CREATING A GARMENT FROM A MEDIEVAL ILLUSTRATION:

QUEEN EDITH’S CORONATION GOWN

Alianor de Ravenglas

In the SCA, we often find ourselves in the position of having only pictorial evidence of
the garments we would like to (re)create. In order to do more than just achieving an outward
reproduction, we must extend our research beyond the illustration from which we draw our
inspiration. In this paper, I describe the process I followed in (re)creating a garment depicted in
Matthew Paris’ manuscript “The Life of Edward the Confessor,” which is dated to roughly 1250.
My hope is that this explanation of the process that I followed will show that (re)creating
garments from illustrations is something that is available to any SCA costumer.

Illustration 1: Edith’s Coronation1

1
The Life of Edward the Confessor.
STEP ONE: EXAMINE THE ILLUSTRATION
The first step in this process is a detailed examination of the illustration that inspires the
outfit. In this case, I was working from Illustration 1, an illumination by Matthew Paris. This
plate depicts the coronation of Edith, Edward the Confessor’s Queen. In this examination of the
illustration, I tried to notice as many details about the outfit as possible. I made notes on what I
observed, which are transcribed below.
Blue gown - very full even from the shoulders (look at folds on torso). Worn
unbelted.
Has 5 bands of *something* - I'm pretty sure it would have to be tabletwoven trim
- on it. See edith_trim.jpeg. Not possible to do this pattern with regular tablet
weaving - it'll have to be double-faced and then just work out the pattern that way.
=> Just above bustline
=> at waist (assuming that her elbows are at about waist height, which
mine are)
=> around hips (to line up with ends of arms)
=> at knees
=> just above ankles.
=> Also at the ends of the sleeves - don't appear to line up with any of the
other bands.
Need to figure out spacing of bands.
Why don't the ones on the sleeves make sense?
Sleeves are slightly shorter than those on the undergown - a couple of inches, I'd
guess.
Neckline is finished in contrasting (similar to trim) color and there's a small circle
right at her throat.
These notes served as the starting point for the (re)creation of the outfit.
STEP TWO: RESEARCH CONTEMPORARY GARMENTS
In the case of this particular manuscript, there is a question of the difference between the
time when the manuscript was executed (circa 1250) and the time of the events it depicts (the
events leading up to the Battle of Hastings in 1066). Did Matthew Paris clothe the characters in
this story in his ideas of the clothing of the 11th century, or do the clothes we see in his
manuscript reflect the fashion of the mid 13th century? One way to answer this question is to
compare the clothing depicted in the Paris manuscript with contemporary illustrations.

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Queen Edith’s Coronation Gown
 Illustration 2: Gowns with 3/4 sleeves worn over a
tunic with tight long sleeves, worn unbelted.2 Illustration 3: Women wearing tunics with mantles.3

Illustration 4: The woman on the left wears a tunic and mantle as well as a veil (more or less)
secured to bands.4
If we compare Edith’s garments to those in Illustrations 2, 3 and 4, we see a number of
similarities. In Illustration 2 shows tunic styles identical to Edith’s: a gown with 3/4 sleeves
worn over a contrasting tunic with full length, tight sleeves. Illustrations 3 and 4 show tunics
worn with mantles of the same style that Edith wears (probably a half-circle cloak), and
Illustrations 4 and 5 show veils similar to the one that Edith wears. Based on these illustrations, I
have concluded that Matthew Paris drew Edith in the garments of his time rather than those of
the early 11th century.
Based simply on an examination of the garments as they appear in the manuscript, we
would conclude that Edith is wearing two tunics, a veil, and a mantle. With this information, it
would be possible to create a set of garments that would passably recreate the “look” found in
the illumination. My goal, however, was not only to reproduce the look but to use the illustration
to guide the creation of a full outfit as it would have been worn during the 13th century. As
such, more research was necessary, specifically, examinations of how the garments of the period
were constructed, how they were worn, and what accessories usually accompanied them.

