The Scholar's Garret

While the primary audience for the material on this page is for historical re-enactors and re-creationists of the Middle Ages (such as members of the Society for Creative Anachronism, the Kingdom of Acre, et. al.), it is not sponsored by nor affiliated with any of them and does not speak for them.
Please be aware that all the material on these pages is copyright by their respective authors. Please contact those authors and ask permission before posting or distributing their work.


Articles to provide instruction in various fields of Medieval arts or for Medieval re-creationists, by people with a passion for their subject.

Cotehardies: Cutting and Fitting the Grand Aissiette
by Ken Nye (Edward Newman)
The outstanding feature of the fourteenth century pourpoint worn by Charles of Blois is the extraordinarily large armhole (grand aissiette) and sophisticated cut of the sleeves. This article covers the details of the grand aissiette and provides instructions for its construction.

Recreating 14th Century Braies
by Ken Nye, writing as Edward Newman
As cotehardies grew shorter in the middle of the 14th century and uncovered more of the leg, hose were made longer and more closely fitted. To manage this, the braies also had to be shortened and reduced in bulk. I offer my experiments as a possible clarification of the surviving evidence.

How To Make an Eating Dagger from a File
by Al Massey (Lord Giles de Macie)
There are many persons in the SCA who, for one reason or another, would like to make their own working and eating knife. In this, the first of several articles, you are taken through the steps needed to turn a file into a very good dagger. (Hafting and sharpening are in later articles.)

How to make an eating dagger pt.2-Hilting the blade
by A.R.Massey (Lord Giles de Macie)
In a previous article, the author gave an overview of the steps involved in creating an eating dagger from a used file. In this article, he gives tips on how to finish the blade, by putting a guard, and handle, on what will be a hidden-tang knife or dagger blade.

Building the “Henry” Tablet-Weaving Loom
by David Swan
How to construct a loom for tablet weaving. The loom is long enough to easily do split pack work, and the back of the loom is a warping board.

Lining a Kirtle the Easy Way
by K.Nye (Edward Newman)
Lining a garment has several advantages. Often, the draping qualities of a fabric can be greatly improved by selecting the correct weight and texture of lining. This article shows a lining technique learned from studying Victorian corsets. The method is from out of period, but the results are superbly applicable to the kirtles of the fourteenth century, those beautifully shaped garments made of many narrow gores and inset godets which can be hell to get a lining to fit into neatly and accurately.

A Jig for Marking Clock Wheels for Cutting
by D.M.Swan (Master Henry MacQueen)
To make a clock wheel (a gear inside a clock), you need to be able to accurately mark out the teeth of the wheel for cutting. This article describes a jig for marking clock wheels.

Weave a Pouch in Three Hours on a 5 Cent Loom
by David Swan, writing as Henry MacQueen
Weave a seamless drawstring pouch using a square of cardboard and some straightpins as the loom.

Lining a Kirtle the Easy Way

by K.Nye (writing as Edward Newman)

Lining a garment has several advantages. Often, the draping qualities of a fabric can be greatly improved by selecting the correct weight and texture of lining. Garments with neatly finished and enclosed seam allowances wear much longer. If you have a really spectacular fabric that is “forever”, the lining can take a good deal of wear and dirt, and then be replaced. If your wonderful fabric is reversible, the back side has been protected and the whole garment can be “turned”; that is: reassembled with the other side out. If you’ve spun every inch of the thread and woven the cloth yourself, it will seem like hardly any work at all! On the down side, a lining can make anything that is meant to be washed more difficult to press. Most of my lined garments are non-washable fabrics so this does not concern me unduly.

There are two ways of backing your outer fabric. The first and simplest is to underline (see Figure 1) . The two layers of fabric are basted together in a process called flat-mounting and then worked as if they were one. This will leave the raw seam allowances inside the garment and they must then be finished in some manner. This method is mostly used to improve the weight or texture of the outer fabric. Edges will require hems or facings to cover the seam allowances etc.

