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Hair and Head-dresses

2-22-05:  I picked up some beautiful brass pins from Historic Enterprises at Estrella War this weekend to wear with my bundlein.  I'm so excited!  There are eight of their "veil" weight pins, which I plan on using on my outer veil, plus I picked up a set of 4 of the heavier "dressing" pins.  I'll find something to use those for, I'm sure!

1-10-05:  Well, easing back into this project, I decided to go ahead and hem a linen outer veil so I will have workable final pieces for the bundlein.  I still want to do a silk one as well, but this one will do for now.  I also wanted to try my first shot at a hand-rolled hem edging on linen before I give the sheer silk a go.  I'm pretty pleased with the results and it didn't take as long as I feared it would.

As previously covered, I used the already hacked up draped diaper weave  piece to get an idea of the final pattern.  I unpinned what I already had, folded it lengthwise, picked a side I like best, and neatened up the lines for a "pattern" piece to lay on the fold, as you see on the left.  It still surprises me how long this ends up being, but hey, the drape doesn't lie, yuk, yuk.  After cutting out a piece of my lighter weight linen according to the pattern, I got down to business on the hemming.  I'm really glad my linen is 60" wide, my front edge is selvedge, which blends in well with the back edge of the vach.  I ran a line of little machine stitches around the outer edge, trimmed back the linen to the stitch line, and started sewing.  It came out a little wavy by the time I was done, but I'm still happy with it, and I think this will give it a bit more body when I'm wearing it.  I'm also pleased with the length of this, I think it's going to look great!  To the left, I tried to take a detail shot of my very first rolled-hem, in the center is the whole veil hanging off my work-table, and the last shows the completed veil pinned to serious head.  All in all, a most pleasant Sunday afternoon.  I still need to finalize the ties for the vach strip, too.

8-18-04:  After I worked on the coutil, I decided to go ahead and put together the vach, so I could get them off my printer where they've been in the way since I pleated them.  I need more work surfaces in here if I'm going to keep several projects running at once.  I have ended up constructing a pretty solid headband-type strip, and I took lots of pictures because I didn't really have a methodology in mind while I was doing it.  In case anyone ever wanted to duplicate this idea, here goes.

I decided to tack the pleated linen strips to a backing piece, to try and add more structure that would allow me to trim off a large amount of the extra fabric that I knew would accumulate at the back long edge of the ensemble.  I was also keeping in mind SG's comments that she isn't that crazy about the extra bulk that she ended up with on her set, so I also tried to control fullness wide enough to keep the cumulative curving tendency to a minimum.  I envisioned some kind of rectangular tapered band that I could just tie on over the wulsthaube layers.  So I started with a rectangle about 18" long, plus 2" on either end for allowance, and about 8" wide.  One long edge of the rectangle is a selvedge edge to help reduce bulk.  I tacked the first vach strip along the selvedge edge, and sewed it down by machine from the back.  I should also mention that I spent some time with each vach strip as I went along evening out the pleats, and then ironing the bejeezus out of it before any sewing.  I used a comb to help even out the pleats, a trick I read about on a smocking website when I was looking for info to smock my Flemish shift.  I had the first vach overhang the selvedge edge a bit, so the backing fabric potentially wouldn't be visible, as you can hopefully tell to the right.  Then I just started adding layers, ironing after as well as before every row, to try and compress the fabric as much as possible.  I ended up with this picture on the left when I was done with all six layers.  Stitch lines make it look like more layers!  So then I started thinking about how I could finish the assembled strip.  My first thought was to eliminate as much bulk as possible, so I flipped the strip over, folded back the backing, and graded the raw vach strip edges, as seen to the right.  I then laid the backing back over, flipped the strip back over, and decided to use the back edge of the backing to encase the back edges of the vach rows.  I turned the back edge down once, then folded the whole thing snug against the back vach edges, and stitched it down.  Turned out to be a tidy and solid little strip, as you can see here on the right. I think I could even wash this without any loss of structure.   I haven't finished the ends yet, I might narrow them down to points and add ties, or leave it square and add a couple ties, I don't know which yet.  For now, it will be pinned.

