German split-brim hat – Historical Sew Monthly February 2017

My German Renaissance Split-Brim hat with grey ostrich feathers worn with my black velveteen Gollar and my Cranach gown costume.

In mid-January the SCA barony I live in celebrated the step-up of a new Baron and Baroness, who have German personas. To recognize their elevation in a symbolic kind of way, several of us planned to add German elements to our existing costumes. As I wasn’t entirely sure if I could pull together a new German gown in time for the coronet, I decided to start with accessories. First the Gollar I already posted about, and next a new hat.

November Naalbinding

November’s naalbound hat (and me being super-goofy)

Quick post today – just to show off the new naalbound hat I made, finished off in November.

It’s purchased 100% wool yarn, a dark grey heather made of Icelandic Lopi yarn. (The wool I brought back a year earlier from my trip to Iceland!) This is the alafosslopi.

Celebration – headwear

Complete “celebration” Italian outfit including the padded roll hat, teal figured velvet overdress, and green silk underdress with sleeves

To top off (ha ha) my new Italian Renaissance costume, I needed headwear. I looked at a few different options:

• I could use the Reta I already made – it fits well and is correct for the outfit I’m making.
• I can go without any headwear at all – many of the portraits show women without headwear.
• I could finish off the netted headdress I started, which is about half done, with the most challenging parts done.. but it’s rather unimpressive….
• I could try something new and totally different…. which would require drafting a new pattern and starting from scratch…

.. so of COURSE with 2 weeks to go before the event, and NONE of the garments completed yet, I opted to go for the fourth option.

Istanbul: Tarpus

Complete Tarpus with the Hirka

The third item I made for my Ottaman costume was a hat – the Tarpus, described from my overview as:

“Tarpus: tall pointed or pillbox hat”

I spent a fair amount of time looking at different hat styles, trying to figure out what kind of hat I wanted to make. There was a pillbox hat with a scarf over it, the scarf worn alone with a headband, a chunky hat, a tall pillar hat, and then also a super-crazy hat that I would LOVE to make….

German hats – first attempts

Tellerbarret – German platter hat

On May 17 I published my entry for the Historical Sew Monthly May 2016 challenge – a pair of German hats (worn together). I’ve been pretty busy with a few different things so I didn’t get to the longer post about these hats until now.

Goldhaube and Tellerbarret worn with a mundane sweater (iphone photo)

I was inspired to work on these hats because the the (SCA) Royal Progress is Cologne for Silverwolf 2016. With this in mind, I wanted to attempt to make my first German costume. While I’m strongly attracted to the Cranach-style gowns, I thought that they might be too fitted for me to accomplish right now on short notice (since I would need a hand with the fitting). Instead I opted for the Landsknecht style, which nicely worked with the “holes” theme of the May Historical Sew Monthly challenge.

Like my Byzantine costume, which also had a short deadline and my Istanbul costume (likewise, short deadline) I didn’t do in-depth research for this costume; instead starting with Pinterest.