Another piece for my mother's Age of Exploration classroom unit, she wanted a new apron dress to replace her blue linen version, below:
I made her this apron dress almost a decade ago, so an update was certainly in order. My first order of business was to work on the straps. When I made her blue linen, I was still attaching the loops to a larger piece of strap that would go over the shoulder. Well, I know now that this isn't supported by any evidence. If you would like to read more about that, I have addressed it in several of my previous posts.
Once the garment was constructed, I treated all the seams. I used the same wool weaving yarn to do a running stitch holding the seam allowances where I wanted them. I've seen this technique used by many other costumers, and I was curious to try it myself.
In the end, I love the effect that the lines of running stitch give the garment. It's a quick and easy technique, but it certainly adds a lot of interest to the piece. All that was left to do at this point was add the silk trim.
Here's the final piece, as it was displayed at Laurel's Prize 2017, before I shipped the dress to Mom for her classroom unit.
Bibliography:
Ewing, Thor. Viking Clothing. Gloucestershire: Tempus Publishing, Inc. 2006.
Glæsel, Nille. Viking Dress Garment Clothing. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform. 2010.
Hägg, Inga. "Viking Women's Dress at Birka: A Reconstruction by Archeological Methods." Cloth and Clothing in Medieval Europe: Essays in Memory of Professor E.M. Carus-Wilson. Ed. N. B. Harte and K. G. Ponting. Pasold Studies in Textile History. 1983.
Schweitzer, Robert. “Beginning Tablet Weaving.” Forward into the Past. 2 April 2011. <http://www.fitp.ca/articles/FITPXXI/beginning_tablet_weaving.pdf>
Geijer, Agnes. "The Textile Finds from Birka." Cloth and Clothing in Medieval Europe: Essays in Memory of Professor E.M. Carus-Wilson. Ed. N. B. Harte and K. G. Ponting. Pasold Studies in Textile History. 1983.
Thunem, Hilde. "Viking Women: Apron Dress." 25 February 2015. <http://urd.priv.no/viking/smokkr.html>