The other way is to install the lining so that its seam allowances face those of the garment and all the raw edges are concealed between the layers. The best way to accomplish this is to hand baste, then slipstitch each piece of the lining into place. Beautiful but time consuming. The worst is to assemble the complete lining, stitch the whole works in around the edge, right sides together leaving a small gap, and turn the thing through. This never looks better than home-made, and that’s if you’re lucky. Fortunately, there are compromise techniques that might not be quite as elegant as the first method but are head and shoulders above the second.

A good lining must move as one with the fabric of the outer garment. If you ever get a chance to look into the construction of haute couture dresses or really high class hand tailoring you will find a huge amount of hand stitching to insure just that. One very important step is to anchor the seams of the lining to the seam allowances of the garment where ever they coincide. The more points of attachment you have, the less likely the lining is to bag and twist.

On one of my “garb in a weekend” binges I managed to put together a thirteenth century gown with dozens of hand worked eyelets on the side seams, long pendant sleeves lined with silk, and yards of brocaded banding around the edges and still had time to make a barbette and hem the wimple and veil by hand. I saved hours by applying a lining technique that I learned from studying Victorian corsets. As it turned out, the method is superbly applicable to the kirtles of the fourteenth century, those beautifully shaped garments made of many narrow gores and inset godets which can be hell to get a lining to fit into neatly and accurately.

I am assuming that you have already fitted the pattern to perfection and are ready to make up the finished garment without adjustments. I put you on your honour to pin carefully and hand baste if your fabric or trimmings require it. As always, washable fabrics should be thoroughly laundered and pressed before cutting to avoid different rates of shrinkage between layers.

The basis of the technique is to pile up the layers of the two pieces to be joined in the following order: right side lining, wrong side lining, right side cloth, wrong side cloth. Stitch through all four thicknesses in one seam. Then turn the bottom lining and top cloth away from the middle layers and press (see Figure 2) . Viola! All of the raw edges are enclosed and the lining is in perfect harmony with the outer cloth. Add the next sections in the same way and just keep going.

Inserted gores (godets), shoulder seams, sleeves and the last seam in the garment are just variations on the theme. Insert godets set into slashes first. I usually cut the top point square and about one half inch wide just to make them easier to work with. Cut your slash almost to the top and clip diagonally each way to the corners of your stitching line. Assemble the layers as above treating each edge of the gore as a separate seam. I usually do the top first and then go down each side (see Figure 3) . This is very strong and resistant to raveling but if you wish to bring the top of your slash to a point just be sure you are catching all four layers of fabric as you stitch, and clip to the last stitch very carefully. Plan your sequence of assembly so that one of the sections to be joined in the last seam is the widest in the garment. Match up three of the layers as usual and then pull the fourth into place enclosing the rest of the garment in a sort of tube. Stitch the seam and pull the garment through, turning the area you just stitched right side out (see Figure 4) (see Figure 5) . Shoulders are done the same way, turning through at the neckline. A one-piece sleeve and its lining are each folded right sides together then matched and stitched. Reach up through the outside fabric layers, grab the other end and turn through. Two piece sleeves can be piled up and both seams sewn before turning. Edges can be finished with hems, facings, trim bands or bindings (see Figure 6) . Sleeves are installed in the usual way. Overcast or bind the seam allowance.

With a bit of thought this method can be applied to quite a variety of garb. I don’t pretend that it can be documented to any earlier than the nineteenth century and it is, after all, a machine sewing technique. That said, a Gold Key trunk stocked with sturdy, attractive garments makes for a happy Chatelaine and helps to insure that newcomers can blend in and have a good time without being self conscious about wearing something really weird or tacky.

For my personal wardrobe I aspire to sew only by hand with two-ply flax thread and silk twist, but I have been known to condescend to the use of a sewing machine (treadle, naturally) when pushed for time. (I am, unfortunately, often pushed for time.) Even if you would never dream of wearing a (gasp!) machine sewn gown, try making a kirtle or cotehardie out of some old curtains from a thrift ship (or something better, if you’re feeling generous) and make a newbie happy. Then show them how to make their own.

Figure 1. Flat-mounting. Two or more layers of fabric are basted together along the stitching lines with a single thread. This holds the layers together while the garment is assembled and marks the exact stitching lines on both sides of the fabric. Each edge is marked with a separate thread and the ends of the threads are left unknotted at the beginning and end of each line. Remove the threads when the garment is complete.