2
Manesse Codex.
3
Murthly Hours folio 170r.
4
Murthly Hours folio 162r.

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Queen Edith’s Coronation Gown
 In the thirteenth century, women’s and men’s clothes were very similar. Both consisted
of layers of tunics. These were made from the most commonly available materials of the time:
linen and wool. In the illustration of Edith’s coronation, two body garments are visible (the two
tunics mentioned above). Based on other illustrations and on what we know about the manner in
which clothing was worn during the 13th century, we can conclude that a linen shift would have
been worn beneath the two visible garments. At least one such undergarment is extant: the St.
Louis tunic. This garment is “a 13th century linen tunic, associated with Saint Louis” and can be
found in the treasury of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris.5 While the extant garment is associated
with a man, evidence and common sense suggest that women wore similar garments.

Illustration 5: The aggressor wears a Illustration 6: The newly-made knight wears an

plain undertunic with braies.6 undertunic in the right-hand panel.7

Illustration 7: The white of the shift shows under the central figure’s skirt.8
First, let us examine the pictorial evidence for these garments. Illustrations 5 and 6 show men in
their undergarments; in illustration 7, we see a suggestion of the woman’s shift under her tunic.
Common sense tells us that, given all the other similarities between men’s and women’s
garments of the period, women would be wearing an undergarment similar to that worn by men
despite the minimal visual evidence of those garments.

5
Jones.
6
The Life of Edward the Confessor.
7
Matthew Paris, “Knighting.”
8
Manesse Codex.

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Queen Edith’s Coronation Gown
 Edith’s head is covered by a veil on top of which a crown is about to be placed. Clearly,
the covering of a woman’s head was common practice during the late 13th century; every
illustration of a woman reproduced here includes some form of hat or headrail. In Paris’
illustration, the veil appears to just be draped over Edith’s head; a similar concept appears in
both pictures in Illustration 2. In other 13th century illustrations of veils (such as Illustrations 4
and 8), however, a system of bands is visible.

Illustration 8: She wears a veil with bands.9

This method of constructing and wearing a veil has several things to recommend it. First,
given the other types of hats worn during the 13th century (the fillet hat, which appears in
Illustrations 3 and 4), using bands to hold on a headrail was certainly not unheard of. Second,
this method is far more practical; the bands hold the veil securely in place and can be completely
camouflaged by the veil itself.10 As such, I decided that my (re)creation of this set of garments
would have to include a veil secured with bands.
The only part of Edith’s ensemble not suggested in any way in Paris’ illumination is what
she wears on her feet. Pictorial evidence of men’s garments shows that they wore hosen on their
legs. Often, these are shown in a variety of colors. Due to women’s fashions, particularly the
length of their gowns, there is very little pictorial evidence of women’s hosen. Despite this, it is
a safe assumption that women wore something similar. As such, this (re)creation of Edith’s
ensemble includes a pair of cut hosen.

9
Murthly Hours folio 149v.
10
Virtue.

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 Illustration 10: The man on the right wears red
Illustration 9: A man wearing black hosen.11
hosen.

Illustration 11: He wears blue hosen and ankle

boots. Illustration 12: He wears red hosen.
STEP THREE: GARMENT CONSTRUCTION
Having researched the general styles of the garments of the mid- to late-13th century, the
next step was to decide on the style and materials for the garments themselves.
TUNICS
We know that most garments during the medieval period were made from linen and
wool; we also know based on extant garments the basic structure of 13th century tunics.

