- How to make a medieval gown. Step one, buy a book about
garments from 500 years ago. Step one and a half, I guess, realize that it has only half
the information you need, so, go and buy second book. Step two, make a video about
scaling up the pattern, another video about making a mock-up, and a third video about just
the cord, for good measure. Step three, sew about 95% of the dress, and then shove it to
the back of your closet because you are intimidated
by the last step. Step four, reluctantly dig
it back out of the closet about a year or so later,
take a deep breath, (sighs) and go ahead and tackle that woven hem. And then step five, prance
around in the forest in your new medieval gown! Okay, I guess you
probably want me to cover that whole sewing a bit back there. All alright. Btdubs, there will likely
be a "Sponsorship Morgan" lurking about somewhere
later in this video, so keep an eye on that one, she's shifty. Alright, to the sewing. Actually a very quick summary
of the project so far, there's a cool Norse settlement called Herjolfsnes in Greenland around the 11th to 15th century, and a bunch of their clothes were found which is fantastic for
our modern understanding of medieval clothing construction... And I'm gonna recreate this one. The mockup that I made fit fairly well around the bust and shoulders, but there were a few small
changes that I wanted to make: the sleeves were just a
smidge shorter than I liked, so I added an inch of
length to the sleeve pattern by splitting it just below elbow, and adding an inch of paper between, and then smoothing out the rough edges. The hem was also an inch
higher than I liked, don't mind all that is really uneven, I'll get it trimmed in the end, so I added an inch to the
bottom of all of skirt pieces. No need to add it to the
middle like the sleeves, just tacking it onto the bottom is fine. Then set out my pattern pieces
on the wool twill fabric, and I tried to lay everything
out in an economical fashion, so I wasted as little fabric as possible. Make sure to check if your pattern has seam allowance included
or not, mine does not, so I left an inch between each piece, and then added a scant half
inch around every outline for seam allowance. A clear ruler is so handy for adding seam allowance like this. A little trick for
keeping the straight grain on each pattern piece lined-up correctly with the fabric underneath, is to line up one end of
your ruler with the selvedge, note the distance to
the straight grain line. And then travel the
ruler down the selvedge, checking that the straight grain marks is at that same measurement. I admit, I usually just eyeball it, but checking can be handy sometimes too. To mark the top of the center front split, I made a small hole, and marked the fabric through the paper with my chalk. And then I used a straight
edge to connect this mark with the center front bottom edge. Once I was satisfied that I had
marked out all of my pieces, I cut everything out with
a rotary wheel, yeah, maybe not exactly the most
medieval tool out there, but dang if it isn't precise and fast. As I finished up cutting
all my pieces out, I had a moment of curiosity, and wondered how closely
my fabric matched up to the original. So I took a small bit of
the spare fabric left over, and I cut out a wee little one centimeters by one centimeters square,
as precisely as I could. From there, I tried to count
how many threads there were in each direction, for
both the weft and the warp. I counted twice, just to be extra sure, and ended up with a thread
count of around 13 on the weft and 11 on the warp. If I compare to the original, there's this handy chart in "Medieval Garments Reconstructed", and I'm making the second one down. You can see that the original
fabric was two-toned grey, with dark on the warp
and light on the weft. I went with a single natural
sheep's wool color white, mostly because it's the
closest fabric I could find at the time and white/white twill was also documentable, as you can see in the
child's garment below. Back to the thread count, looks like the original had about 10/14-16
threads per centimeters, and while my 11/13 isn't exactly the same, I'm gonna go ahead and call
it pretty darn close enough. The 2/2 twill fabric was
from Tudor Tailor by the way, I'll make sure to add a link to their shop down below in the description. I laid out all my finished pieces, so I could make sure nothing was missing, and I could get them
arranged in the right order, and then pinned together. The extant gown had a really
interesting seam arrangement, with sort of an over-under pattern to how to seam allowances were treated. The allowances on the
inside flip directions, which has a fun dimensional effect. The new seam is getting
pinned towards the left. And I'm using the chalk marks
to line up the seam correctly, and then pins to hold it in place. Some of the seams on the original garment are described as "showing
evidence of being sewn from the right side", which is what I'm trying out here. I was a little shaky at first, but quickly got plenty of practice from sewing the many, many,
many seams on this dress. Another little nifty seam treatment thing from the originals is the false seams. The dress is mostly
made from narrow panels, with the exception of a
pair at the side back, they are actually big panels with darts at the top for shaping, and then a false seam
down the length of it so it looks like the same
as all the other panels. This was done by making a
very tiny pintuck type pleat. The devotion to symmetry
and a balanced overall look is just fascinating! One of the questions
that I get pretty often for any project is "How long
did it take you to make this?" Unfortunately, I don't
really tend to track my minutes on projects, they simply take as long
as they take, you know? Several hours of
stitching every other day, and eventually, someday,
maybe two years later, it's finally done! After stitching a seam, I always leave behind a trail
