The Hat: Mongolian Haberdashery Take 2

Now that I'm almost out of things I've already done, the posts are getting less frequent.

I mentioned in my last post that I was making a boqtaq from scratch, and I have now done so.
If you missed my post on what the heck a boqtaq is, here is the relevant information.

I had researched and made a boqtaq last year, which was passable, but really didn't quite have the right shape, and definitely didn't have the right attachment to the head.
One of my major goals for this challenge is to make one properly, from birch bark and silk.
Of course, once you start the accuracy ball rolling, projects just get larger and larger.
First it was just birch bark, then it was silk and dyeing the silk red with cochineal. I haven't quite gotten to the point of raising silk worms and peacocks as I'd threatened briefly, but close.

My deadline for this project leads me to another goal I have now completed, teaching a brand new class: The Boqtaq: Like Wearing a Boot On Your Head, which I taught at The College of Three Ravens in my local SCA barony, last Saturday.

The following is the adapted version of the class notes.
 

The Boqtaq: Like Wearing a Boot On Your Head

The boqtaq was worn by Mongolian noblewomen from at least the 13^th century onwards. It features in portraits of many of the Mongol Khatuns (Empresses), especially those in the Chinese portion of the Empire. 

Chabi, Empress of Kublai Khan

It was about 12”-3’ high, round at the bottom and square on top, and attached to the head by a secondary hat which more resembles the headdresses of the lower classes.

For the purposes of reference, a cubit or an ell is about 18” long.

“(the boghta is) of birch-bark, some two feet high. This they generally cover with a black woolen stuff; but some of the richer women use red silk. The end is like a duck.”

-Li Chih-Chang, 1222

“On their head they have a round thing made of twigs or bark, which is an ell in height and ends on top in a square; it gradually increases in circumference from the bottom to the top, and on the top there is a long and slender cane of gold or silver or wood, or even a feather, and it is sewn on to a cap which reaches to the shoulders.

The cap as well as this object is covered with buckram, velvet or brocade, and without this headgear they never go into the presence of men, and by it they are distinguished from other women.”

-Jon Plano of Carpini, 1245

“Furthermore they have a head-dress, which they call bocca, made of bark, or such other light material as they can find, and it is big and as much as two hands can span around, and is a cubit and more high, and square like the capital of a column. This bocca they cover with costly silk stuff, and it is hollow inside, and on top of the capital, or the square on it, they put a tuft of quills or light canes also a cubit or more in length. And this tuft they ornament at the top with peacock feathers, and round the edge (of the top) with feathers from the mallard’s tail, and also with precious stones. The wealthy ladies wear such an ornament on their heads, and fasten it down tightly with an amess, for which there is an opening in the top for that purpose, and inside they stuff their hair, gathering it together on the back of the tops of their heads in a kind of knot, and putting it in the bocca, which they afterwards tie down tightly under the chin. So it is that when several ladies are riding together, and one sees them from afar, they look like soldiers, helmets on heads and lances erect. For this bocca looks like a helmet, and the tuft above it is like a lance.”

-William of Rubruck, 1255 

“Saray Mulk Khanim (chief wife of Timur Khan) was dressed in red silk, her face covered by a white veil. She wore a complex headdress, fashioned from red fabric ornamented with pearls, rubies, turquoise, feathers, and held together with gold wire. As she moved forward, the tall headdress swayed with each step.”

-Ruy Gonzales de Clavijo, 1404

Because the writings we have to document this are mostly from the writings of visiting outsiders and from pictures, it is not easy to tell what it signified or why it was shaped in that way.

Taji, sister in law of Temur Khan

It has been suggested, especially recently, that the European hennin, popular in the early 15^th century in Western Europe, was inspired by the boqtaq.

By the timing it seems possible, and yet, I would question it. We know that Europeans had the accounts above to draw from, however, as far as we know, there is no proof that anyone in Europe ever saw a boqtaq up close. I also question whether European women would have wanted to imitate the Mongolian women, since they often saw Mongols as murderous barbarians.

We have several extant examples of boqtaqs, but they are flattened and not very well preserved. It is nearly impossible to tell how they were constructed from these, except in terms of what materials were used.

We know they were made mostly of birch-bark frames, with fabric, often silk, covering them.

We can tell from the portrait of Chabi, the approximate size and shape, and how it is attached (to a point, there is much speculation involved). The portrait of Taji shows the band around her head as transparent, and therefore you can see what’s going on underneath.

