming out of the sessions, though. I've put together a folder with a few snapshots of the student work at Flickr, here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/25078538@N03/sets/72157604578528806/ . I did have a set at Photobucket, but they kept pulling the best drawings down for terms of service violations. They do not like art nudes.

Now, the loom will be leaving my house entirely. I heard back from the Pioneer Living History Museum that is located just north of Phoenix. They're willing to take the loom and add it to their collection. I am actually really tickled about this. I love having the loom, but it really belongs in a museum helping to teach other people. My contact will be there on Thursday, and will get back to me about when I can deliver the loom. In the meanwhile, I need to carefully disassemble it. It is too big to fit through the door as is!

And in other news, I just ordered three Icelandic fleeces off of Ebay, in preparation for an arts competition entry for Estrella next February. One of the three categories for the year is 'weaving', and I'm using it as an opportunity to really push myself. I'd like to make a rectangular Viking cloak from the ground up, as authentically as I can. Hence the Icelandic fleeces. That breed of sheep is supposedly genetically almost unchanged from the sheep the Vikings brought to Iceland 1100 years ago. So, step number one will be to clean and process the fleeces for spinning. I'll be posting more about this project as I go along.

I hope the fleeces get here soon, though. The longer I have to think and plan, the bigger this project gets to be. When I first thought of it, I was going to be content to spin the yarn for the project on my modern treadle spinning wheel with the Woolee Winder. But I have a great wheel that is almost identical to a Medieval wheel. And I have an actual spindle whorl from the Middle Ages...I wonder if I could find a shaft for it and get it working again? And hey, I could dye the yarn too, instead of just using the natural color. I've got a pot of madder that has been growing out front for a couple of years. Hey, if I'm going to all this trouble, maybe I should build a warp-weighted loom, instead of using my modern dobby loom. And....


Somebody stop me before project creep takes over entirely!!