So then I threw the vach on Serious Head.  My plan is to have the schleir forward edge be a selvedge edge, which will hopefully make it transparent that the veil and the vach are separate pieces.  The vach are pinned at the nape, around the tied corners of the unterhaube layer.  Each successive layer will encompass the earlier ones, even at the nape.  I then added a linen outer layer of a length-wise rectangle to serve as the "test schleir."  I skewed the placement of the veil to have one side be longer than the other to wrap around the chin to form the bundlein silhouette.

I made some unexpected discoveries during this process, of course.  With the veil separate from the vach, it could potentially be difficult to get the veil to stay on effectively that far back on my head.  On Serious Head, I pinned it to her (she's such a good voodoo doll substitute, not a single complaint) but that won't be an option on a live person.  On the other hand, the line of pins I made on her corresponds pretty well with the pins I see on the Nuremberg Dance bundlein.  Next, as you can see in the pics above, the veil shape I assumed would work best turned out to be problematic.  I actually went ahead and hacked off a bunch of the fabric to more closely approximate the length seen in the artwork, and even so, the fabric didn't want to drape into the elegant lines you can see around the dance attendee's chin.  When I took the hacked veil off the head to see what shape I ended up with, I got an unexpectedly deep bell curve, which I made longer so the chin strap could go all the way to the opposite side, which the rectangle couldn't achieve evenly or at the right angle.  In order to achieve the correct lines along the side, I pulled the veil straight back from the center back to create the length used to wrap around the chin, as illustrated in the first picture below.  The second picture is my final result, all pinned in place.  Still a bit (more like a lot!) longer under the chin than shown in the artwork, but I'm happy with the results so far.  This schleir is a piece of old diaper weave cotton that I cut out of a worn out shift, it's much drapier than the linen.  All these layers even disguise the towel bulge at the back of the head.  Not a bad day's tinkering.

8-16-04:  I went ahead and pleated six selvedge edge strips of linen for my first set of vach.  I also have the gold-edged ruffled silk ribbon that I want to try, but I'll do this set as my daily wear.  I haven't actually assembled the pieces yet, but the first picture is of the smocking pleater in action, and the second picture is of the finished strips just piled on top of each other.  I'll be evening out the pleats and tacking the layers together as a separate "headband" type of accessory to wear under the outer veil.  Let me throw in a little cheer for the smocking pleater here:  woo, baby, this is the only way to go!  Still fiddley, but totally worth it.  Thanks, SG!

8-4-04:  I've been a bit side-tracked lately with dealing with my four year old.  How is it that everyone knows right away what one means by the "terrible twos," but no one has yet coined a phrase for the "f***king fours?"  It's been horrible, but I think we're making progress now.  Thank goodness, I was having sewing withdrawal.

I've managed to finally get my new wulste cut out of the leftover waste silk that Saragrace used.  The wool stuffing in the failed linen incarnation turned out to be OK, but guess what?  Un-stuffing is about as tedious as stuffing, I had to take a bunch of time to "re-fluff" the wool I wanted re-use, so it would still stuff again smoothly, not lumpy.  Too funny.  The new wulste looks awesome, here are some pictures.  On the left is the completed wulste, with the shaping stitches already in place.  Mine didn't seem to curve as much as SG's did, but it twisted more.  It really shows when you look at the long seam line on the third picture.  The rest of the shots are of the wulste in action on my serious head, on which I have wrapped a towel to give it more bulk.  Oddly, the third picture is a fair approximation of the shape of my head with my hair up in sticks, isn't that weird?  In the last picture, I went ahead and threw an unterhaube layer on from a cloth diaper.  I'm thinking now that I may keep this layer as tied on, and that I will shape the fabric to be a big half-circle with corners that are convenient to tie at the nape of my neck.

On another note, another distraction I have been dealing with is getting plantings done in the backyard before monsoon season really hits.  It's a big thing out here in Arizona, and now that we have a pool, I don't want all the loose top soil that the previous owner left for me to wash into it.  So what do you think of this bed?  Guess what it's called?  Folks, meet Nierembergia Purple, which I found for $3.50 a pot at Sprawl-Mart.  I saw the name and couldn't resist!