Illustration 13: Tunic with long gores.12 Illustration 14: Tunic with short gores.
Again, Marc Carlson’s research on extant garments supports the design I chose. He describes
Nockert Type 5 tunics as
Garments consisting of two straight-cut main pieces -- front and back -- joined together

11
Ashmole Manuscript, folio 24 r.
12
Drawing adapted from Houston.

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Queen Edith’s Coronation Gown
 with a shoulder seam. Side gores inserted between the main pieces, combining with them
to form sleeve openings. No gores actually inserted in the main pieces. Pocket slits occur.
Long sleeve, tapering downwards, cut with an upper and lower part. Gores under the
sleeves.13
This description does not specify the length of the gores; they could reach the gussets (long
gores), or they could only come to the waist (short gores). In this set of garments, I used both
long and short gores.
The first layer of the outfit, the undertunic, is made of lightweight (roughly 3.5 oz), loose
weave linen.14 It is falls to mid-calf and has short gores (as shown in Illustration 14). Each of
these gores is “split”; rather than being one isosceles triangle, each gore consists of two right
triangles sewn together along the “flat” side. I cut the gores in this way because doing so
allowed me to conserve fabric. This garment was hand sewn using cotton thread because cotton
is easily and affordably available, unlike the more-accurate linen. Flat-felling these seams is
especially important, since the loose weave makes it rather weak. For this tunic, the flat-felling
was done using a running stitch.
The second layer of the outfit, the gown, is made of a 55% cotton/45% linen fustian.15 In
the 13th century, this gown would have been made either of linen or of wool; I chose to use the
linen/cotton blend because it was more affordable than the appropriate weight linen and because
I was unable to find 100% linen in the desired shade of red. Like the undertunic, the gown has
side gores that begin at the waist. In this gown, however, I have inserted two gores into each side
seam. This lends a very full skirt (with a circumference of roughly 120”) without the headache
of inserting gores into the body panels. The sleeves are fairly loose at the top of the arm and
quite snug near the wrist, very much like the blue tunic shown in Illustration 6. For this garment,
I stitched down the flat-felled seams using a hem stitch so that no stitching would be visible on
the outside of the gown. I used a cotton/poly blend thread because it was more affordable than
linen and provided a better color match than any 100% cotton thread I could find. The gown is
roughly 63” from shoulder seam to hem; since I am 64” tall, it puddles on the ground when worn
unbelted.

13
Carlson.
14
I purchased this fabric from fabrics-store.com (http://www.fabrics-store.com).
15
This is the material sold at JoAnn’s Fabrics as a “linen-look solid.”

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Queen Edith’s Coronation Gown
 The outermost layer of the outfit, the overgown, is made of a fine Pendleton wool twill.16
Before cutting, I machine-washed the fabric and dried it in the dryer in order to pre-shrink it. It
became a bit more fuzzy, but did not full very much; the pattern of the twill is still quite visible.
This garment has a slightly different structure than the other two. Rather than using short gores,
I used gores that begin at the gussets (as in Illustration 13). These longer gores lend the neck-to-
hem fullness that is so apparent in the Matthew Paris illustration (Illustration 1). As I did with
the red gown, I inserted two wide gores into each side seam. This also lends a lot of fullness to
the gown; it, too, has a hem circumference of roughly 120”. These sleeves are short (roughly 3/4
length) and do not taper from the body to the wrist. I again stitched the seam finish down using a
hem stitch and used a cotton/poly thread due to affordability and color match. This gown also
measures roughly 63” from shoulder seam to hem.
TABLETWOVEN BANDS
The Edith gown has one very unique feature: it is marked by patterned bands that run
horizontally around the garment at regular intervals. In considering my options for how to
reproduce this aspect of the garment, two options were immediately obvious. I could either
make or commission custom-woven fabric for the overgown, or I could treat the bands as having
been applied to the finished garment. I chose the latter option for a number of reasons, the
primary ones being 1) I do not weave and do not have the funds to pay someone to custom-
weave fabric for me and 2) I do tablet-weave and tabletwoven bands seemed a plausible way for
such bands to have been produced.
Having decided to tablet-weave the bands, I had to make two further decisions: the colors
of the bands and the pattern that would appear on them. Due to the partial grisaille style of this
manuscript, I could not make a decision about the color of the bands based on the way the bands
appear in the illustration. I selected two shades of purple (one dark, one lavender) based on what
was available at my local yarn store and what looked good (to my admittedly modern eye) with
the blue and red fabric that comprises the tunics.
I experimented with various double-face patterns and eventually decided on one slightly
different from the pattern depicted in Paris’ manuscript. Rather than working “empty” ovals
with dots in the middle (as shown in Illustration 3), I chose to work long solid diamonds with
dots in the middle (see Illustration 4).

