14th Century Commoners – part 1

The assignment: 14th-century peasant clothes for a “couple of guys who will be out digging in the dirt” for a period piece.

I dug though my fabric archives (“stash”) and pulled out several pieces of unbleached 5.3 oz. linen and both large and small pieces of hunter green, reds, and what I call mouse-brown, but if memory serves, the retailer called it “tobacco.”   I also pulled out about 5 to 6 yards of a prewashed chocolate brown wool flannel and a 5-yard piece of dark gray tweed that had flecks of blue, rust, taupe, and tan; a piece of unwashed rust flannel and unwashed black flannel; some odds and ends of a lightweight, bright finally and prewashed “popinjay blue” wool crepey flannel.  [Yes, I really did have all of that in my stash … and then some.]

Since time was of the essence, rather than draft my own patterns, I chose to go with a Reconstructing History pattern — RH004: 12th through 16th Century Peasant Man’s attire.   I had the pleasure of working with this company several years ago and beta-tested a couple of her early patterns.   I trust scholarship that goes into every pattern, although I have disagreements with construction instructions, but that’s probably more due to the fact that I almost exclusively use an industrial straight-stitch machine and avoid handwork where possible (well, these days anyway because of the carpal tunnel) and the charming and lovely Kass has put entire period ensembles together by hand, for which she has my never-ending admiration.

The Shirt: As this pattern covers the basics for the 12th through 16th, I chose the early shirt option, which has a modest center front and back gore.  The construction is fairly simple, and once you’ve made the first one and worked out how to assemble it, you can easily put one together in 3 to 5 hours.

Notes: If you choose the tapered sleeve option, please note that unless the gentleman who will be wearing it has smaller hands, you will need to leave the bottom 3 inches of the sleeves open and use some type of closure (I used wooden beads and made loops with pearl cotton).  Make sure you transfer the marks before you start sewing; it will make it easier all around.  Attach the gore to the sleeve and sew the underarm seam (think set-in sleeve), and then sew the sleeve to the flat shirt rather than sewing the flat sleeve to the flat shirt pieces — much, much easier. The shirt and the tunic are essentially the same construction, the exception being gores.