C11 has chosen to study medieval fashions for her project. Her intention was to make clothes for a medieval peasant, lady and princess. However, it has been much harder than she anticipated, and it has taken her almost eight weeks to do the peasant doll. We have decreased her wortk, therefore, to a peasant doll and a Knight’s lady. This post is all about her journey to dressing her peasant dolly.
In Feb I posted about C11 having made the chemise. This was a simple under dress that most women in the medieval times wore, usually made of a thin linen:
She designed the pattern, drew it, cut out the material and hand sewed it. Not being very experienced in these things, it took time. The over dress took even longer, because this time she had to figure how to add arms, as it was a long sleeved dress we were making. This time she chose to use the sewing machine for the seams.
She used simple twine as a belt, and ties at the back as fastenings. The fastening options were wooden pins or ties for a peasant woman:
Next she made the apron, they were made of hessian or linen. We had some hessian peanut sacks given to us from a pet shop. She used one of those to make a simple apron, again using the twine as apron ties:
Next was the mantle, traditionally made from wool, it was a shawl to keep the peasants warm over winter. C11 made that by cutting out a triangle from some sheep wool material we had in our dressing up:
In order to make a simple head-dress, she used a strip of our old bed linen, leaving it unhemmed for a more ‘peasant’ look:
Finally, she made her dolly peasant some simple shoes from leather (a shammy cloth) and more twine:
And here is the dolly in all her peasant glory:
And a last photo of C11 very proudly holding her newly dressed dolly:
Well done, sweetie pie! Knight’s lady next!