14th Century Belt Purse

This piece is part of a medieval ensemble for a friend I've been working on on and off for the last several months, designed around her wanting to wear a dress but also carry a sword for RenFaire.  As such, we were more concerned with putting together something fun than being particularly historically accurate.  As such, the various pieces of the outfit don't all come from the same time period, but it's going to look cool for Faire, which is all that really matters in this case.  The purse itself is pretty accurate, though, so I thought I'd share it here!

This purse is based on the drawstring belt purses seen in a lot of late medieval manuscripts, which come in a variety of shapes.  These purses are mainly from the 14th and 15th centuries, putting them about 400-500 years after the dress and hood this is going to be paired with, but it's for fun, not reenactment, so I decided to go with it.  Besides, they're cute, but wouldn't go with my 16th century wardrobe, so when else am I going to make one?
   

Most of the manuscript purses appear to be rectangular, though some are a little pointier.  For no particular reason, I decided to make my purse pointed at the bottom, though it turned out a little more round than pointy.  I can't quite tell of the purse on the left has tassels on the drawstrings or not, but the one on the right clearly has either small tassels or pom poms all over it, so I decided that a little decoration was acceptable.  I also chose to coordinate the purse with the rest of the outfit for no particular reason other than that I didn't want to have to find fabric for it and I had leftovers from the dress and hood.  I also chose not to buy cording or decoration, again mostly to avoid overspending, and tried making my own braided cord.

The grey wool hood fabric and the red
linen dress fabric look cute together,
so why not use them, right?

Once I figured out what I was doing, this purse came together really quickly.  I cut out front and back pieces in both the red linen lining and the grey wool fashion fabric.  I sewed the lining pieces together "right" sides together, and then repeated the step with the wool, this time leaving a gap at the center bottom for the middle tassel.  Then I made the tassel by simply folding 6 strands of yarn in half and knotting them, then trimming the ends to the same length.  I inserted this in the gap in the wool body of the purse, leaving the end I wanted to show between the right sides of the fabric.  I then flipped the whole thing inside out and pressed the seams.

Next, I made the braids.  For the strap, I used 12 strands of a medium thickness acrylic/wool blend yarn, tied a knot in one end, divided into 3 sections, and braided tightly.  When that was done, I knotted the other end and cut down the ends to make tassels.  I then repeated the process with only 9 strands of yarn to make the drawstring.

Making the drawstring channel. 
Lots of pins to hold the fabric in place.

Inserting the drawstring

Closing the channel and
finishing the edges.

The last step!  Whip stitching
the strap to the bag.

Then back to sewing.  I inserted the lining into the outer shell of the bag and made sure the seams lined up properly.  Then I backstitched a seam near the top to create a channel for the drawstring.  I made 2 eyelets in the center front of the drawstring channel, inserted the drawstring, and then finished the raw edge of the lining as well as the top of the channel by folding the raw edge in and whip stitching the lining to the shell.  I didn't have any raw edges to finish on the shell because I had used the selvedge as the top edge while cutting.  Finally, I pinned the strap to the sides of the bag and whip stitched them in place.  Done!

This was probably the easiest project I've done in a while, and certainly the quickest.  And I (kind of) learned a new skill, so yay!  I was really pleased with how the braids came out, as I was sceptical of using yarn for trim, but they're cute!  I'm now considering making braided trim for an upcoming project rather than spending on the velvet ribbon I was going to buy... We'll see!

14th Century Martial Surcoat

He didn't feel like putting on his mail, but it fits
over the gambeson, which is the important part!

This project started as my brother's Halloween costume last year, but as usual, things got a little out of hand...

I made a very hastily constructed (raw edges everywhere!) surcoat in just a couple of days- I finished it the morning of- for my brother to wear over his armor on Halloween last year, but I wasn't satisfied with the finished product.  It looked ok, but a lot of things about it aren't great.  It's made in a cheap, lightweight linen/rayon blend that doesn't really drape well, I didn't have time to finish the interior seams, and the applique device on the front was extremely rushed, so it's not really done properly.  So since I apparently can't let imperfection go, I decided to make a better one.  

The cheaply and quickly made
Halloween costume
version.  You can't tell here,
but the dragon is starting to fray.

My brother had designed his arms hastily in order to have the costume in time for Halloween, but upon further consideration, completely changed the color scheme, so rather than the blue surcoat with the red and white dragon, we now have a red surcoat with a "gold"- which is apparently what we call yellow in heraldry- dragon.  I'm going to say right now that while I write this blog specifically to help others with historical costuming, please don't copy my brother's personal arms!  I'd love for people to follow this procedure to make their own clothes, but the arms are individual!  Design your own, and have fun with it!  Need help, or don't feel comfortable making your own garment or designing arms?  I take commissions, and I'm sure I can get my brother, who, unlike me, can draw and knows a lot about heraldry, to help with the designing bit.  Don't hesitate to reach out!

I did most of the construction of the actual garment back in December, and didn't take pictures, so I'll do my best to describe the process.  

