Teal Propoloma – The fan-shaped hat

New blog post! I made a heavily embellished teal and silver hat for my Byzantine costume wardrobe

Back in 2016 I made a Byzantine costume for an event/competition (where I won first place in the advanced category!) and part of that was a gorgeous, fun, huge fan-shaped hat called the Propoloma. My pattern was speculative, and I could see two different ways to accomplish the hat – but liked the idea of a very packable hat, especially considering how often SCA events are well out of town and require costumes that will pack up into a suitcase or duffle bag easily.

The first hat was golden, which worked well with that first costume I made (blue, with red and gold accessories) and it also worked really well with the second Byzantine costume I made too (green with gold)…

…. but then I was gifted this amazing teal top embellished with silver beads, sequins, and French wire… and the ONLY thing I could see in my mind’s eye for this was elements for another Byzantine accessory.

16th Century German – Dockenbaret – HSM Jan 2021

Black Dockenbaret

As I was doing my analysis of my German wardrobe in my German Capsule Collection post, I recognized that one of the things I wanted to add to the wardrobe was a hat in a more historically-informed colour.

I have two hats for this period already – a blue-on-blue Tellerbarret, and a teal tweed Dockenbaret with ostrich feathers. (Which I referred to as a split-brim hat.) However in portraits the most common colours are red and black, with the occasional white hat appearing as well.  I wish I could find ample heaps of affordable red wool, but alas, no such luck…. so black wool it would be!

Horned hennin V4

V-neck Burgundian gown worn with a white horned hennin

While constructing the thid version of my horned hennin, (which isn’t complete yet…) I was struck with a different idea, so kind of dropped that project (for the time being) and went back to the drafting table.

I wanted to continue on the path trying to make a collapsable and packable hennin, and decided that for this one I would do an all-white hennin, like some of the inspiration images from the research I did when constructing my second version of a horned hennin in red velvet.

Saint Birgitta’s cap

St. Birgitta’s cap

This post is incredibly long in the making – I started working on a St. Birgitta’s cap several years ago, when one of the people in the SCA (Coryn of the Wode) taught a class on how to make the cap.

Unfortunately, the cap wasn’t finished in class… so I took it in parts home, and then promptly forgot all about it. Then, for the February edition of the Historical Sew Monthly, the topic is “linen”, and while there are more elaborate linen items on my to-do list, this seemed like an accomplishable project given how few projects I was able to accomplish in 2018.

Make a packable hennin

V-neck Burgundian gown worn with a white horned hennin

I’ve offered to teach a class for Avacal’s Winter Crown on February 15, 2019 in Beiseker, Alberta. I figured I’d share a little bit of information here in case anyone was interested. (You don’t need to be an SCA member to attend the event.)