7-23-04:  Well, the heavy linen for my final wulste isn't working out.  It's just too stretchy.  It might be because it was SO humid in Virginia while I was working on it, and now that I'm back to drier Arizona it shrank in some places internally, but who knows.  There's just enough of the waste silk that SG used to do one out of that for me as well.  I hope to be able to reuse the wool stuffing I put in my linen wulste, but I am pretty concerned that it was so humid and muggy while I was in Virginia that it may have felted inside the wulste.  I'll find out this weekend!

7-1-04:  Saragrace has found a few more awesome head-dress pictures on-line that I wanted to drop in here.  I think she's been finding them on Images Real, which is not a source I know much about, so please excuse my not knowing much about the artwork itself.  This first one, by my read from the early 1500's,  is a really great shot of the steuchlein from the back, on the woman in the middle fore-ground, and this shape is evidently referred to as the hufeisenhaube, or horse-shoe hat.  It sure looks like a horse-shoe to me!  It's interesting how far back this wulste sits on her head.  The orderly disposition of the pleats, with the added binding strip covering them is pretty cool, too.  Looks like this would be a pretty solid arrangement.  Some of the other ladies in this image have interesting steuchleins as well.  The striped one on the left must be over an enormous wulste, and the profile of the woman in white close to the right column is very dramatic.  The "groove" forward of the wulste is very emphatic.

This next one, on the left, is from 1514, and shows another great back shot.  I would guess this one is simply the wulsthaube without the steuchlein veil.  I'm really excited about how much this looks like the mock-ups SG and I have been making.  The sizing of the wulste appears to be almost exactly the same.  I'll have to find a better resolution version to see if I can get some better idea of how to assemble my wulsthaube.

This last one, on the right, I think titled "Anna Barth" and from the Lamberger Portrait Book, is just a cool shot of a GIANT wulste, though from later, like 1575-ish.  I totally need to develop a wulste wardrobe, as I've mentioned before.

In other news, I'm also working on putting together my final wulste (as opposed to the mock-up we have already done) from the more appropriate materials.  I'll be making mine from heavy linen, stuffed with the wool stuffing that SG got from Weir Dolls.  I'll post pics of that as I progress.  I'll do wool felt cabbage to cover my shaping stitches when I get to that point.  I plan on taking most of this with me to Virginia for something crafty to do while I'm there.

6-22-04:  Haven't had much time to continue on the vach experiments, but I had an email yesterday from Teddy, who had an awesome suggestion to try.  Teddy regularly boils and otherwise abuses his fabric prior to sewing to circumvent unpleasant surprises later, not a bad practice for me to start.  Anyway, he suggests boiling linen (or other fabrics) to distort the selvedge.  When you boil fabric, sometimes the main fabric will shrink, leaving the more firmly woven selvedge more or less intact, creating a distorted edge.  I though about this for about 10 seconds, and said, Duh, how many times have I done this to wool?  What a great idea!  I threw some of my fabric-store.com linen in a pot yesterday to boil while I was doing house-work, and three hours later didn't notice much change, but I will definitely be trying this on other weights, fabrics and linen from other sources.  Maybe I'll be able to get some kind of period vach construction after all.  Thanks, Teddy!

6-17-04:  I just had to put in a picture of Saragrace's wulste.  We ordered 100% wool felt from Weir Dolls for doing the cabbage, and she noticed that they also had wool stuffing, so she got some of that for us to try.  It looks great!  I was going to do my final wulste in heavy linen with wool stuffing, but now I'm considering waste silk like hers.  This is nubby silk, cut on the bias, stuffed with wool stuffing, and NO shaping stitches yet.  Amazing!  We're both stunned by how well this curved on its own.  On the vach front, distressing the linen selvedge edge isn't working at all, so I'm rummaging through my stash looking for other fabrics to try.  Bummer!  I really had high hopes for the linen working out, but it's turning out to be solid as a rock,  I really don't want to try to weave in distortion in a handwoven piece, though I've done it before accidentally.  We played a bit with a little pronged pleating tool for dolls that SG has, but they didn't really look right.  The smocking ones looked way more like the paintings.

