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Viking Sundress, or Musings on Grain lines and Historical Assumptions

Updated: Feb 5, 2022

This is my final official quarantine project - our stay at home order was lifted, and I'm returning to work.  Although the official quarantine is ending, I expect that I'll still be spending a lot of time at home and can continue sewing. However, since I knew that this was coming to an end I wanted a nice quick project to round out this time.


I dug back into the stash and found about a yard and a half of a brown woven fabric. The fibers are much wider and courser than what I'm used to working with, so I suspect that the local fabric store would have described it as "homespun". I'm not sure what the material is made from (I acquired it when my mom was de-stashing, and I doubt that she remembers the fiber content either). I suspect it may be a linen blend, that would certainly explain the stubbornness of the wrinkles. Since we usually buy our fabric from Joann's, it's more likely a blend than just linen. My first thought was to make a pair of pants for Ren Faire, but my pattern for pants requires significantly more fabric (and interfacing) than I had on hand. I decided to try one of those viking apron dresses that are so popular.  I've been thinking about making one for a while, especially because the apron by itself looks like it would make for a really comfy summer dress. Or I could pair it with an under-dress and jewelry to get that viking look.  I found a simple pattern online and got to work. I decided that I would just make the dress as long as the fabric I had would allow and see what I came up with. I started with the pattern from Lady Fortune St Keyne, and it was very easy to follow. Since I didn't have a set length in mind and just wanted to be economical I folded my fabric in half twice - once long-wise and once short. Note! You can't cut the fabric this way, but you can lay it out to maximize fabric while minimizing measuring, and you'll only measure half of the chest height.


The dotted lines are the fold lines and the blue lines are the cutting lines. Remember to unfold the green line before cutting. For a full tutorial on making the garment I highly recommend the Fortune St Keyne tutorial linked above and at the end of this post.


The only part of this dress that was particularly challenging was the back gores. Getting all three of them to line up nicely at the back was extremely difficult. It didn't seam like it should be that hard, but they did not want to cooperate with me. I need to find a good tutorial on how to insert gores; I wonder if it's easier to attach the gores to each other before attaching them to the garment. The final fit on the back is a little weird, I think that I ended up inserting the gores an inch or two too low. I also ended up hemming significantly more off the back than the front, which corresponds to my theory that the back gores were too low.  Regardless of the final placement of the gores, they were all cut on the grainline, and that made for a nice visual on the back. Since the threads making up the fabric are so wide the grain is very visible. I don't usually pay a lot of attention to the grain - I know to follow it when cutting, but I usually don't think about it much past that. It was cool that the back and center gore piece were all going the same direction, but the two gores in between were on the bias. I think it is very visually interesting.


Closeup of the back gores. As you can see, I wasn't kidding about the wrinkles.


The only changes I made to this dress were the straps - I made them significantly longer than recommended and I sewed them directly to the front and back of the garment. I made them longer because it's always easier to make them shorter later than to lengthen them then.  I went ahead and attached them for two reasons: one is that I don't currently own a pair of awesome brooches to attach the straps, the other is that I want to be able to wear this garment alone as a sundress. The extra length turned out to be a good idea - I needed the straps to be long enough to overlap the front of the dress, and if they straps were much shorter then the dress would have been digging into my arm pits.


Front and back of the dress over an under dress.


Historical Accuracy...going into this project I felt fairly confident about this outfit. After all, I've seen these Viking Aprons all over the internet as well as at ren faires and SCA events. However, while looking for more information I discovered a guest post by Cathy Raymond on The Dreamstress that argued there was actually very little evidence to support the style.  I was a little disappointed, and then I got a little embarrassed. The image of these apron dresses is so saturated in my virtual and physical environments that I took it for granted. I just assumed that since so many people were making them in the same way that they must be right. As someone who studied history in college it was doubly embarrassing to realize that I'd made such a baseless assumption. There is evidence of brown woolen smokkrs at Birka, so at least the color of my garment is plausible, but it is more likely to have been wool or wool lined with linen than made out of linen.


So here's what I have for now:

A medieval cotton tunic under dress and alleged Viking Apron. A fantasy medieval belt that looks cool, and a long strand of turquoise beads with silver beads. I don't think that the Vikings had a lot of access to turquoise, but I like how the chunky beads look at the top of the dress, and the silver beads intermingled are nice. As stores re-open I'll consider purchasing beads that look more authentic. I'll also consider buying a pair of cool brooches, but I want to see how things go with work the next few months before I start making luxury purchases. In the meantime, I'll add this brown dress to my summer sundress rotation.




Item: Viking Apron

How it fits the challenge: Timetravelling - I fully intend to use this as a medieval overdress and as a summer sundress

Material: Linen blend (I think)

Year: 9th-10th centuries (800-1000 AD)

Notions: Thread

How historically accurate is it? It's really hard to say.  There is little surviving evidence of what people were wearing, especially vikings, and of course "vikings" were not a wholly homogeneous group who all dressed exactly alike. The color is good, the material probably should've been wool rather than a linen blend, and the shape is debatable.

Hours to complete: 6

First worn: Chatting with friends in a video call

Total Cost: $0 (Probably about $20 to buy 1 1/2 yards of comparable fabric today)


Sources:

Raymond, Cathy. (2012). "Terminology: The So-Called 'Viking' Apron Dress." http://thedreamstress.com/2012/01/terminology-the-so-called-viking-apron-dress/

St Keyne, Fortune. (2015). "Viking: A Quick and Dirty Tutorial Viking Apron Dress or "Smokkr"." http://www.gildedkisses.com/2015/03/a-quick-and-dirty-tutorial-viking-apron.html

Thumen, Hilde. (2020). "Viking Women: Aprondress." http://urd.priv.no/viking/smokkr.html



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