Leading up to the wonderful Blackstone Raids, I made the harebrained decision to try to make my lovely mother an entirely new Campfrau/Trossfrau outfit. In ten measly days. I had already patterned out the bodice and created one dress in a burnt umber linen blend bought at Joann’s (fondly called the Burnt Umber Bitch) that she wore to Haunting in the Hollow in AE. She had no hemd and wore a chemise instead, and I applied what I learned from that attempt to my second. Namely, it needed desperately to be taken in.
With Joann’s closing, we went shopping and found her a very soft and cozy navy blue wool blend, as well as a length of linen to make the hemd. With my job, I can do a little bit of hand-sewing in my downtime, so I chose to work on the dress at home, keeping the hemd at work with me.
For both I used tutorials from Katafalk, here, adjusting her bodice pattern to my mom’s measurements when I made the Burnt Umber dress. For her blue wool, I then took the bodice in by two inches, and started dating my patterns. Lucky for me, mom’s arm measurements aren’t significantly different from the original pattern makers, because that would have been far beyond my abilities!
Accessories I worked on included a Dockenbaret (which didn’t fit) and Wulsthaube, both patterns bought from Thimble and Plume on Etsy, here. Both patterns were easy peasy to follow, and any errors are strictly user based! Accessories she had already… Well I had made her a Steuchlein from a lovely silk I got out of a remnants pile at a fabric store, sewn with Gutterman silk thread that matched beautifully.
The guards are a black wool blend, and the dress is lined in a medium weight white linen. For stays I used plastic boning I picked up at Joann’s. To make sure it was firm enough I did use the boning doubled, and to make sure that it wouldn’t curve oddly I placed the pieces right sides together so they curved against each other and somehow ended up fairly straight!
The most difficult and time consuming part of this process was smocking the Hemd. My goodness it took *forever* and again, I learned much. I sewed the body by hand, choosing to save the hand-sewing for the neck and sleeve hems and smocking. I printed up on heavy card stock a 1 cm grid, poked holes in it, and used a fine tipped washable fabric pen to make the dots. I then took a heavy thread and ran my gathering lines.
As I ran the gathering lines I gathered the fabric, I had the feeling that it would be impossible to gather it all at once. Once everything was gathered to match her neck measurement, I began the embroidery. To be perfectly honest I winged most of it. I did some cable stitch, some honeycomb, and a surface honeycomb stitch that may not be period but I adore how it looks!
Unfortunately, at this point I became more interested in finishing this silly thing than taking pictures of my method. The blue dots washed out beautifully and cleanly, I was so relieved! I did take out my gathering stitches before I sewed the lining to the neck, which is NOT the correct order! Baroness Ellesbeth gave me some wonderful pointers while we were at BSR on what to do differently next time, to make the process easier.
From here, admit to doing quite a bit of work with the machine in order to save time. I sewed 2 panels for the skirt, each a full width of fabric and length appropriate. I chose to knife pleat the skirt, reversing directions in the middle of the back, having decided to do this on my own instead of asking for help. I added channels for the boning to the bodice, used grommet tape for the lacing, and attached the guards. I did hand-sew the guards to the front, as well as the hems at the sleeves using Gutterman silk thread again, in black.
The Wulsthaube was made with the same white linen as the Hemd, stitched by hand with Gutterman thread. Plain poly thread this time! I did a decorative herringbone stitch along the hem for a bit of fun, using DMC pearl cotton in size 8. I’m still working on my decorative stitching, but practice makes passable!
To be perfectly honest, I think my mom didn’t realize how much went into a German outfit. She started with this because she wanted a Tellerbaret, and I can’t blame her! But when I presented her with a pile of linen and wool blend she got overwhelmed a bit.
I didn’t manage to get a picture of her in the wool, because by the time she wore it, it had already gotten dark outside, but she said it was cozy warm. Since then, I have added a third panel to the skirt, adjusted the pleating to cartridge, and taken the bodice in a smidge more while adding a bit of width to the shoulders because she noticed that her shoulders keep slipping.
I’m hoping to get a picture of her in it soon, but with summer coming it may be hard to get her into it! We plan on working on a linen version for Pennsic, but who knows. Maybe she’ll decide to do Viking instead and make my life easier!
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