6-14-04:  While I threw together my black Flemish partlet yesterday, Saragrace worked on her vach experiment.  It looks so cool, and I think she's really pleased with the results.  She's also thrown in the towel and will be making her own Nuremberg gown since we're having so much fun with the bundlein.  Picture me innocently asking, "So what gown do you think you'll be wearing your bundlein with?"  Subtle, huh?  She plans on some different details from mine, so now people will be getting two for one out of this journal, neato.  So, on to the vach.

SG used her smocking pleater to create loosely smocked strips which she has stacked in layers to create the vach rows.  The length of these tacked pieces is just enough to pin around SG's head at the nape.  The crescent shape formed naturally as she stacked the layers and evened out the pleats.  The first picture is sort of an overall shot, and I tried to get closer in the second shot.  In the third picture, we stopped and took a picture of the pleats partially ironed so you can see the difference.  To the left of the pencil is ironed, to the right is not.  The rest of the pictures have all the vach ironed, SG irons to heighten the "crimp" effect.  If she goes with this method, she'll pull the first thread from the edge of each vach after she presses it, so the smocking threads don't show, but leave the rest in for structure.

So then, of course, we had to play with draping over this, which just breaks our hearts, as you know.  Pictures of how SG wears the wulste are here from the front and here from the side, so you can see how someone with shorter hair might wear the wulste.  For now, she also has tied a triangle over the wulste to serve as her unterhaube, like I did earlier, but she will probably be doing something else with these layers in the end.  We started by placing the vach strip over her head, and then we pinned this at the nape.  In the second picture, I then rolled up the excess enough to tuck against the wulste, which also gave us a some supplemental padding forward of the wulste, a look that Saragrace really likes.  We then draped an un-edged veil over the vach to hold them in place.  We're still talking about how to treat the edges of the top veil, but you can see clearly in the artwork that these were edged on at least three sides.  It's speculation about this outer layer in fact, which is pushing us to the "distressed edge" vach that we plan on trying next.  Moving on, I next pushed a row of pins back through the supplemental padding into the wulste in an effort to create little "pin dimples."  I then pinned on a separate strip at the back for the chin strap.  In practice, I think the outer veil was all one piece, but we were working with scraps here!  Anyway, the last three shots are just different angles of the final draping.  Pretty cool, I think!  Final pieces would look smoother, we didn't have things pulled as tight as we usually do.  I like the look of vach made like this, but SG and I both agree this was unlikely to be the period method.  We'll just have to keep playing, darn!

6-12-04:  I got together with Saragrace to play with the wulste some more yesterday, and I waited to tape my hair til I got there so she could take some gallery pictures of that.  So now there's a little hair taping gallery here.  Enjoy, it's really not that hard!  We'll be building a gallery based on SG's shorter hair for possible wulste arrangements for that as well.

So we played with a few things yesterday.  We experimented with supplemental padding, and really looked closely at various steuchlein shots for additional wulste shapes.  I think they must have had a "wulste wardrobe" to make all those different silhouettes.  Anyway, there are a few new pics at the end of the Wulste Construction gallery, showing a tied on unterhaube and one of the additional padding, all over taped hair rather than my sticks.  We were trying to get some different pinning scenarios.

We also played with some fabrics to start thinking about how to do the vach on the outer veil.  I'm still looking through Collette Wolff's The Art of Manipulating Fabric for more ideas to try, (and there are tons, you should check out this book when you get a chance) but here's what we played with yesterday.  On the left is a piece of sheer chiffon that we ran the selvedge edge through SG's unthreaded smocking pleater to create a crimped look.  Then I folded the edge back and forth and pinned it in place to create extra rows.  An interesting effect.  I bet we end up using at least part of this idea in the end, the regular crimp appearance is too good to pass up, and we could maximize the effect even more by starching or sizing the fabric first.  On the right is an old flour sack towel (Williams-Sonoma, SG says) where we distressed the heck out of the selvedge edge in an attempt to create a fabric distorted ruffle.  The idea is we'll do this as much as we can, and then iron straight down to heighten the crimp effect.  It looks much better in person, but this would be pretty tedious to do on a yard or more of fabric to get enough strips for six or so rows.  We plan on trying this on linen next, but, as you can see, it's surprisingly easy to rip the fabric doing this. 

