Frankenblogging Part 7: Medieval veils and other headwear

Author's note: The Frankenblogging feature is a republication of older content from my former personal webpage, with some annotations. It occurs every Monday morning. This one is late! My apologies.


Today's installment is made of a couple of pages from the old site. The first section is the short opinion/advice piece that grew into a larger research project, on 12th Century French women's court headwear, and the second is a set of pieces I wrote about buckram and other materials in making historic hats, closing with a tiny little thing I said once about straw hats.


A short observation on early veils

The early veil (think Norman Conquest - there are two ladies on the Bayeux tapestry wearing something that looks like this) seems to have been a smaller version of the roman matron's veil.

It's a large rectangle, worn by laying the centre of the long side over the head, crossing the ends over the front of the throat, and tossing them over the shoulders. No bands seem to have been worn with this style of veil, but keeping it in place would have definitely been helped by pinning it to braids wrapped around the head. It's very warm, as well, so if you live in a hot place, make it of thin cotton or linen, with a slightly open weave, to let air pass through. For winter, make it of wool or heavy soft silk.

A good place to get inexpensive, high-quality, premade veils (my early veil is exactly this item) is at Dharma Trading Co. They carry them in silk and cotton (though they call them sarongs).


Buckram and Elizabethan Hats
This is OLD, I wasn't as much of an expert as I thought I was, and this wasn't EVER my main focus of research. I can MAKE hats, and I was trained in modern millinery techniques (i.e. 1800s and more recent). Please have a look at the websites of those who do specialize in this period, like Sarah Goodman and Drea Leed.

I trained with a professional milliner (who is now retired) making reproduction hats, using traditional techniques and materials. I've done theatrical costume and I've also been researching and making documented period costume for over 10 years. Much of what is given below is based on my experience with the various materials.  

That last sentence is pretty accurate. It's practical advice on using modern materials, NOT AT ALL a piece on making authentic reproductions. Keep that in mind!

Period Usage of Buckram  No, not really about buckram at all. I didn't find any. See my cautionary note, above, PLEASE! This is another case of "Ive got a BOOK! Look! Expert! ME!" syndrome. 

Sigh.

I have checked my copy of _Queen Elizabeth's Wardrobe Unlock'd_ (Arnold), and it seems that buckram was used in giving body and shape to clothes (as Pellon interfacings are used now), but not to hats, during Elizabeth's time. Stiff felt was used for shaping hats, which would then be covered with the fashion fabrics. I suggest Arnold's _Patterns of Fashion_ for more information (with photos of construction details on an existing example) on at least one hat (my copy is now gone and I have been unable to replace
it). Also, try the Elizabethan Costuming Page, as it focuses more on this period than I do, and may
have more information on where to look. The main downside to felt is that millenery felts are fairly expensive.

Modern Buckram

Modern buckram is made in a similar way to period buckram. 10-years-ago me seems to know SO MUCH about things I haven't really researched personally. Please ask someone who really knows what they are talking about! "Buckram" basically is now defined as a coarse-woven cloth stiffened with starch, and the meaning of the word has not changed very much over the intervening time, save that in the 16th c it also referred to the unstiffened cloth. If you want to use it for hats, you should look for and purchase millinery buckram as it is superior for hatmaking. It should, in any case, be reinforced with a millenery wire frame securely whipped down onto the buckram, in order to produce a reasonably sturdy hat. Buckram's main advantage is that hats made with a wire-and-buckram base are less expensive to make, and are lighter, cooler and tend to breathe better than felt hats.

Other materials (In hatmaking)



This is actually pretty good advice for people wanting to learn how to build hats on the cheap. I've used posterboard, plastic jugs, coathangers, cardboard pizza boxes (unused), cereal boxes, etc. Alternative materials are a great way to learn.


Now, if you are wanting to *practice* making hats (or if cost is an issue), lightweight posterboard is a reasonably cheap and practical alternative for working out shapes and fit before working with an unfamilar (or expensive) material or technique. Also, medium- or heavy-weight posterboard is quite sturdy for costume hats, and is often used for making headwear and props for theatrical productions on a smaller budget. A posterboard base can be covered with fabric and finished just as a buckram-and-wire base can, and I have a few 'practice' or 'stage' hats in my costume closet that are indistinguishable from the 'real' hats to the uninformed. I have found that using an equivalent weight of posterboard for a base structure is almost equally durable as an inexpensive sized felt.