Based on headdresses collected in the early 20^th century by Henning Haslund-Christensen, and kept in the National Museum of Denmark, I have extrapolated that the base for the boqtaq is probably similar to the basic bead-hanging headdress still common in Mongolia today.

Method

I bought a 4 foot square piece of Siberian birch bark, and soaked it overnight.

I decided not to go with a 2 foot tall hat, because I’m fairly sure that Chabi’s is shorter than that, and the taller ones can get very unwieldy. The one I had made before was about a foot high, and it was a little wobbly at times.

I used a yogurt container as a reference for the size of the base.

I tried to cut a 1 foot tall by 11” wide piece with the intention of shaping it into a cylinder at the bottom and bending it into corners at the top to create the square shape. Unfortunately, possibly due to not enough soaking time, when I scored the bark to make the bends, a large piece broke out between the two bends.

At this point I weighed my options and tried two different theories.

One would have been a cylinder with four trapezoids sewed onto it, and then to each other. I cut and formed those pieces, but did not sew them together, because a better idea occurred to me.

I cut one piece 11” x12”, made two scores on the bark side at 3 ½” in from either side, 8” down from the top, and bent them gently at right angles. I then used clamps and string to hold them into 3 sides of a rectangle at the top, and wrapped the bottom with string around a wine bottle.

I cut a third piece, 4” by 8” triangle, and flattened it overnight.

I let these dry.

I drilled holes in all the pieces at the attachment points, and used waxed thread to sew the pieces together. I decided to concentrate on the second design, especially given the tendency of the bark to split unexpectedly. I ended up just dealing with one split, and sewing up some of the others.

I used two clamps and a piece of wood for the top shaping, and a wine bottle for the bottom. After 36 hours it was mostly dry, and could dry the rest of the way without the support system.

Because the bark portion was a little lumpy, especially along the seams, I covered it with a layer of cotton batting. I believe that the Mongols would have used wool felt, but I didn’t have time to make some of my own, and batting was available and cheap (I did use 100% cotton, though). If one wanted to justify it, Mongols did have access to cotton, although it probably wouldn’t have been as processed as this was.

Before covering the hat with two layers of red silk, I embroidered the silk with pearl and coral beads (having learned from the last time that embroidery should happen before attaching the fabric), and left plenty of space around the diameter of the hat. I then used a doll-making stitch to secure the fabric together, trimmed the top and bottom, and hemmed them.

Finally, I made a flap for the top of the hat, and sewed it on. It is easier to see the shape of this flap in some of the later illustrations, rather than in Chabi’s. It appears to be a rectangle, the width of the top of the hat (front to back), and about 3” longer on either side. It also appears to be tacked down on both sides. 

This makes sense to me from my experiences wearing the first version--in high winds the flaps like to float around.

I made a tonsure-shaped cap out of red wool, 4” in width, and curved. I used a weaving stitch to put it together because I felt the more room I had the better. I then covered it with one  layer of red silk.

I made a long strip out of wool felt (commercially made), and covered it with black linen. I will eventually re-cover this with black silk.

I speculated, since none of the portraits show the back of the hat, that the black strip around the chin is also the same piece as the two black ribbons down the back of the hat. These are trimmed with pearls at the ends. I chose to recreate this by making a black strip long enough to go around my head under the chin, cross at the top, and hang down past my shoulders in front.

I then posit that the red silk piece goes on top of this, and is pinned to it, making the hat more secure. The hat, I believe, is attached to the red silk piece with the triangular pearl embroidered pieces shown in all of the portraits. I think the pearls are attached to something a little stronger (more fabric, or leather perhaps), which would hold the hat in place. The red silk piece extends the hat further onto the head, making it even more secure.

One of the descriptions of the boqtaq mentioned the feathers being inserted into a tube in the hat. I chose to use a goose quill I had around (for scribal, but I’ve never figured out how to use it, so why not?). I trimmed three peacock feathers until they fit into the quill together, and then chopped the hollow part of the quill off of the rest of the feather, and sewed it into the back of the hat between the fabric and the bark.

What I Learned

One of the best things about teaching a new class is that you learn so much from the students. When I tried the hat on for the first time in class (because I only finished the strap beadwork five minutes before class, thank you, procrastination :)), it was very wobbly.
We then spent most of the rest of the class talking about how the attachment might work better.

