Medieval Costume

Since I've been blogging about period costume, I thought my readers might be interested in my newest project. The Historical Novel Society is having their annual conference in Chicago in June, and if you historical writers aren't already signed up, you really should be. They have a fantastic array of agents and editors who are especially interested in historical novels. That said, my blog focus today is on the Period Costume Pageant for Saturday evening at the conference. I decided my "persona" would be a 12th century scribe, and after reading directions on SCA websites promising that you needed no pattern for a tunic, I still wasn't convinced, being a lifelong sewer who never set scissors to fabric without a pattern. I found a site, after much looking around, which carries period patterns. (You may know that Simplicity, McCall's and the others do have what they call "medieval" patterns but the seams and construction are not authentic.) Medievalists made use of every inch of fabric, so their patterns were much more rectangular than out garments today.
I bought No. 16 medieval from Patterns of Time, and was dismayed to find about 6 sizes on one sheet of tissue, making it difficult to locate the line for my size. To make things worse, I cut a muslin pattern first, which was too large, and had to go back twice and scotch tape the pattern and recut. This took two evenings and a lot of unprintable words, but I finally got what I wanted.
Next, I decided on material, and that's a whole new blog……..'Til next time, do go to the HNS website and look around at the conference info. It's all at http://www.historicalnovelsociety.org/.