All three materials (sized felt, buckram, and posterboard) are sensitive to moisture and will lose shape if they get wet, are crushed or damaged in any way. I suggest that you start out with posterboard to begin with, and, once you are familiar with the shapes, fitting, etc, you can then move on to a felt base hat. The successful 'practice' hats, if nicely finished, will do nearly as well as felt-based ones would for camping events, loaners, dress-up hats for demos, or other situations where one's best costume isn't really recommended anyway.

On Straw Hats
Wow, actual good advice without too much Authoritative Tone. Straw hats are nice, anyway. 


The basic woven grass/straw 'farmer hat' has been around for at least 2000 years. They are shown in many medieval illuminations of field workers. I have also seen Roman artwork depicting travellers and laborers wearing woven grass or straw hats of a very familiar shape.

I suggest, if you are unsure of whether they were used in your period, that you check contemporary artwork for images of travellers, laborers and other persons who might need protection from the sun.

Q&A time! More Sticky Tile Advice

We are still on Hiatus, but I got a question today that I think is worthy of a small update. A lady named Marie posted a comment on this post asking for help with her self-adhesive tile installation:

i had tile put down this summer 12x12 good tile he pull up all the old tile & cleaned the floor put down some wood then the self stick tile now every time i walk on it ,it sounds sticky.What can i do about it. THANK U MARIE

Marie, I'd have emailed you but you didn't leave an email address :)

It sounds as though your installer did not level the floor properly. Applying a new substrate is only part of the job - the substrate must be levelled and smoothed with a filling compound and allowed to cure, then sometimes re-levelled, before tiles are applied. This is even more important with larger or self-adhesive tiles, as they require a perfectly level surface to adhere properly.

The right application tools are very important. Having some way to press the tiles down, such as a roller, is crucial to bonding the tiles in place. If this is not done immediatley after the tiles are applied (usually after the entire floor has been laid), the tiles can release from the floor due to temperature fluctuations, and make a sticky noise when the floor is walked on. It is equally important not to walk on the new floor for the time recommended on the tile package, as walking on it may cause the adhesive to slip while it is curing.

Also, the quality of the self-adhesive tiles can significantly affect their sticking power - I've used expensive tiles and cheap ones, and universally had cheap tiles slip, peel and creep, even when thoroughly pressed down with a weighted roller. I've had best luck with the Armstrong brand of self-adhesive tiles, though the quality of tiles they produce is also affected by the price range and intended use. Some cheaper tiles will peel right up on a hot day, for example.

A slightly uneven surface is one of the reasons we chose small, ceramic tiles for our bathroom. The cost would have been approximately the same for inexpensive tiles (our ceramic tile was about 1.80 a square foot) + grout + substrate + leveling and filling compound vs quality self-adhesive tiles (generally about 3.00 or more a square foot) + substrate + leveling and filling compound.

On the positive side, it tends to be fairly inexpensive to pull up and replace self-adhesive tiles in order to correct insufficient floor leveling. Good luck!

Castles in the Sky

Or, "Cabinets in the Kitchen." It makes no difference, because one is as real as the other, unfortunately.

However, dreaming can be fun, so I downloaded the Ikea kitchen design software and went on with my imagined redesign of the kitchen. I'd been playing with various configurations for some time in my other 3 remodeling software packages, but this really works well 9this year - last year's crashed on me too much to bother with). We're considering Ikea as a source for reasonably priced cabinetry that we can install ourselves, so this gave me a nice idea about how much it might be to get the whole mess from them (under 7 grand, including fripperies like a stove and a dining area, and not including shipping). There's the added fuzzy of following a kind of tradition - the house and everything in it having originally been ordered from catalogs - even if this is just a pipe dream.

