Now mark ye what I say. Silks I have myself; see ye that men do bring us jewels upon their shields and thus we’ll work the clothes.
– Das Nibelungenlied
This is a story that starts in 2010. I was at the Pennsic War – a two-week medieval recreation (SCA) camping event – and I had brought with me to read a recent translation of Das Nibelungenlied, an anonymous German poem from about 1200 CE. I loved laying in my canvas tent, the breeze breathing through the fabric as I rested up from a day of running around in heavy armor, feeling the warmth of bruises and the gentle ache of exertion, reading about noble women crafting gowns of silk and gems to celebrate … well, pretty much everything in that poem, actually.
I decided that my next costume project was going to be to re-create a gown from the book, and I started immediately after Pennsic, planning to have it done for the very next year.
Another thing that happened in 2010 is that I joined the Cleveland Fusion women’s football team. I reasoned that, with less time to attend SCA events, I could happily say I was actively participating as I hand-sewed this dress at home between practices and workouts. I bought silk twill fabric and dyed it with plants and bug carcasses! I also bought silk thread, so every part of the gown would be an authentic material. I compiled images of women from around 1200 near Germany and compared sleeve shapes and necklines. I drafted a pattern and sewed a “test gown” in linen and linen-wool mix.
The main thing I was unsure about was how to attach gems to the gown. The maidens in Das Nibelungnied were very keen on sewing pearls and precious gems! The poet bangs on and on about it! I researched and found the cheapest possible small cabochons – ten millimeter diameter stones in jasper and aventurine from Fire Mountain Gems – and tried to figure out how to mount them. I bought soapstone and pewter ingots to cast my own mountings. When that really, really didn’t work, I went back to Fire Mountain Gems and bought silver cabochon mountings. They were too small.
The gem thing was a big preoccupation for 2010-2012.
I remember being at an SCA event and hand-sewing the trim on one of the sleeves. I horrified another woman by tearing the strip of red silk for the trim. (I had heard it was easier to get a straight line by tearing along the weave than cutting with scissors. Also, I was lazy and knew I had dyed more red than I needed.) By the end of that event, I was close to done, but the bit at the bottom of the sleeve was coming out fiddly, and I was afraid of what to do about the collar and had still not figured out the gems. That was the last time I remember working on it.
I packed the unfinished gown in a bag with the gems and my unused fabric and threads and, incidentally, a letter from my Aunt Grace, dated March 20, 2011. (Was I reading it? Carrying it around until I could compose a reply? Whatever reason, we have a shockingly clear date for when I Gave Up.)
THEN some things happened. A lot of things. I went to Clarion. I started regularly selling fiction. My Crohn’s disease reached a breaking point and I ended up in the hospital most of 2015. My older sister moved in with me in late 2015, and she took over my sewing room as a storage area.
Then covid hit, and then I had to actually evict my older sister to get her out of my house. And then we had to renovate the third floor to undo all the damage said sister had done to the room in five years through hoarding and leaving windows open. So the hoarding mess was removed from the sewing room and then the renovation mess took it over in, um, 2021?
But then, LO! A year or so ago I FINALLY had my sewing room back and I went through my things, sorting them from the mess that they had been left in under all the piles of not-my-stuff and I found: THE DRESS, still all packed away in its tote bag with all the materials to complete it, including a pair of scissors!
I was shocked how little was left to be done – one quarter of one sleeve-edging and the collar! How long could that take? I thought I could finish it in time for the next SCA meeting.
And then, okay, that didn’t happen. I found that in the intervening 14 YEARS I had gotten out of practice hand-sewing. It took longer than I expected to finish the sleeve. But that just left the collar, and I figured I could get it done for the next SCA event, which happened to be a Costumers and Armorer’s event! “Dressed to Kill.”
Yeah, I did not finish in time for that event, but I did bring it in its bag to work on.
But then came the Regional Arts and Sciences Fair, April 13, and my dear twin sister was running the contest and worried she wouldn’t have enough entrants, so I said, “oh, fine, it’s a deadline! I’ll do it!”
I had to SIGN UP. There was a form. I was ON THE HOOK.
So with two weeks to work, I hastily finished up the collar and had time even to edge a piece of waste fabric for a belt. I gave up on the hand-mounted cabochons which never worked out and used beads and plaques I already had to adorn the neck.
My sister very kindly leant me her own notes on 12th century gowns so I could quickly assemble my “documentation packet” for the contest, since what I had failed to pack in that bag 14 years ago was my own research. (That was probably on my laptop two laptops ago?) Over the course of a few days I slapped together a 20-page document detailing all the reasons for the shape of the sleeves and the length of the hem, etc.
Packed in the bag was a hand-woven silk cord I’d made myself, to lace me into the gown. I just had to snip off the end that was all loops to mount the weaving.
The only question was: would this gown even FIT? I mean, I started 14 years ago! I have been… many sizes in the past 14 years, through football and Crohn’s disease and lately my clothes are all tight. Worrisomely tight. I mean the “Fat jeans” are tight.
No, Grace said, you can’t get away with not wearing it. The judging of costumes requires that they be modeled.
Did I mention this delicate-ass THING is hand-sewn? Not just one line of stitches per seam, yo. I sewed and ENCAPSULATED every seam, some seams are flat-felled which means THREE hand-stitched lines. Then there’s the sleeves, which I ended up lining and inter-lining so those wankers had three lines of stitches covered UP by a fourth.
I had recently torn one of my nice work dresses putting it on over my increased bulk. I didn’t DARE try this thing on until the night before the event. I even tried it on Brian, first, and found the lacing would not close on him, despite his waist being thinner than mine. Yipe.
Grace reassured me, “We squish,” she said. “You have lacing. So what if it’s open?”
With a week to go, I resolutely skipped snacks and desserts and ran on my elliptical every day that I didn’t bike to work. Desperation moves, yes.
Friday night, sewed down the last bit of the back of the collar and ironed the gown. I felt embarrassed by how sloppy the collar was. I’d really had to rush. I knew from past experience that in arts contests, you are judged by your sloppiest stitch. I did not have high hopes. At the event site, a Catholic school, Grace helped me put the completed thing on for the first time, tightening my hand-made lacing cord through the teeny hand-sewn lacing holes.
(She also quickly sewed back on a bead that fell off in the process of dressing because, of course, my beading was very rushed and fragile, and I couldn’t sew on my own shoulder!)
Lo, I present, Das Nibelun-gown:
Not only did it fit, I scored the highest of anyone at the art contest and was named Baronial Arts Champion! Excelsior!
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