Since, clothing tutorials just are not going to work given my current location, I thought I’d help you get all the items you’ll need together first.  If you’re like me, there’s nothing like spending a bunch of time on something only to realize you didn’t have the right stuff for it in the first place.  What makes a garment of the exact same cut look like a cheap Halloween costume, a good attempt or pretty darn on the nose? The answer is fabric.  You can completely hand sew and add period embroidery to cotton and it is still going to look wrong for the simple fact that Rus’ just didn’t use cotton.  Don’t worry if that’s the majority of what you currently have, we’ve all been there and if your nervous with new patterns I totally recommend doing your first run with cotton (I make my patterns out of muslin) because ‘ cheap and fairly forgiving. But my goal here is to help you do it right.  So in this post we are going to talk about linen, silk and wool as this was what Rus’ used to keep themselves cool in the summer and toasty warm in the winter. To not over load you with info, I’m going to save weave, in-depth burn testing and my recommendations on where to find these fabrics in different articles.

Linen

So, let’s start with linen.  Regardless of your rank, you should have some linen things.  Linen breathes well, is comfy

and it’s also a great fabric to do your first sewing project on because it’s pretty forgiving. It’s also great for beginning block printing projects that we’ll do later. Any garment that I show you moving forward can be made out of linen so it’s worth it to invest.  So, let’s talk about what linen is.  Linen is a fabric made out of flax stalks.  It will put you to mind of cotton but if you are touching the two fabrics simultaneously you can definitely tell the difference.  Linen strands tend to be thicker and the weave on the fabric is usually a little more open than your standard cotton fabric. There are a lot of linen-look fabrics out there that are typically going to be some kind of linen-cotton blend, but they can also be straight cotton or cotton-polyester.  These can do in a pinch if that’s all you have access to and/or money is tight, or though it’s pretty rare, an allergy to flax.  I would like to recommend against them if possible though, because they usually won’t breathe as well and in some cases (if they have a polyester content) they are flammable.

Some of these mimic fabrics are very convincing and sometimes your shopping at a merchant at an event and it looks good but the merchant doesn’t know either, so how can you tell? You can do a burn test.   This is where you cut a small square of fabric off and light it on fire and see how it burns, and it will let you know the content.  Linen will take longer to light and you can just blow it out. It will also turn to ash as opposed to melting.  NOTE: No period fabric will ever melt. Ever.

Wool

Next, lets talk about wool.  Wool is tricky because they definitely had it, but not like we have wool today.  You can go ahead and forget about thin suiting wool, it just didn’t exist.  Wool was meant to be warm, protective, and it had the added benefit of being a bit water-proof.  Period wool fabric was made with a thicker strand so it was pretty dense.  Don’t confuse this for a rough look though. Wool, depending on weave and cut can give a very regal appearance.  I’ll cover weaves in another article. There is a lot of synthetic wool out there so how do we burn test if there isn’t a fiber content displayed? It is going to be super obvious.  It will burn quickly, smell of hair and make dark, brittle little ash balls, but mostly it will smell very, very bad. Another option is to bring your friend who is allergic along and touch them with the fabric, they can let you know instantly if it is in fact wool. Of course, some people like their friends and would never do that. Some of my friends are jerks…

Because it comes from animals there are different kinds of wool that you can use.  I need to do more research as to if they really had access to them in period but merino wool and cashmere are soft and lovely and can often be found in the right weave. I have a pair of knitted cashmere socks that I never camp without and I have a beautiful diamond twill merino/silk headscarf that I wear when I’m feeling fancy and I absolutely adore them.  These wools are also good if you want to keep your fiber content but have an allergy but be aware, you will pay for it. Those fabrics aren’t

cheap. You can pay anywhere from $25-$100 per yard that’s a large part of why my acquisitions are small.

Now, while I will always urge you to use 100% fiber content with any fabric for accuracy, visual and feel, wool is what gets a lot of people.  It’s one of the largest fabric allergies and even for those without the allergy it can be rather itchy. I myself have an allergy.  This is where layers can come in handy.  Have a linen under layer to protect your skin, or you can line it in linen or silk if it’s a coat.  This is also the one area that I totally cheat in, because I want to look correct but I also don’t want to scratch myself raw at an event and I think that is fair.  Joanns fabric sells a herringbone cotton that looks like wool and feels just like wool to someone without an allergy.  I’ve found it so far in four different colors, there may be more.  You can sometimes find other fabrics that will do the trick, you just have to keep your eyes peeled.

Silk

Not everyone could afford silk (things haven’t changed much) but you could still see lower ranking folks edge a garment or two with thin strips of silk or add a neck panel to a wool or linen garment.  Of course, if your high ranking or need that beautiful court garb you can go whole hog and make the entire garment out of silk.  Silk is completely different compared to linen and wool in regards to what is right.  You can have 100% hand-woven silk and it still wouldn’t have even been close to what they would have used.  In the interest of keeping it simple for this

post so it isn’t forever-and-a-half long stick with noille, dupioni and some brocades.  Full disclosure, dupioni as is mostly found today actually isn’t quite right but it’s about as right as you can get while being readily available. Silk noile is essentially just raw silk, which is incredibly period in make and feel. It typically can be found in off white which is easy dye-able. Brocades are tricky as they totally had them but they had pretty specific patterns which I’ll get into more in another post.

So, most people don’t have an allergy to silk, but if you do for whatever reason please be careful if you use a polyester mimic fabric.  Some mimics are really very good in feel and weave but if, for any reason they catch on fire (most events have a lot of fire) it will melt to you and cause severe burns.  So if you can, please avoid poly-silk. It really is worth it to spring for the real thing, and it doesn’t have to be expensive. You can get just about any color of hand woven dupioni for about $5 a yard if you’re able to wait for the shipping. So don’t ever think that silk is out of the realm of possibility.

So, how do you tell if it’s silk? It’s a lot like wool since it is a fabric made from animal fibre. The difference is that it will burn a lot slower but it will still leave those dark black knots but they will crush easily into a fine ash. This is true for any kind of silk. I also want to kill the misconception that silk doesn’t breath.  Real, 100% silk can breathe as well as linen.  This misconception is due to the wide use of poly-silk which is quite hot and does not breathe at all.  Another important reason to make sure you know what you are purchasing.

That’s it for Part 1. In Part 2 we’ll cover burn testing in more detail and talk about weaves.  Part 3 will be my recommendations on where to shop for fabrics and why.  I hope you found this useful and if you have any questions please don’t hesitate to reach out to me.