First, here is a rough approximation of what we've got now, Ikea-style:


I'm guessing, from the five or so cabinet doors we found cobbled into a shelf in the cellar, that there was a basic kitchen built-in on the side where the counter is now, possibly also an icebox. The corner cabinet I roughed in in this is a homemade affair, cobbled together (fairly well, actually) form odds and ends of plank and tongue-and-groove boards, and goes from floor to ceiling. I like the midcentury steel cabinets, but they don't go with the house, and we need more storage and more counterspace.

Problems with the kitchen as it stands:

• As you can see, there's LOTS of wasted space.
  
• The current sink location is both counterintuitive and just plain bad - the supply and waste pipes go through an unheated space under the original back porch).
  
• There's kind of a work triangle, but not really.
  
• If we want a vent hood, we will have to cut through the outer wall of the house if the stove stays where it is. Not good.
  
• There's no eating in the kitchen without traffic bumping into the hapless person next to the door.

So I have a few things in mind to change, and some things to restore. I started out with a bare room and the knowledge that the original location of the kitchen sink was where the range is now, the stove had been in the inset where our dinette is now, and went from there. I got this:


Wow. I went with one of the more traditional "modern" cabinet fronts, "Ädel," on "Medium Brown," as it seemed more like what was once here. I put the range in the original location of the cookstove, I moved the refrigerator over and put tall cabinets between it and the partial wall for expanded storage (including a broom/cleaning storage closet, which we do not now have), put cabinets on the stove wall, filling the awkward inset with useful things, and relocated the sink to the original sink location, under the short window.

In order to avoid removing or obscuring original features (the long windows, which let so much wonderful light into the kitchen), I elected to put kitchen carts or some other portable storage/workspace solution on either side of the sink. And the dining area? Where the existing sink is, so nobody gets elbowed or bumped during breakfast. The sink I picked is one of two that I really love in the Ikea catalog, the one that looks like a vintage farm sink.

It's so much more usable that I just want to buy it NOWNOWNOW. Of course, this is not possible, and will entail a great deal more than seven thousand dollars, such as living without a kitchen for a couple of weeks while we move plumbing around and install everything. Never mind the money.

We finished something! Call the press!

The living room is DONE (well, except for refinishing the floor, but we'll wait on that until the kids are older). We also got the carpet out of the dining room, and it looks an order of magnitude better, even with the hole in the ceiling. A million staples later, we have floors we are already happy with.

The bath is half tiled, all fixtures are in, and the only things waiting to be done (besides part 2 of the tiling) are the faucets on the shower wall (we must finish tiling and grouting first) and connecting the sink to the plumbing. All the weird, fiddly, awkward tiling is now complete.

The Amazing Debris Collection is almost gone. The next dumpster load is waiting next to the dumpster, and we have a few pieces left in the house.

I updated our budget sheet last night and we have spent about 4 grand on tools and materials so far. It sounds awful, but if we had hired people to do this for us, we would have spent 10-20 grand, just to get this far. Even if it would have gone faster, it wouldn't have gone much faster (and may have gotten slower). Our friends A and R hired folks to do all their work last year, and it took them 9 months to get into their house. It's a Stick style house, and it looks great now, but it was a fustercluck for a long time, there.

By the way, spellcheck hates "fustercluck" - and suggests I use "festers" instead. Apt.

Some progress, some regression, and some blessings counted.

I'm counting my blessings, lest I sink into despair. There will be no moving in this week. FX will come home to an unfinished house, even if he will have a play area to use while we work.

Why? We have fixtures in the bath now, and even some tile (Thanks, MOM!), but that's not really done yet. That's the progess. However, in the process of getting there, we discovered that the toilet we wanted to keep was Done For.

After re-installing it. Sigh. Off to the Home Improvement Store (this time it was Menard's) for a new toilet, a cheap new toilet, and other necessities. Unforseen spending later, (under 200 bucks, really, so we got out cheap, but it was still not budgeted for) there is, once again, a toilet in our new bathroom.

Well, if we have to move for any reason, we can advertise it as having "all new fixtures" in the bath. I don't want to move, this house has ahold of my soul.