• The strap is probably not one piece, but at least two and maybe three. 
• One piece probably is attached to the front of the hat with a brooch (instead of the cloth triangles I used) in the front, and goes under the chin. 
• One piece is probably attached to the bottom of the back of the hat, and may tie underneath the veil. This would be similar to the back of the traditional headdress.
• There may also be a hat pin that goes through the hat, caps on the other side, and goes through a mass of hair on the inside of the hat. I hadn't remembered the quote that the women tied their hair on top of their heads and inserted the hat over the top. This form of attachment makes a lot of sense.
• My dear friend Baroness Mistress Daedez of the Dark Horde Moritu reminded me of the story of the boqtaq, in which a group of Mongolian women have to defend their homeland, and so ride out like men, and are awarded the boots of their enemies, which they wear proudly ever after. This may or may not actually describe the reason for the hat shape, but it is a good thing to know.
• I think if I were to do it again (which I probably won't), I would make the front triangle wider to make the shape more exaggerated. It looks mostly right, but it could be wider.

References

Boyer, Martha Hagensen and Ida Nicolaisen. Mongol Jewelry: Jewelry Collected by the First and Second Danish Central Asian Expeditions. London: Thames and Hudson. 1995

Daalder, Truus. Ethnic Jewellery and Adornment. New York: Macmillan Art Publishing. 2009

Dawson, Christopher. The Mongol Mission: Narratives and Letters of the Franciscan missionaries in Mongolia and China in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. New York: Sheed and Ward, Inc., 1955. Print.

Lane, George. Daily Life in the Mongol Empire. Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2006. Print.

Roxburgh, David J. “Ruy Gonzalez de Clavijo’s Narrative of Courtly Life and Ceremony in Timur’s Samarqand, 1404.” The Book of Travels; Genre Ethnology and Pilgrimage, 1250-1700. Ed. Palmira Brummett. Leiden: Kononklijke Brill NV, 2009. 

Weatherford, Jack. The Secret History of the Mongol Queens: How the Daughters of Genghis Khan Rescued His Empire. New York: Broadway Books, 2010. Print.

Ordos Tribe Married Woman’s Headdress and Ear Pendants, Qing Dynasty, c. 1900, Art Institute of Chicago. Web, 11 February 2014.

Mongolian Women’s Costumes, c. 1936-37, collected by Henning Haslund-Christensen, National Museum of Copenhagen, Denmark. Web, 11 February 2014.

Some very nice pictures of boqtaq finds from Mistress Aleea Bagah, which I haven’t been able to locate recently, and so cannot comment on the provenance.

A Buggy Beginning

I intended to sign up to teach a brand new class at our Fall Academy, which entailed a bunch of scrambling around trying to figure out how to get the research together and how to compile a new handout from three write ups. 

Oh, and also making a brand new boqtaq from scratch. Yeah. That.

Due to financial difficulties, I decided not to go to Academy after all, and try to teach it for our local schola in the late winter instead.

This was one of those projects that starts relatively normal and then snowballs until you realize that you're raising your own silkworms.

madder plants: these are super sticky

I am thankfully stopping myself before it gets that far, but here's the run down.

First, I decided I ought to make a red silk boqtaq, preferably of bark, because that would take care of one of my major goals, and make a good visual for the class. To be fair, I thought I would get this done by Pennsic, so that I could put it in the Arts and Sciences display. That didn't happen.

I did have some habotai silk left over from a chemise, and so I decided to dye it red, rather than trying to buy red silk.

I had some red acid dye already made up in a bottle from when we tie-dyed over the summer, and dyeing it that way would have only involved throwing the fabric in the sink and squirting the dye over the top, but then I thought, I have a box of natural dye materials from a friend--maybe it has something I could use. I also grow madder, so that was a possibility.

madder reds

I didn't really want the orangey-red of madder, though. I really wanted a good royalty red, since the boqtaq is a hat for royalty of a culture that was heavily involved in the Silk Road, so it makes perfect sense that they would have used expensive royalty-only dye-stuffs.

As it happened, there was an unidentified packet of powder in this box, which I decided might well be cochineal.

I did some research, because my only experience with cochineal was watching someone else use it.

Alum appears to be the most common mordant for cochineal, and luckily I had a few bags worth.

A quick note on cochineal: it is made from little cactus bugs which are captured and dried and crushed. I had a bag of mostly whole bugs, and a second bag of powder (luckily, because the grinding is a pain). It is so expensive because it takes around 90,000 bugs to make 2 pounds of dye. 

