Ponderings on Patterns.

From time to time, I get asked if I have a pattern for this or that piece of clothing - to which my usual answer is "No, because there were no patterns in the modern sense used in the Middle Ages". Exceptions may apply for items such as hoods, where it's easy to take the pattern from an archaeological find, and which fits a range of head, neck, and shoulder sizes, and not-really-fitted garments such as high medieval breeches, which are rather huge and don't need a lot of measuring.

For dresses and other fitted items of clothing, though, such as hose? In my opinion, it does not make any sense to offer a pattern in the modern sense for these - because their construction, as it can be reconstructed, did work completely different. To get a result close to what the original garments were, it makes much more sense to follow the procedure that was probably used for the originals than to try and use the industrial, post-19th-century approach to clothes, in graded sizes on paper patterns.

Generally speaking, for the historical construction of garments, you take some key measurements and transfer them to the fabric straight away. It's not even necessary to have a measuring tape for this, you can do it with a piece of string (measuring tapes are a rather late invention as well, at least I was not able to find any evidence for them from earlier than the 17th century). Your building bricks for the garments are geometrical shapes, which means they are easy to cut out of the fabric, and final tweaking takes place straight on the body. In case of the more involved, very tight-fitting garments used in the late Middle Ages, or in case of really expensive fabrics, this cut-then-fit approach can be done first on the lining, and then the lining fabric used as a template for the upper fabric.

The huge advantage of this approach (apart from being much closer to the original method, and thus much better suited to get results that look and fit more like the originals fit their original wearers)? Different body shapes pose a much smaller problem than when you have graded pre-made patterns. Human bodies are quite different from start, and they tend to take on even more different shapes if weight is put on, which is definitely an issue today (it would be interesting how many overweight people there were in the Middle Ages, but that's an entirely different topic and not really relevant for now and here). These very varied ways on where extra fat is stored is one of the reasons why it's much harder to find well-fitting garments for people that are overweight or adipose; some people carry most of the extra weight in the legs, some in the butt, some around the middle, and these differences make for very different shapes, so basic pattern grading will not work properly anymore.

So I'm always a bit to very sceptical when I see "patterns for medieval dresses" somewhere. In my personal experience, a lot of the patterns will not work properly, because - as explained above - the approach is just too different. It's especially, um, "interesting" if the pieces in question have not been published completely yet... as is the case with the Lengberg bra. Apparently this skirted bra has been turned into graded patterns which are now available at a site called Reconstructing History. Apart from the fact that if you use the search engine of your choice to look for reviews of patterns from this place, you'll find a lot of people telling you that they are badly documented, badly graded, and come with not-so-great instructions, I can tell you that the members of the Lengberg research team do not endorse this pattern. It was produced without their co-operation or consent, and they do emphasise that it was made without direct knowledge of the original garments or their patterning.

The Lengberg research team is working on a publication on the garments, and as far as I know, they are also going to make their reconstructions as accessible (and re-tailorable) as possible. I know that patience is hard... but it's probably very well worth it here.