Sometimes its hard to be a woman...

No, I'm not suddenly into country music ;-)
It's just that I find myself in the situation many a medieval wife with her own small business to attend to may have known: The husband needs something new to wear and suddenly 24 hours in a day are not enough to take care of all the chores, so some things have to wait. Unfortunately that means my book projects ...

Ok, I persuaded Andi to join me in late medieval living history, so naturally I won't leave him alone with all the sewing. And I really like making historical clothes :o)
Last year he joined the event in Soest in a mixture of clothes he had borrowed and some he had made himself. Now it's time for new clothes!

As he is going to portrait a rope maker and beekeeper around the year 1480, the set of working clothes is rather simple and somehow oldfashioned. It consists of shirt and braies, single leg hose fastened to a doublet without sleeves, a buttoned coat / jerkin and a hood.
Hose and hood are made from a 2/2 twill, dyed with madder to a reddish orange, the coat from a slightly finer woadblue 2/2 twill. Shirt, braies and doublet are made from handwoven tabby linen (and also the linig of the coat).

The main source is an altar from Kefermarkt in Austria with a scene ot the "Annunciation to the shepherds" which has a lot of great details. The coat is made after the one on the left, buttoned to the waist with pairs of cloth buttons.

The single leg hose was rather outfashioned in the 1480, but still in use with lower class people. There is a painting showing St. Leonhard and a captive from Bad Aussee where you can clearly see the single leg hose fastened to a doublet.

If you think it's joined hose - have a look at the shirt being pulled over the hose at the front and tucked into the hose at the back - that only works with single leg hose I think.

At the moment I'm doing the last hems, Andi has finished the hood yesterday. So I hope I can show you some pictures after the weekend :-)

Speaking of the weekend: It's going to be fun, we are attending an event in Quakenbrück with a lot of nice people from the Vruntlike Tohopesate and I'll work as a bookbinder the whole time. Finally back to books :o)