Now to the livingroom carpet. Remember the carpet dream? Well, it was partially prophetic - that horrible carpet was on a pad that was either glued down or that degraded in a manner most foul. We've been scraping for two days, and we only have 1/3 of the floor exposed. I see refinishing in my future - but, at least, not sanding. Scrubbing, on hands and knees, and revarnishing, but no sanding in this room, at least.

bathroom demo complete, plus bonus wound report

Look, the idiot is dancing again. But this time, she is limping.

The good news: the bath demo is done! The tiny tub (very HEAVY but also tiny) is out, and awaiting removal* in our otherwise empty living room. The appallingly designed, 1970's, also tiny (below crotch level on a small woman), sink vanity was ripped out (and destroyed) with glee yesterday. The sink and bath had a strange synergy going - the tub is a wave-front, streamline designed built-in tub, and the vanity was a flat-sided box that was installed rightupagainst the tub, leaving a little pocket between the head of the tub and the side of the vanity, where water and a half dozen washcloths had gathered over the years.

Not surprisingly, I had to rip out several punky floorboards, but the subfloor is very intact, which means that patching that spot on the floor before installing the tilebacker is going to be a piece of cake (all supply lines run through the wall, so no cutouts even need to be made!). Yuck, but fixable. AND - no termite damage, just old mold rot, which is now well dried out (the house was not lived in for 2 years before we bought it and we didn't use the tub or sink at all) and gone.

All the Vile Stinky Tile Adhesive came down with the plaster coat it had been attached to. The bare lath looks a heck of a lot better, and smells better too. Funny how much bigger the little room looks when it's empty...

We have elected to keep the old, high-flow toilet, as we like it, but it's getting pulled gently and set aside until the hardibacker is laid and skimmed.

The plumbing is demoed, too, so now we know what we need to get - and what we forgot to get. Like the tub overflow valve...and the drain pipe parts. Nothing quite like discovering you forgot to get something essential when elbows deep in a job. Sigh. We also have nowhere to go when working on the house. Well, I have nowhere to go. For the guys, there are plenty of trees in the backyard...

The bath wiring is also complete - J was putting in the two new GFI outlets as we left last night. The box for the wall fixture was put in, and the ceiling fixture was pulled out (even if it's nice, I really don't need to climb 9 feet up to screw around with a wet fixture to change bulbs in the middle of the night). The hole will probably end up holding a through-attic vent, since the enclosed back porch covers the only window.

That window opens, but it hinges open against the showerhead. The window predates any shower in that bath, so it's a matter of old laziness (I think the PPO, when they fixed the house up for sale in 1949). I say this as it is an easy fix - swap the hinges and latch from one side to the other. I want to pull and strip the hardware anyway, so why not fix this issue now?

We have also come to a decision about the 1940's - 1950's medicine cabinet - we're selling it. We'll put in either the original cabinet (found under the bay addition, and in need of restoration) or an equivalent repro. Craftsman-style wall cabinets are popular and can be had fairly cheaply these days, so it comes down to whichever is the less expensive option for now.

Now, we get to the limping part. I caught my shoe on a multi nailed scrap yesterday, and thinking I had shaken it off, put weight on my foot. No such luck - it had caught me and I got punctured. My foot HURTS, but the nail was a clean one, I've had a Tetanus shot in the past few years (in '99) and we have a first aid kit handy. My foot still hurts, though. I'll live.

* This gets mentioned last. My husband was theorizing yesterday about uses for the ex-tub. Like a fishpond, or planter. In the yard. I think he's pulling my chain. I hope he's pulling my chain. I'm all about reuse, but that's a little rednecky, even for me.

Here's an example of his sense of humor:


  

My advice? Don't sit on the smudged lid of a spackle can in black pants when he's around ... whether he has a camera or not.

Recycling = more beauty from ugliness

And it's almost free! If you don't count my time spent, that is. As I'm not gainfully employed at this time -there being no payscale for mothering- I'm not counting it. I'm literally making beauty out of ugly things, not just patching or covering it up, so I've got that to be happy about too.

I needed to create a fill-in between the den (which will become my older son's room) and the dining room, inside an arch, in such a way that it can be removed later but also in such a way that it looks like a built-in or other deliberate design element. The arch had already had awful vinyl accordion curtains screwed into it, which we reomved, so attaching a framework inside it was not going to create any more damage or future work. That was the easy part. It took about 3 hours, including measuring and cutting, and sifting through the demo'd out 2x4s from the old 70's drop ceiling for good lumber. Recycling phase 1.