I started out with the same pattern I used for Halloween.  I found it online at La Cotte Simple, which is a great resource for all your medieval garment needs!  She has two surcoat patterns, one with and one without side gores.  The one with gores is likely more historically accurate, since medieval fabrics were much narrower than modern ones, so I chose that one.  The other one is simpler, probably goes more quickly, and I'm sure it looks good over armor too, but I was going for accuracy here!  

I used about 2.5 yards of heavyweight linen for the surcoat itself, which is probably what they were made of in period.  For reference, the wearer is 6' tall.  How much fabric you need for the decoration obviously varies depending on what you're doing.  I found 2 remnants totaling about 1 yard of white linen, but was unable to find one of the yellow, so I just ordered a yard when the color I wanted was on sale.  I really only needed a little for the dragon, so now I have almost a yard of yellow linen left over for sleeves or something.  

I cut out the front and back panels and the triangular side gores.  Then I cut out the neck opening and a bit at the shoulders of the big panels.  I pinned in the gores and stitched the pieces together, then flat felled the seams.  This technique was used in period, and it's my favorite method of finishing seams because it encloses the raw edges completely without being bulky like French seams.  It's also really easy to do.  You just trim down one of the seam allowances, then fold the other over it, tucking the raw edges under, and stitch!

Flat felling a seam:

1. Sew the seam with a running stitch, then cut down one seam allowance

2. Fold the other side over and pin down

3. Stitch!

Then I cut the slits in the front and back panels and hemmed them, but didn't hem the bottom of the garment yet.  I wanted to try it on the wearer first to make sure my hem was even all the way around, but because I was planning to add a white piece around the shoulders, I hadn't done the shoulder seams yet.  I also realized after cutting out the red fabric that the shoulders were much too marrow, which is what I get for cutting things out when I'm tired.  So I decided to fix this by making the white piece wider, and wanted to finish the shoulders once I added that.  If you don't have any extra pieces to add here, this would be the time to hem the bottom too.

Before doing that, though, I decided to add the decorations.  This is the tricky part.  Embroidery is really not my strong suit!  So when my brother asked for the dragon to be embroidered on, the answer was absolutely not!  In seriousness, though, applique was a very common method of decorating clothing in the medieval period, so I think this is more likely the way it would have been done.  

The first thing I did was the white bit around the shoulders.  I cut out my pieces and pinned them to the surcoat, rolling the raw edges under.  I then whip stitched the white fabric in place using white perle cotton thread.  I decorated the tips of the zigzags by making my stitches right next to each other.  Nothing crazy- I'm embriodery challenged, and wanted to keep things simple!

We have a dragon!

So.  Many.  Pins.  Definitely
stabbed myself a lot doing this!

Then I cut out the dragon.  I can't draw, so my brother made me a printout of the device (the dragon and sword) to use as a pattern.  I left off the small parts like the horn and the tongue, since cutting those out with a seam allowance was going to be too difficult, and figured I'd add them back on in embroidery at a later stage.  I then pinned the dragon and the sword to the front of the surcoat, again making sure to turn under the raw edges, and stitched them in place with regular thread that matches them.  Next, I went back over that with backstitch in thin, black perle cotton, adding the fine lines of the design.

Maybe one day I'll actually
invest in a bigger embroidery
hoop... Adjusting constantly
is kind of annoying.

The lines on the dragon's belly and wings were added with just a single line of backstitch in thin perle cotton thread.  I added the horn, claw, and tongue at this stage by outlining them with backstitch and then going back and filling them in with satin stitch in the same thread.  I used an embroidery hoop for this step to stabilize my fabric, since I'm dealing with a lot of small detail and actually drawing with the thread here.  On simpler embroidery like I did over the edges of the white piece, I don't bother.  Ideally, the hoop is big enough to contain your whole design, but I only own one, so that's what I used.  I had to move the hoop around a lot, but I'm not really doing anything detailed enough for that to matter. 

Once this step was done, I got rid of the hoop and whip stitched over the edges with the same embroidery thread, keeping my stitches very close together.  This created a thick black line around the outside of the device.  I have no idea if this is a correct technique for medieval clothing, but it looks nice.  Once this was done, I moved on to the squiggly white line (apparently the technical term is either "fess" or "bar wavy", but I didn't know that either!) around the waist of the surcoat, which I attached the same way I had the zigzaggy piece at the top.  If I'd thought about it before I got halfway through this section, I would have used a much thinner perle cotton than I did to still get the decorative effect with less effort, but oh well.  I like how the thicker one looks anyway.

Finishing the neckline

Finally, I just had to finish the neckline, shoulder seams, and hem.  I did the neckline by turning the raw edges of the white and red fabrics towards each other and hem stitching them together.  I then did the shoulder seams the same way I did the other interior seams, by flat felling for both strength and finishing raw edges.  Finally, I rolled the raw edges of the bottom in and hemmed, using buttonhole stitch around the tops of the front and back slits.  And that's it!  I'm pleased with how this turned out, though I think I made the back slit a little too high.  It's even with the front one, but when it's worn, I think it looks long, so next time, I'll probably make it a couple of inches shorter.