of uncut thread breadcrumbs, I don't think it actually matters if you cut as you go or wait till the end, but either way, get
those seams cleaned up. The side seams are mostly done, so lets look at the center front and center back triangular inserts. I might have accidentally
cut the same piece twice, but we can just flip it
over and that'll be fine. The straight edges will
be stitched together, I pinned them first, and then whip stitched from the outside. I don't believe I've
talked about my thread yet. I'm using a 100% undyed wool thread, to match the color of my fabric. This is a single ply and in truth, I should have used a two-ply but I couldn't find any with
the right fiber content, to do what I want, so this'll have to do. By the way, I want to show
you my favorite method of making a knot in thread, if you take the needle in one hand, the thread in the other and
then cross them over like so, you can hold the thread against the needle and then loop it around
three or four times, pinch the loops, and
pull the needle through. I was taught this as kid, and was told that it was
called the Kissing Knot, because you "kiss" the needle
and thread ends together. So cute! And it makes a very tidy knot. Whip stitch until you have a seam! And then we're going to
iron it nice and flat. That triangle is gonna
need somewhere to go, so next I'll cut open the center
front to the marked length. I recommend using the longer scissors, because like, this is taking way too long. Come on, hurry it up! Here's our new center front, and this is where the
triangle is going to be set, but first I need to fold
back the seam allowances. It starts out very narrow
at the point of the V, and gradually widens to
the normal seam allowance once I get further down the seam. Now I'll add the triangle insert, getting it placed just so, and then pinning it place. Continue down the length
of the front seams. Starting at the top center
is highly recommended, because it'll help prevent
the triangle from going askew and not fitting right. Then I stitched the insert, keeping with the trend so far of stitching from the
outside of the garment. Also tricky at first, but this really started to grow on me as the project went on. It was around here that I had gone through my
entire spool of wool thread, fortunately I bought two! So, disaster pre-averted! To help set the alternating
seam allowance pattern, I lightly top stitched
all of the seams so far, so that the allowances would
stay in the correct direction. This was further helped along when I overcast the
raw edges inside later, but this will help keep
things neat until then. All of the front and side
gores are stitched together, just need to add the back panel. I'll prepare the folded edge first, and I'm starting to
realize I might have a pin overuse problem... This seems like way too many pins. I mean, I'm all for sewing precision, but, wow! That's a lot of pins. Anyways, the edges are
ready for the back panel to be added now, I just need to line up
this little chalk mark with the top of the last side gore, and then start pinning from the top down. Since I marked the seam allowances, it's really easy to match the folded edge with the grey chalk mark and get just the right seam
allowance the whole way down. Then I'll grab myself some new thread and start stitching these
last two body seams. With the body assembled, let's take a look at the sleeves. There's actually a pretty nifty diagram showing how the original sleeves
gussets were stitched in. I was excited to try it out! So matched my seam allowances, just like I've been doing
for the rest of this project, and pinned the gusset onto the sleeve. I stitched that, and the
other side of the gusset, and then down the length of the sleeve, leaving the last few inches
open, as per the original. And no, your eyes are not deceiving you, the cuff edges are absolutely uneven, which is also following
the extant example. It's kinda weird, but it
adds an interesting flavor. Now I'm adding the first
row of top stitches, and you might notice that I'm
not doing a running stitch like so, in the usual fast back and forth, traveling along with the needle, very angled taking
several stitches at once, but no, instead I am completing
each stitch separately, stabbing the needle
perpendicularly to the fabric. This results in more of
the thread being visible on the surface, and making it a slightly
more decorative effect. The original had quite
close and compact stitches of this style, I was maybe
a bit lazy with mine. The sleeves and neckline both had two rows of this stitching and I am doing the same. Next are the shoulder seams, I pin them down, and
then pin them together, and then play the song of the whip stitch. Curiously, the shoulder
seam is one of the few seams on the extant Herjolfsnes garments that very often had the seams
pressed and stitched open, rather than to one side. To attach the sleeves, I must first find the shoulder mark and line that up with the shoulder seam. I'm going to pin down
the rest of this sleeve, and then attach the second one. I am really happy with how
this has been coming together so far, and I'm pleased
that attaching sleeves in this way is surprisingly easy, I thought it would take
a lot more fenagling. I also bought some handmade
needles for this project and experimented with them throughout. They definitely handle differently, I found that they tended to want to go around the woven threads rather than through them, which make sense, they are more blunt. And it worked fairly well for
a nice fluffy wool like this but I do suspect they would
be much more difficult on really fine or tightly woven fabrics. I bought handmade needles from
several different sellers, and very quickly lost track
of which ones came from who, but I'll do my best to
link them all down below. I gave all of the seams
a good thorough ironing. Using a ironing ham is