 I weighed my fabric (about .5 grams), weighed my cochineal powder, and decided the whole bag would do it. It wasn't a very large bag.

First I washed the silk with synthrapol soap to get any oils or dirt out of it. Then I soaked it in an alum solution for an hour. I was worried because the message on the Alum bag and the info I had gotten from the web didn't really add up, and one said soak as long as possible, while the other said not to soak it too long or the fabric would disintegrate. I let it dry out, and then soaked it again right before I dyed it the next day.

Meanwhile, I boiled the cochineal powder in water, and then let it sit overnight. In the morning, I poured it through several coffee filters to get the powder back out, which was recommended because otherwise the dust will stay in the fabric. That was a bit of an adventure because it took forever to go through the coffee filters, but then I would get impatient and pour too much in, and some would go over the top of the filter...it was unwieldy.

Finally the dye was ready, so I boiled it, and soaked the silk in it for an hour.

I suspect the silk was ready from the beginning, but just in case. I didn't want pink fabric, and if I could avoid it, I wasn't going to overdye it with madder, either.

Once the silk was done, I wrung it out and rinsed it in the sink until the water ran slightly less than clear. The leftover dye, being a dye used in foodstuff and therefore safe, was poured into our sump.

And here is the result!

It's actually a shade or two darker than it looks, but I was trying to get the natural light on it.The shadows are pretty close to what it actually looks like.

I'm very happy with it.

Next step, birch bark.

Cloisonné, my darling

Wow. It's been a long time since I wrote on this thing.
Part of it is just being too tired to think most days, and part of it is that I keep thinking "I have to take some pictures", and then the light isn't there when I remember to, and I forget to when it is there.

At Pennsic there was a great class I was eyeing about Cloisonné enamel. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what classes were "if I feel like it and have time", and what classes were "I have to take this, so if childcare gets fobbed off on someone else, deal with it".  
Cloisonné topped the list. I have been drooling over Cloisonné for a VERY long time. Back in college,
I took a metal and jewelry series of classes which were fantastic, but the teacher didn't do enamel or casting herself, so it wasn't something she felt competent to teach.


Before that, I had done some research on different types of ceramic tile work, and the one that really got exciting for me was tube-lining because...it looked just like Cloisonné , only with clay and glaze.








 Also, I love Cloisonné fishies.

Anyway, there was this amazing class, and I said "I have to take this. Whatever else happens this War, I have to take this."

The teacher was wonderful: really knowledgeable, funny, very flexible, and surprisingly able to keep her calm despite having a class that was half again as large as she had stipulated was the limit (and she provided materials to everyone).

She explained the history, the use in period, and then had everyone draw something that would fit on a little 1 1/2" diameter circle with a shank to bend into a loop for hanging.
She gave us little thin pieces of wire and pliers to make the design areas, and then fired them into place on the disk.
Next we all got to fight over the beautiful colors of glass dust, and fire it again. After a second coat of enamel, the end of class was nigh, and we had to take what we got. I was very happy with what I had the chance to make. It was a curly Mongolian cloud over a fall oak leaf, to represent my significant other and myself. The background was navy blue with a depth I really loved.

Since the person I gifted it to has since misplaced it, I will just have to take the class again next year (darn). I was surprised to see how many people were re-taking the class from last year or from a previous class that War, but afterwards I could understand.

Now I just have to invest in a small kiln!

A long break, but success!

For the last two weeks, I've been at Pennsic, a weird and wonderful place.
This year was much less hectic and stressful than last year, which is good, but I had a three year old, which (as much as I adore the child) was difficult.
I had a few goals for myself this year, some of which focused on crossing items off my A&S50 list.

• I wanted to fence in a tournament (which I did, though I lost badly)
• I wanted to get up to the archery field in a less-than-rushed way (which I did, three times, and shot all the points I was allowed)
• I wanted to make orange peel sweet rolls (which I did, and learned a lot about what NOT to do)

On the list, I was going for teaching a class, making glass beads, and bookbinding.
I only managed one out of three, but I achieved a goal I hadn't been going for, so I'm happy with that.

The class I taught was Butter 101 (of previous posting).
Knowing Pennsic, and specifically the popularity of food classes at Pennsic, I limited the handouts to 30 per class and the materials to 24 per class. Luckily, I guessed pretty close to right on that. I think if I were to do it again, I would maybe raise the limit on both by around 5.