16
I purchased this wool from Phoenix Textiles (http://www.fabric.com).

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 Illustration 15: Bands as they appear in the
illumination Illustration 16: Bands as woven
I made this change for a number of reasons. First, I wanted the bands to be relatively narrow and
in order to achieve a long enough oval with the yarn I am using, the bands would have to be at
least twice as wide as they currently are. Second, the weaving of the “empty” ovals would have
been considerably more difficult (in terms of keeping track of the pattern) than the solid diamond
pattern. I have not seen any evidence of this type of pattern in medieval double-faced bands, but
example A in Illustration 17 clearly has a chevron pattern, which is not much removed from a
diamond pattern.

Illustration 17: Extant Tabletwoven Bands.

“Silk tablet-woven braids from mid 14th-century deposits, (A) No 145, (B) No 450, (C) No 451.”17
The final pattern is a mix of ten single-color cards and six double-faced cards. I decided
to only thread the cards involved in the pattern for double-faced weaving to protect myself from
mistakes: if I accidentally flip a background (read: one-color) card, there will be no impact on
the overall pattern. The cards are threaded in an alternating S-thread/Z-thread pattern. The table
below shows the threading pattern (L stands for Lavender, P for Purple).
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16
A L L P P P L L L L L L P P P L L
B L L P P P L L L L L L P P P L L
C L L P P P P P P P P P P P P L L
D L L P P P P P P P P P P P P L L
S Z S Z S Z S Z S Z S Z S Z S Z

17
Crowfoot et al.

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The weaving pattern is eighteen stitches (36 turns) of background (without manipulating any of
the double-faced cards to bring the lavender to the top) followed by the diamond pattern. The
entire pattern is worked as follows:
All Cards in Beginning Position 18 stitches
Flip Cards 8 and 9 to Lavender 1 stitch
Flip Cards 10 and 7 to Lavender 1 stitch
Flip Cards 11 and 6 to Lavender 2 stitches
Return Cards 8 and 9 to Purple 1 stitch
Flip Cards 8 and 9 to Lavender 2 stitches
Return cards 11 and 6 to Purple 1 stitch
Return cards 10 and 7 to Purple 1 stitch
Return cards 8 and 9 to Purple (All cards in beginning position) 18 stitches

The end result of this pattern is a “right” side which shows lavender edges, a purple background,
and lavender diamonds with purple dots in the middle. The “wrong” side is equally interesting,
showing a lavender background with purple stripes and diamonds with lavender dots in the
middle.
HOSEN
The hosen for this set of garments are made of bias cut heavyweight 100% linen and
sewn with cotton thread. Common belief is that women’s hosen were short, reaching just to the
knee and being held in place by garters.18 There exist two examples of short hosen, described by
Nockert and interpreted by Marc Carlson, who describes them as Nockert Type 3, which are
“Short hose, possibly with a foot. Leg cut in one piece -- on the warp -- with a rear seam and cut
straight off at the top. The cut of the foot is uncertain” and Nockert Type 4, which are “Short
hose with a strap. This hose is cut in one piece with a seam at the back, and an opening for the
foot at the bottom. The two side pieces thus formed at the bottom were sewn together to make a
strap beneath the foot.”19 These hosen are loosely based on both Type 3 and Type 4. They have
a leg that reaches to just above the knee, a seam up the back, and an attached foot. It is primarily
in the join of the leg and the foot that they differ from extant hosen; this design is simpler but
probably less fabric conservative than the extant patterns.