Once I had the framework in, I stood around puzzling about what I wanted to cover it with. I looked over the hideous fake wood paneling we had ripped out, and noticed that the backs of the sheets (those not badly damaged or befouled by glue) were actually quite attractive, if I sanded off the product information stamps. I selected the two most attractive, cut them to size and tacked them up. Recycling phase 2.

Now what? "It looks like a big doorway with fairly nice plywood tacked across it. Hmmm. Better, but not the look I want." Thinking ensued. Some of those old furring strips were nice and smooth on one side, and if I pulled out all the staples and nails and scraps of polystyrene tile, might just sand up to something tolerable. Oh, and we did have lots of original salvaged mouldings of various types from demo'ing the old closet wall and making our bedroom large enough to use. Some of those looked promising. Like the casing from the closet doorway...

I sat on the floor after assembling all the likely pieces of wood and thought intently, then decided to go buy myself a drink. Not alcoholic, though I have certainly thought about that enough, between the house and general other drama. However, as Miller Time isn't for another month and a half, I must needs wait.

Back from my jaunt, I cleaned up enough furring strips to make vertical trim pieces on my new paneled wall, Craftsman-Style. I set a baseboard in, measured from there to where I wanted the "chair rail" (more like armpit rail...), and got out my handy wee saw. Then, with all five trim parts cut, I became distracted by a good idea. "Hey! What this needs is a mirror!" As we had one that had been hung on the bathroom door, that was actually less of a leap than you'd think.

Of course, now I had to figure out how to frame the thing. Originally I had meant to just use furring strips for all the trim, horizontal and vertical, but adding the complication of a built-in, framed mirror made that less than workable. Back to the casing from the closet door that was no more. Hmmm. Inside the closet, the casings hadn't been stained, but outside, they had, so I had some pre-matched mouldings to work with on my fakey-craftsman "built-in" piece. I think there may even have been a lightbulb hanging above my head. More measuring and cutting ensued, with me pulling the mirror down, measuring it, forgetting the measurements, and running back and forth between the mirror and my improvised sawhorses.

Eventually, I got the framing mouldings cut, and notched correctly for the mirror, and hung on my false wall. I even remembered to put the mirror in before it was all tacked up, and there was only one episode of not-measuring-correctly in the middle of it all. Recycling phase 3 was now complete.

Today, I got a wild hair to add a shelf above the mirror, before measuring and cutting the last several furring strip trim pieces, and that's what I did. There was a great deal of swearing involved, as I really needed more hands to do this, but the result looks good. I made that out of most of the old knicknack shelf the PO's dad had made 30-some years ago, plus the mitered offcuts of the door casings. Recycling phase 4.

Of course, there are no pictures. There likely won't be until the thing is all assembled, possibly not until it's all stained and shiny, depending on whether or not I can be bothered to remember the camera. Hopefully my gestating offspring hasn't absorbed my very blue vocal expressions (also known in my family as "Carpentry English") too terribly much today.

And, yes, I still need a radio. The crazy is getting distinctly ... crazy.

Baby stuff: Homemade spot cleaner for carpeting

For anyone who has a Baby, as all babies produce Yellow Staining Poo (and it does get on the carpet, no matter how hard you try not to let it :/ ).

Anyhow, this stuff actually works, and it's cheap.
You need:
A spray bottle
A 12oz bottle of Hydrogen Peroxide (cleans and disinfects)
2-3 drops of dish soap (cleans)
1 teaspoon of baking soda (deodorizer)

dissolve baking soda in a little water.
Pour into spray bottle.
Pour HP into spray bottle.
Add 2-3 drops of dish soap.
Close spray bottle and shake to mix.

Spray on 'spots' on carpet, allow to foam a bit and blot with a damp washcloth. Repeat until spot is indistinct.
Any residue will come out next time carpet is cleaned.

What reminded me to post this? I just had to clean up a stealth poop off our bedroom floor. Sigh.