First, though, the saga of the butter churn.
I have been wanting a butter churn for a long time, since I first saw them advertised in Lehmans.
Back then, they sold some lined with wax, for home use.
When they discontinued the wax-lined version, I just assumed that the non-lined ones were normal butter churns that might benefit from some wax lining, or just regular use, and that Lehmans was saying "not intended for regular use" as a CYA in case the churns weren't cleaned well and made someone sick. I was wrong.
I bought the largest model (5-8 quart) right before Pax, intending to use it in my class.

Now, a proper butter churn of this variety is basically a tall, tapered barrel with a churn dash and a lid. Therefore, the staves should be held together by metal rings, which can be adjusted down to make the staves tighter, reducing leakage. Also, the staves should absorb water, making them tighter when wet, also reducing leakage.

I should've known when I unpacked it that it was not going to work properly, because the rings were riveted to the wood, and therefore would not move. I haven't experimented with removing the rivets to see if it would work properly at that point, because I doubt it (and it works okay now that it's been modified).

We filled it with water to soak it, and within an hour, it was empty.
Needless to say, I did not use it at Pax except as a visual aid.
Aside from the staves being decorative, the other problem was that the barrel wasn't made well enough to be water-tight (and also is not round, but octagonal), and most of the leaks were around the base.
I had originally decided not to wax-line it, because that was a modern way of avoiding biological contaminants because of the wood absorbing the milk and potentially breeding bacteria. I thought if I just bleached it or scrubbed it really well, it'd be okay (for my use, not for the students to eat the butter or anything).
I decided to backtrack and wax-line it, in hopes that it would be water-tight enough to use in class, anyway.

 So we hauled the thing to Pennsic, and I melted the beeswax and painted it on the entire inside and around the outside base. After that, it held water nicely.

Next is the saga of the cream.
I had been told that ultra-pasteurized cream wouldn't make butter (I knew it wouldn't make cheese, even some plain pasteurized cream has given me difficulties with that), so I was looking for plain pasteurized. I tried the grocery stores first, but apparently Giant Eagle (or at least the ones where we were) doesn't carry regular cream, only ultra-pasteurized, and no quarts at all. Furthermore, the price was ridiculous for the pints, even compared to the price back home, which I already thought was a bit much. Because of the giant churn, I had to get a lot. I was figuring on 6-8 quarts.
Next I tried the camp store, which carries local dairy products. No cream at all. I even asked them specifically whether the dairy they buy from could maybe do a special order. No go. She did say that maybe next year they could request it, but not this year.
Next I did an internet search for local dairies. I thought maybe buying direct would work. Pennsylvania has a lot of dairies, so it shouldn't have been a problem. I found a few, but they specialized in cheese. One of them I drove all the way into town (which probably should've been a clue), half an hour away, to find that the address given was a tiny concrete block building with faded lettering, right next to an industrial plant, with no one home anyway.
Desperate, I finally tried Walmart. I don't like Walmart. I don't like supporting it. However, they did in fact have quarts of cream, for less than half the price of the Giant Eagle's pints, and they had eight of them. I bought six. They were ultra-pasteurized, though (again, the only thing available). Turns out, it works fine for making butter.

When at Pennsic, we live a pretty long distance from anywhere, including the A&S tents where the classes are held. We have a nice Radio Flyer cart donated by my grandmother, so I loaded that up with the churn, the handouts, 6 quarts of cream, butter-hands, a leaf-shaped wooden platter, a roll of paper towels, the plastic lidded cups and toothpicks for student use, and my toddler and toddler-gear.
Squeezing the toddler in between the churn and the cream with some books to keep busy, I started down the hill 15 minutes early.

photo: Gwenllyen the Minstrel

25 minutes later..
Luckily someone in the class knew where I lived and kept reassuring the students that I was coming from way over there and it might take awhile.
There were a few friends in the first class, and that was very nice, especially since the toddler went right over to them and stayed calm and relatively quiet the whole time.
I was terribly nervous and rushed through my spiel, but everyone seemed to have a good time, and we only went through three quarts filling up the containers for the class to use, so I put the other three in the churn.
I was told I ought to add my contact information to the handout next time, and I shall.
Other than that, the only comments I got were good ones.
I did feel awkward enough that I didn't ask anyone to churn with the big churn. By the end of class, the big churn was only maybe 1/3 of the way done, so I put it back in the cart and rolled it over to the Artisan's Row, which, luckily, was doing a day of Dairy, with my friend Lidia the Cheesemaker!