We pretty much decided that the vach piece over the brow at least was probably a separate strip. We're also wondering if this anonymous Portrait of a Woman (this one is from a scan from Early German Painting, page 103) is showing her vach flipped over, from the stitch side.  Maybe she didn't feel like ironing that day?  Or maybe the artist was lazy.  Ah well, just speculation, but we're pretty much settled on the vach being a separate piece.  The methods I want to try from Wolff's book are from her section on ruffles.  She shows some edge-on line drawings of effects created by a pinked edge ruffle that looks very promising.  I want to try a double-edged pinked gathered ruffle and fold it in half, offset somehow, and appliqué them somehow...  She has a ton of stuff worth trying, I think.  She shows how to control fullness for effect, too.

I'll also be doing some mock-ups of the false braids, even though that's not the head-dress style I'll end up wearing.  I found a picture in Saragrace's copy of Spät/gotische Tafel/malerei in Sachsen by Ingo Sandner that I think shows a possible arrangement for attaching them at the back and how the ribbons are placed.  Look for that soon, I have to make up a false braid first.

Lastly, I want to put a plug in for another yahoo group I have been using for inspiration and resources, the Frazzled Frau yahoo group.  This is another group of people who have a lot of info that's been very helpful in construction clues.

6-6-04:  While we were working on the wulste, we talked about ways that long hair might be put up to make it easier to fit the wulste.  I decided to try my hand at hair-taping myself just to see how hard it was.  Someone had to wake up first to light the kitchen fires back in the day, and I bet some households were small enough that no one else got up with her just to help her with her hair!  Over the years, I've read several "how-to" articles on-line, and came up with the method I used.  Most styles, like Italian hair taping, wrap the hair with tape rather than braid it, or twist it back in rope twisted strands and proceed from there.  This took me about 10 minutes while I was watching TV, including doing the braids.  I think I'll be wearing my hair like this more often, to say the least.  Later on, I'll put together a progress shot photo gallery, my husband was too engrossed in "Crossing Jordan."  (Ack, <gag!>)

I started by braiding my hair into two braids at the back of my neck that just hang straight down the center of my back, like you see in the later woodcuts.  I threaded the grosgrain ribbon onto a child's plastic needle (I like these for lacing up kirtles and what not) and secured one end of the ribbon in a knot through and around part of the braid as high up as I could, on the left side braid.  I crossed the braid to the right side and started sewing it to my head by feel, working my way around the back of my crown.  It just happened that when I finished with the left braid I was in a good spot to do an extra stitch and start back in the other direction, winding the right side braid around my crown to the left.  I hit the right length of ribbon first try, a bit more than a yard.  It's so secure, with no pulling anywhere, that I simply buried the needle in the base of the braids to end it off.  I can't wait to try the wulste over this!

6-5-04:  Saragrace is finally back, so she and Lonnie came over for a costuming day today, yay!  We got going on the wulste today.  It's amazing how much becomes clear once you get down to business and start construction!  I stopped and took a lot of pictures while we played, and it seems easier to put that together in a gallery, so here is what we did today.

5-30-04:  With my sewing buddy SG out of town, I haven't been doing any actual construction on this gown yet, but, my consolation prize is that I got possession of SG's ILL copy of Textiler Hausrat while she's gone, so it's been great to do some catching up on that!  We also finally tracked down a copy of our own in Germany, it should be on the way by now.  I myself am waiting for my copy of the Housebook Master, is it ever going to get here?!  I'm hoping to see it sometime next week.  So, I've been filling up my time by reviewing the archives and files at GermanRenCostume.  I sure am glad that I'm taking the time to go through the posts themselves, I've been picking up artwork links and awesome site and book references left and right.  Also, a surprising number of topics of interest to me for this particular dress are NOT found under a relevant subject line, in other words, if I weren't going through the posts individually, I would never know this stuff was there!  If you haven't joined this group yet, you need to, believe me.  Anyway, the topic I've been focusing on is the head-covering construction. 