great for odd curved spots like the sleeve head. Finishing seams. Now that the sleeves are attached, I wanna get this neckline finished. I folding back the seam allowance first, and use that handy chalk as a guide, until it looks like this. Now I'm measuring out a
doubled length of wool yarn, measuring around the neck, plus a few extra inches just in case. I used that yarn to cover
the raw edge of the fabric in the neck seam allowance. Just grab a thread or two from the bottom, pop up halfway through
the seam allowance, and then wrap around the yarn. Woven into the Earth theorizes that this is to help prevent stretching and warping of the neckline and to create what they
call a 'decorative fullness' which is very neat. When the filler threads are done, I then added two rows of top stitching, just like sleeve cuffs. Notice how this part of the
neckline is looking puffy and rounded looking, while the topstitched section
is looks very flat and crisp. First row down, adding a
second row of stitches. I know it's not super visible, since this is all the same color, but it does make a texture
difference in person. Moving down to the hem, there are a few longer parts like this one that need to get trimmed to
match the rest of the hem. And I tried it on to double
check the overall length, and wow! Yes, this is just as unflattering as I expected it to be, but the hem doesn't need to
be trimmed up much higher, so at least that's good to go. I ended up leaving it
longer than my chalk marks, so let's give it a bit of
a bath to clean those up. And here's where I put
it away for 12 months. Literally all the stuff you just saw was filmed in 2019. So now, in the last bit of 2020
and the early part of 2021, I finally got the to courage
pull it back out of the closet and tackle that tablet woven hem just like the original dress had. I made a whole video just for that, definitely check it out if
you haven't seen it already, and I think I'm gonna
try and to put a playlist of all the videos in
this project in one spot, I know there are several
of them at this point. I also added filler
threads to the raw edges inside the dress, starting at the hem and working my way up. Theoretically this will
help prevent the side seams from stretching on the bias over time and protect the raw cut fabric
edges from wear and tear. But honestly, all practicalities aside, it just looks cool. We are so darn close to done, just one of the last steps
is to add pocket holes to the second panel from the front, I measured down from the armscye, and double checked the original distance in my reference book so
I could get that right. Figure out where to pin and cut. I then pinched back the seam allowances, top stitched them in place, and then covered the raw
edges with more filler thread. The basic opening is done, but let's add some pizzazz! Remember those wool finger loop braids that I made forever ago? It's their time to shine. So here's my fabric, and
the braid I'm attaching, I just sort of grab a little
nip of the fabric edge, and then one face of the braid, you can sort of see here that the braid has a square profile, with four sides. I'm trying to make sure I always grabbing the same side with every stitch, so it looks consistent like
this on the outside of the gown. Two hand openings it's done, and it's now to the neck. I'm going to add the braid
in the exact same way, I absolutely found stitching this from the inside to be the most
effective for this process, on the extant gowns, the researchers made no mention that I could see for how
the braid was stitched, so I just kind of made up something that I felt might be plausible. Lastly, we have the sleeve edges, I've already one here, so now to tackle the second one. This is such a cool decoration detail, I'm really glad I picked a gown that had evidence of
braid in all three places, the neck, sleeve, and pocket
opening, it's so neat. It's time. It's time to iron the dress so it can look it's absolute best, and we can get kind of
all those new stitches sort of melded in to the fabric. It's also time to talk about the sponsor of today's video, Skillshare. Skillshare is such a cool website, some of my absolute favorite
videos here on YouTube are just folks showing
stuff that they know and that's like Skillshare's whole jam! It's a whole website
just for learning videos. Like, Mr. Donner recently
gifted me a fancy new lens, and that has just gotten
me all sorts of extra keen on photography lately. I've been enjoying Jessica
Kobeissi's new series on "Portrait Photography". I love that it's not
specific gear dependent, it's more about using
light and angles, props, all these things to best possible results with just whatever you have. If you all aren't as into photography, there's drawing like "Procreate
for Beginners", looked cool. or "How to Write a Song", in case you want to try your hand at making the next big sea shanty. The first 1000 of my subscribers to click the link in the description will get a free trial
of "Premium Membership" so you can explore your creativity, whether it's photography, drawing, music, whatever strikes your fancy. Alrighty... let's go try on this dress. I really really enjoyed this dress. Even the hard parts that scared me. Maybe especially the hard
parts that scared me. The end result might be a little
bit of an ugly potato sack, but I am damn proud of how much I put into
making it as similar to the original gown from
Herjolfsnes as I possibly could. There are absolutely small
allowances that I made for what I could find,
but for the most part, I truly tried to get as close as I could. It was a really fun exercise, I'm all for using a machine for the majority of my projects, for sure, but there is something satisfying about tying to doing
something 100% by hand and trying the original techniques. This was a lot of fun. I hope you guys enjoyed
my year, year and a half long making adventure. And thank you so much for watching.
