Practice

These tassels are more like they're supposed to be. I didn't have problems with three strands, but four strands are still difficult.

Piper silks doesn't have a shade or yarn card, but they're going to send me some cuttings of gimp thread to see what it looks like.

Wrestling with gimp thread

This is my first attempt to make a tassel with a gimp thread turkish head knot. I used cotton gimp thread by Textere and DMC cotton floss.


I tried to make a knot with four parallel strands of gimp thread, and it really felt like wrestling. It's difficult to keep the strands parallel and I had to "fumble" so much that the white core started to appear through the red cotton... It's amazing that people were able to make this type of knots with up to six parallel strands!

Frilled headwear seminar - Denmark

I just wanted to let you all know that here you can view some photo's of the seminar on frilled headwear held in the Middelaldercentret in Denmark last September.

--> These photo's have now been removed by the owner of the site.

Dom, Wetzlar (Germany), late 14th century

Here, here and here you can see some experiments done by Gina Barrett.

Here you can see a frilled veil made by Cailin. She is not a member of the Kruseler Research Group, but I like her reconstruction very much.

Here is one of my previous posts about my own research and experiments.

An official description of the Kruseler Project can be found here.

silk gimp thread

This company seems to offer silk gimp thread:

http://www.pipers-silks.com/products.html#TWISTEDGLOSSGIMP

Does anybody know their silk?

Textile at the Cloisters, New York

Sabine posted a lot of detailed pictures of embroidery/textile objects from the Cloisters, New York:

http://www.silverdragon.org/SABINE/cloistext.html

Very interesting!

13th century- mid 14th century tassels

These are the tassels I made for Joris. I used Aurora fine 2 ply spun silk, and it is so much better for making tassels than Devere 1200 dernier filament silk! I did the yellow embroidery with Devere 1200 dernier silk, though, because it's more shiny. These tassels have a linen core, just as the tassels in the previous post.

Mid 14th century tassels with turkish head knot

This is a page from my sketchbook. I tried to draw a "how to" for tassels with turkish head knots, based on a mid 14th century alms purse in the Musee de Cluny. The museum has got two purses that probably belonged to the countess of Bar. One purse is featured on the website of the museum. The other purse is of the same style, and has got five tassels with turkish head knots. I could study the tassels in detail.

The turkish head knots were made with five parallel strands of gold thread (so the knots were not green, as in my picture :-) . Most of the gold foil had worn off. The turkish head knot from one of the tassels was missing. This detail showed how the tassel's silk strands were first tied together (with a blue/grey ribbon) and then covered with some kind of roll of linen fabric. I think the turkish head knot must have been tied over this linen core.

Tabletweaving

For the first time ever I tried to do tabletweaving.

I need a pair of beautifull garters to match my medieval outfit.

I used:

• 64 threads
• 16 cards
• 1200 Denier DeVere Yarns silk