Category: Ne wat swetes ðanc, se þe biteres ne onbyrgeð (He never knows the pleasure of sweetness, who never tastes bitterness)
Make, remake, or finish a project that went wrong (can have been started prior to 2025)
Entrant: Lady Rose Le Taillor
Title; Londinium Hood
The lovely Lady Eleanor Hall inspired me to make my own medieval hood.
Hoods were used by all genders to keep themselves warm, and provide that all important head covering. They could be worn open or closed, or perched jauntily atop the head as a chaperone. The tail was called a liripipe, and the length was about conspicuous fabric consumption and fashion, rather than function.
My first attempt was with an old woollen blanket, which I dyed with food colour using Mistress Rowan’s failproof instructions (see references). I used a blue cotton for the lining, and overall, it didn’t fit well, was an odd shape, and the dye was uneven (due to the wool having differential exposure to sunlight, not the tutorial’s fault), and just too bright. I wore it for all of five minutes before deciding I needed a new one. Hence in this challenge I am both making and RE-making the hood within a month!
THL Eleanor then suggested I use Opus Elenae’s Londinium hood pattern (Londinium Hood Pattern – Opus Elenae’s Ko-fi Shop); noting it was perfect and came in different sizes. I bought it, printed it and cut it out in the medium size. I have a large head and small shoulders, so I probably should have accounted for that, but it works fine as is. I ignored the instructions which give a modern construction method and simply flat lined the entire thing, inserting the gores from the outside (Handcrafted History’s tutorial is the one I follow to perfect the tip of the gore, but I sew most of it with a simple backstitch).
The top fabric is red coating wool, and the lining is a burgundy red linen. In retrospect, a brighter contrast lining would have been nice, perhaps a black or gold.
Everything is hand stitched in red silk thread; running backstitches for the structural seams, hems turned in and felled, and each seam felled down. The wool was too thick to turn under one of the seams, so each seam got flat felled to its own side, covering the linen layer. This was a major pain, because it meant each seam was sewn THREE times, but I have to confess it looks great on the outside as well as the inside; all those neat little pin pricks of hand stitching.
The buttons were cloth (using Opus Elenae’s tutorial), and they were not easy to make, and are quite uneven. The button holes are silk embroidery thread, which is much easier than using sewing thread weight silk.
The Liripipe is comically long on me, as I didn’t measure at all; simply using the remnant of my wool and attaching it. However, this means it acts as a convenient scarf to wrap around my neck and help keep me warm.
Overall, this is an excellent hood which is warm, cosy, and fun to wear. It’s a significant improvement over the Kermit the Frog green hood.
References;
Images left to right;
- Le Livre des Simples Medecines, F.28r: Extraction of Aloe
- Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry, September illumination. Cluny MS. 65 F.9
- Tres Belles Heures de Notre Dame, f173r
Londinium Hood Pattern – Opus Elenae’s Ko-fi Shop