Category: Clothing and Equipment

A place to document my kit – things I’ve made or found

Clothing and Equipment2 Comments

GFD sketch

Greet Gijsberts

Here’s my plan for the Gothic Fitted Dress. I’ve got the brown linen, 5+ yards, for the overdress.  Lavena likes to cast pewter buttons, and I have an offer from Melissa to carve the soapstone for skep shapes.  (We’re a bit wary of how much the buttons might weigh, and thus flop over, so we’re going to try out the concept this Project Night.) The brown dress will be embroidered with large green bees volante as in the dancing girl’s dragonfly dress here, in ‘The Allegory of Good Government’, 1340.  That’s the green I’m thinking.  The blue underdress is 5.3 … Continue reading GFD sketch

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Wooden shoes!

Greet Gijsberts

I have been pondering wooden shoes for some time.  They’re in Aertsen’s paintings… Pieter Aertsen, Market Scene, 1561. And I’ve read that they’re still being produced and used in Holland and other places.  Our word ‘sabotage’ doesn’t really come from wooden  that were hurled into machinery in protest, breaking it, and causing grief to the new industrialists, as much fun as this is to imagine. So I’ve wanted my own pair to try out, to see if they are practical in the garden, and for my plaid kirtle and (someday) my green pleated kirtle.  They’re not very expensive to order, … Continue reading Wooden shoes!

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Viking garb!

Greet Gijsberts

  I finished the Viking garb this weekend. Some of you will be thinking – ‘since when is Greet interested in Vikings?’ I admit, I’m really not (yet!).  However, I had all this fabric that needed to be wearable and useful garb because for longer events I’m still woefully short of clothing. Also I’ve discovered that occasionally in the practice of SCA there are ‘theme’ events, and it’s helpful to have a Viking or MiddleEastern outfit even if your main interest is elsewhere. And I wanted an outfit my mother could wear for when we go to events together, though … Continue reading Viking garb!

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Trunk Project

Greet Gijsberts

I don’t think I’ve blogged about my Trunk Views yet, but after lots of thinking and some experimentation, the Views are turning into a Project, so it’s time. Views: Peasants and lesser nobles should be able to live out of a trunk, right?  Houses were small, people might have been very mobile.  Certainly we in the SCA are very mobile.  And She With Few Things is likely to be rewarded with a lower gasoline bill, particularly when she lives Back of Beyond.  (8 hours to Kingdom A&S, 7 hours to RUM.) So I thought about using a trunk to move … Continue reading Trunk Project

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Vert, on a chief wavy argent two bees sable

Greet Gijsberts

That’s my new device, if the College of Heralds like it.  It looks like this. (I’m not sure about the precise nature of the waviness.  Does it matter, from instance to instance, if it’s a bit different?  Four humps, five?  I would think not, if we’re judging on a readability-from-100 yards basis.  We’ll find out.) Oh, right, a name? Well, since I ditched the Hungarian notion, and the Margareta stands, I went back to Daan’s family tree.  "Gijsberts" is the oldest byname listed, and was most certainly the previous genitor’s first name, since they didn’t become Van der Loop until … Continue reading Vert, on a chief wavy argent two bees sable

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Green Kirtle

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After sleeping on the kirtle problem, I got up yesterday and cut into my green linen. I’m rather disappointed in the linen – it seems to have been ‘cottonized’, because the threads I pull from it won’t do for sewing.  They break in about two inches.  So I had to use standard cotton/poly sewing thread.  That does mean the sewing goes faster. It also goes faster when you let yourself use a sewing machine for basting. I don’t regret it.  Here’s what I had at the end of the day. That’s a back bodice, folks, with a center back seam, … Continue reading Green Kirtle

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Pumpkin Dress

Greet Gijsberts

My friend Lavena (newest Companion of the Velvet Owl – huzzah!), just finished her Pumpkin Dress in time for Kingdom A&S.  (She swears there’s a list of these dresses named after vegetables – I told her to let me know when she gets to Asparagus.)  It’s actually a copy of a dress in a Lorenzo Lotto painting. Doesn’t she look wonderful!!  Here it is full length: She says she has 70 hours in the dress.  I believe it.  I frequently put at least that many hours into my projects – but I don’t keep track of them.  Learning to Weave … Continue reading Pumpkin Dress