I've been gleaning bits and pieces of info from message posts, and have been using Katherine Barich's Textiler Hausrat translations posted at GermanRen on the Women's Headress and Women's Accessories sections.  I also found Marion McNealy's Curious Frau on the construction of her steuchlein interesting.  She says she has some more info to post, I can't wait to see it!  My first hurdle was understanding the terms for the many layers of the various head-coverings I see in the artwork.  Here are some of the conclusions I have arrived at.

I plan on constructing the bundlein from Dürer's Nuremberg Lady Dressed to Go to a Dance in at least three layers, plus the wulste and possibly the chin strapping separate.  However, I think it's pretty clear from the picture that the chin strap is integral with the "schleir," the outer veil, so I prefer to not have to make the chin strap a separate piece, but that veil may have to be oddly shaped to get the right look.  I'm thinking that I will do my hair up in sticks on the back of my head, probably not braided, just up in a knot.  Around the bun, I will make a wulste, or padded roll, with tapered ends, like these coptic examples seen here,  that join at the ends to make an exaggerated upside-down tear-drop silhouette on the back of my head, as seen to the right in a detail from Four Witches, also by Dürer.  I'll have to do my hair up higher that I usually do.  At this point, I don't plan on doing anything to actually attach the wulste to my head, but this would be more of an issue for someone with shorter hair.  I'm thinking if I size it right, it will just clamp right around my bun.  In practice, that may not work so well, but we'll see.  If I had shorter hair, I would consider making a base coif to attach the wulste to, maybe I can experiment on that with SG, she has shorter hair.  Over the wulste will go a shape fitted coif, called the unterhaube, that in combination with the wulste is called the wulsthaub, go figure.  Dürer did a study of a woman in just her wulsthaube that can be seen here to the left.  I might make this out of felted wool, or just shape a cap out of linen or something.  Probably felted wool is the way to go, but that could be problematic with my wool allergy.  I'll have to think about that.

Over this will go the steuchlein, a veil that will hold the wulsthaube in place.  Steuchleins can be plain or fancy, sometimes with gold borders, or sometimes black or red.  They were also sometimes needle-worked or cut-worked, or sometimes even patterned material, though I think that was a bit later than I'm going for time-wise. They could be made from the sheer and delicate "nettle cloth," linen, cotton, ticking/coutil, or even in some cases silk damask, since there was a little blurb about forbidding maidservants to wear silk damask steuchlein.   The steuchlein basically will tie at the nape of the neck, and I may sew some pleats in it at the back bottom edge ahead of time to make it lie nicely back there under where I tie or otherwise fasten the corners, as you can see in the Four Witches detail.  Over this ensemble will go a schleir, or veil, which will also be the piece that has enough of a tail to come around my chin.  From what I've been able to glean from the inventories detailed in TH, it's the combination of wulsthaube-steuchlein-schleir ensemble that is referred to as the bundlein.  That seems to be the general consensus on GermanRen as well.  The schleir was required for married women of means in their church-wear, and there was a brief stab at attempting to enforce its use at other public functions as well.  The most noted feature of the schleir I have been looking at is the arrangement of the pleat-like edgings over the brow, and along the long edge. They almost look crimped to me, like when we run fabric through Saragrace's pleating machine.  Anyway, these rows are called "vach," Katherine Barich's translated description reads, "overlapping, finely crimped edges, known as 'vach' were held together with a pointed fastener."  I'm trying to figure out what the "pointed fasteners" are that are supposed to be so visible in the artwork!  I'll have to ask on GermanRen, I guess.  The number of vach was regulated, I think the preference was for no more than six over the brow, and I can see for myself in the artwork that the long edges tend to have one or two.  The schleir could be white or red, as seen to the right, and with or without gold borders.  I'm pretty sure I've seen other spangled examples in my wanderings, as well.

I was interested to read in Katherine Barich's translation of the existence of the "Steuchlaholz," which she translates as "steuchlein wood."  What a shame that no examples survived, by implication, I wonder if this piece was used to achieve the silhouette seen here to the left in this steuchlein.  It bears exploring as well.

So, on to making my wulste!