18
Crowfoot et al.
19
Carlson.

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 Illustration 18: Hosen.

To make these hosen, I wrapped a piece of linen (turned to the bias) around my lower leg and
pinned it such that I could put on and remove that tube easily. I then did the same thing for the
foot, so that there was a seam along the bottom of the foot and one at the toe. The foot and the
leg are then attached. All of the seams are finished by flat-felling, which yields a good flat seam.
The hosen are held up using garters made from scraps of the wool that the overgown was made
from. This material had enough stretch naturally that it did not need to be cut on the bias in
order to work as garters.
VEIL
The veil and bands for this set of garments are made of the same loose-woven linen that I
used for the smock. In period, they would have been made of either linen or silk; in any case a
very lightweight fabric is necessary for the veil to drape correctly. I constructed the bands as
rough 1-inch wide tubes, then turned them and stitched the open end shut. The veil is a simple
circle, roughly 27 inches in diameter, hemmed with a rolled hem as has been found on fourteenth
century silk veils.20 I wear it pinned to the bands so that it drapes similarly to Edith’s in Matthew
Paris’ illustration.
MANTLE AND SHOES
I chose to leave out two elements of Edith’s complete outfit: the visible mantle and the
shoes that I assume she would have been wearing. In the case of the mantle, I chose to eliminate
it because it is a garment that I would not be likely to wear. In the case of the shoes, the
appropriate footwear is a pair of turned shoes, similar to what the men in my illustrations wear.
Unfortunately, I am not a leatherworker, and have not yet been able to convince anyone to make
shoes for me or afford to buy commercially-made turn shoes.

20
Crowfood et al.

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CONCLUSION
The process of (re)creating a complete outfit from a medieval illustration is not one that
we as SCA members should be afraid of. Using my (re)creation of Edith’s coronation gown as
an example, the steps to be followed are:
1) Detailed examination of the illustration of the garment to be (re)created. In this case, this
was an examination of one part of an illumination by Matthew Paris.
2) Research into the constituent elements of outfits of the time. In this case, I first needed to
determine whether or not Paris used contemporary or historical fashions in this historical
document. I then
3) Construct the garments. Decisions in this process are guided by the research into the
design of garments of the time.
I hope that I have shown that (re)creating garments from medieval and renaissance illustrations
or other art sources is accessible to most SCA costumers. All it takes is a commitment to serious
research into medieval garments and a willingness to undertake a project that may (but will not
necessarily) take years to complete.

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SOURCES CITED
~1325. The Manesse Codex. http://www.tempora-nostra.de/manesse/manesse_start.shtml
~1280. The Murthly Hours. National Library of Scotland.
http://www.nls.uk/digitallibrary/murthly/index.html
Carlson, Marc. “Some Clothing of the Middle Ages.”
http://www.personal.utulsa.edu/~marc-carlson/cloth/
Crowfoot, Elisabeth, Frances Pritchard, and Kay Staniland. 2001. Textiles and Clothing 1150 –
1450. London: Boydell.
Houston, Mary G. 1996. Medieval Costume in England and France: The 13th, 14th, and 15th
Centuries. New York: Dover.
Jones, Heather Rose (Mistress Tangwystl verch Morgant Glasvryn). 2001. “Another Look at
Saint Louis’ Shirt.” Tournaments Illuminated #137 pp. 22-23.
Paris, Mattthew. ~1250. “The Life of Edward the Confessor.”
http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/MSS/Ee.3.59/.
Paris, Matthew. 13th c. “Knighting.”
Virtue, Cynthia (Maitresse Cynthia du Pré Argent). 2000. “Simple Steps to Look Great in a
Veil, or Veil-and-Circlet, with photos.” http://www.virtue.to/articles/veils.html.

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