I spent the next hour or so hanging out in the Artisan's Row tent with her, discussing cheese and butter and relative temperatures, and learning how the churn worked (it's not complicated, but it does take a fairly large amount of arm strength near the end). Lidia kindly lent me a bowl for kneading because the leaf-shaped platter was not big enough for the amount of butter I got out of the churn. I gave her some of my buttermilk for demonstration, and carted the child and the churn, the butter and the buttermilk, back to the fighting field. People there helped me cart it back to camp.

Then people in camp teased me about butter for the rest of the week and a half.

Things I learned during my first class:

1. Butter needs cool temperatures, cheese needs warm. Lidia describes cheese as something you make on a summer's day. Butter is something you'd make in the early morning or late afternoon when it cools off.
2. Salting butter not only preserves it longer, but drives out more of the buttermilk (which helps in the preservation as well).
3. You need to scrape down the sides of the churn before finishing the butter, so you don't end up with whipped cream on top.
4. Dairy maids had short sleeves for a reason.
5. My churn dash (an x shaped one) needs to rotate between plunges near the end of the butter-making when it gets stiff, so all the butter gets smacked evenly, because the butter isn't moving at that point.
6. You don't sing "Come, Butter, Come" while churning, to a group of teenagers, for obvious reasons. I didn't do this, but it's good advice.
7. 3 quarts of cream makes a LOT of butter. More than I can use in a week. Probably more than I can use in a month. I don't know the math exactly, but it was probably around 2- 2.5 lbs.
8. It really takes a whole roll of paper towels to make butter in a churn, if you're trying to keep your dress clean. I really need to make an apron and some flour-sack towels for this class.

The second class was a little more professional. Kingdom Court was right after my class, so I was driven down to class with the cart in the back of the truck, so I could get back.
My plan was to cart it all back, change, and run back down to attend court. That was a silly idea.

The class was a little more full this time, although we only just went over the limit in attendance. I gave away my copy of the handout, but we only got maybe two more people after that.
It was a lot louder the second time, so I had a much harder time making myself heard.
There were no hecklers (yay!), and again, everyone seemed to have a good time. I gave people the opportunity to try out the big churn if they weren't able to get a kit, and as a result, I got the butter done much faster than the first time (in terms of actual churning time...it probably really took me longer because I had to cart it around in between).

After the class ended, I carted the butter back to the Royal Camp, because I noticed they were already about five minutes from processing. I toyed with the idea of leaving the butter cart there, and running back to get my hat, but I didn't want to leave the butter half done for hours.
In the end, a friend of mine and I walked to court behind the procession, she carrying my buttermilk pitcher, and I carrying the cart, and I finished churning in the very back. I had a horrible fear that I would get called into court, hatless, in a mildly dirty and cream-stained dress with butter on my hands, but luckily that didn't happen.
I did get a laurel (for those non-SCA peoples, a highly respected artisan) asking me questions about the butter-making process, which was novel.
Apparently I also spawned a bunch of dairy-themed jokes in that quadrant of the hall.

All in all, it was a success, and we have quite a lot of butter, some of which I managed to pawn off on people, and I know how the churn works, which makes me happy.

The Dreaded Birgitta Cap

Last summer I was looking for a thing to wear on my head to go with my brand new Viking. I googled Norse and Caps, and I kept running into the Birgitta Cap. I fell in love, but then it turned out that the silly thing was not Viking era at all, but 14th century.
Well...I kinda do the 14th century thing a lot, so it was the perfect excuse. I did make a nice Viking cap, too, which is nice, but not terribly exciting.

by C.L. Dahl

I started the Birgitta Cap (which, for those of you who haven't run into it yet, (and I'm surprised you managed to avoid it so far) is the cap of Saint Birgitta, a 14th century Swedish saint) last summer, and planned to work on it during Pennsic. I'd gotten the pieces cut and hemmed and the herringbone stitch done, and started on the embroidered front piece, and then I left it in my embroidery basket with a whole lot of embroidery floss during a rainstorm.
The front piece was permanently stained rusty-red, so I had to start that bit over. I was demoralized, and so it took me until this June to make any more progress on it.
Then, I signed up to teach Butter 101 at our local large summer event, Pax Interruptus, and was thinking about what to wear, and then I thought: the cap! I should finish the cap!
Of course, this left me about two weeks in which to do this, with the large part of the embroidered center, the entire embroidered front, and then the assembly left to go.
Somehow (with much obsession) I managed, and so, here it is.

Here are some lovely sites which give you basically enough information to make it yourself:
http://m-silkwork.blogspot.com/2008/11/womens-caps.html 
 http://windwraith.blogspot.com/2008/08/cap-of-st-birgitta.html

This lady did a more complicated form of the embroidery down the middle:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/58611129@N00/galleries/72157624103656221

I used lightweight white linen (the same weight I use for medieval undies, ILO20 at
www.fabrics-store.com), and I got my 100/3 Londonderry white linen thread at www.hedgehoghandworks.com.

I started by measuring my head and cutting out two quarter-circles for the body of the cap. I used the selvedge for one side and hemmed the other (in retrospect, don't bother, the raw edge will be covered on both sides). I also hemmed the curves (this IS necessary). Then I cut a 3" wide piece long enough to go all the way around my head with a little to spare, and another 1" wide piece for the band.

The original Birgitta cap's front is embroidered with a honeycomb stitch, and everyone who has made a replica has done it exactly the same way. That's lovely, if you want an exact replica, or if you're doing it to see if you can make a copy, but it's highly unlikely to me that every woman who had a similar cap would have had the same embroidery (some probably had none at all). I decided to go with a different motif. At first, I came up with a feathered chain stitch which looks like leaves, but that one got ruined, and when I went back to do it again, I thought, what if someone sees this and thinks it's a Laurel cap? I don't want to be mistaken for a Laurel when I'm not one.

Eventually I decided on a motif of strawberry vines with leaves and strawberries and flowers (because I have the right to wear such things, so why not use it?).
I did a little research on medieval embroidery, but I didn't want to do anything filled or couched, and it appears (I say tentatively) that with some minor exceptions, modern embroidery stitches were used in period. I ended up using back stitch and variations on lazy daisy.
I used a running stitch through the middle as a guideline, because with white fabric I didn't want to write on it.

The two halves of the Birgitta cap are not sewn together in the middle like an arming cap would be, but are held together by a 1/4-1/2" embroidered latticework.
It felt like it took me forever to figure out how to do this from pictures. Some people have just done a herringbone stitch, and left it at that, others I spoke with had used bobbin lace and sewn it in, and others had gone the whole way and did the herringbone stitch and then this amazing german interlacing stitch.
I sort of hung out in the middle, and did the herringbone stitch and then half of the german interlacing stitch, leaving the herringbone in the center.
Because the interlacing happens along a curve, it's impossible to stick it in an embroidery hoop. To tension it, I first basted the two halves of the cap to a third piece of linen, to make sure the spacing was correct, and then I pinned the cap to a curved pillow while I put in the herringbone stitch.
Luckily, I had a Boppy Pillow around, and it has lots of nice curves to it.
Once the herringbone was done, I could take it off the pillow and do the interlacing part without as much tension. I left it basted to the linen until all of the embroidery was done. I kept reading conflicting ideas about whether there needed to be a gap at the bottom center or not, so I ended up doing the embroidery right down to the end, and then undoing about 1 1/2" at the bottom.

The nice thing was that the embroidery was a little raggedy at the ends, and undoing it and binding it off made it look much nicer. I hid the ends in the hem.

The band is about 1/4" wide, and I made it by folding the sides in, and then folding it in half and using overcast stitch to seal the edges inside.

Finally, I ironed everything and started to assemble it. I ran two lines of basting at the bottom edges, and pulled to make pleats. Then the front embroidered piece was pinned starting at the center front (because of the interlacing stitch), and then all the way around until it reached the gap in the back. Then I folded the edges in and sewed it all up. The band is attached to both sides at the bottom corners of the embroidered piece, and when you wear it this criss-crosses over your head once in back, once in front at the top, and then it should fit snuggly around the top back of your head to create the pear shape of the cap. Mine was too short to do this, so I ended up having to make a second one.

I measured my head, then cut and sewed the new band, and then pinned the ends in place on the hat, and tried it on. I ended up having to cut another 3" off the band before attaching it permanently.

I finished it the night before Pax, but I wore it all day Saturday, and it was comfortable, kept my hair out of the way, and worked as a nice bit of padding for my coronet at court. I'm very happy with it!