I wrote: 

You need middle gores in the front and back to keep a riding slit closed when not in use (and there are no riding slits without gores in any archaeological find).

In the archaeological record, we have men's tunics both with and without a riding slit. What they have in common is the middle gore set into the front and the back.

The gore on its own would not provide enough room to sit astride a horse without the fabric riding up the legs, at least not in most cases. The Moselund tunic, for instance, is rather long, so it would have to be very, very wide for that to work. If you look at artwork from the Middle Ages, you will notice that the existence of the slit is made clear, but it's always "closed", as in there is no underwear shown. 

The way we are shown that there is indeed a riding slit is rather ingenious: There is a vertical line, and because that is usually rather inconspicuous, often the edges of the lower part of the slit are shown turned outwards, with the lining of the garment clearly visible contrasting with the outer fabric. This is the case in the image above, where a fur lining is shown. The two men next to this man have simpler slit tunics, but you can also clearly tell they are slitted: the corners at the bottom of the slit overlap, and are slightly mis-aligned. The same goes for the green garment worn underneath the red fur-lined one on Main Guy. 

A riding slit, for it to work properly, also has to be long enough. A lot of the modern interpretations in Living History have a slit cut in, but it does not reach up far enough - it has to come up to about crotch level, front and back, if you want to avoid bunching of the tunic. That, of course, is a problem if you do not have the middle gores set in, because a simple slit will inevitably stay open (especially if you hem the edges, which is the smart thing to do) and thus, if it's cut up far enough, expose your underwear. Which, back in time as today, was not something you'd usually go for.

You're long overdue an update on the Egtved Project, right? It has slipped into the background a bit with all my writing about the website stuff and issues - though there was work on it going on in the background. Spinning and weaving have both been finished by now, but today, you're getting an update on the corded skirt, and especially my friends the Endless Number Of Rings.

Looking at the cords, it is relatively clear how they were made. There was no such thing as a cord twister back in the Bronze Age, after all, so the possible methods of getting the cords twisted are a) by hand or b) using a stick or something similar to twist them up strongly and then countertwist them together. For the rings, it's not quite as obvious. 

The rings at the bottom are completely covered by wool fibres, wrapped around a core and looking very smooth, tight, and orderly. Similar rings can be found at the bottom of the belt tassels of the Trindhoj and Egtved finds. In Hald's publication about the Egtved skirt, she assumes that there is a knot (a single overhand knot) at the end of the cords, that they are then sort of closed into a ring shape, with the ends touching at the bottom, and this ring is then wrapped with fibre.

I have tried a few different methods to get a nice, tidy, tight ring, and to me it looks like there's quite a number of different ways to achieve this. The method I've settled for now is a two-step process, and I'm not sure how plausible it would be for the Bronze Age, but it's at least not completely out due to not having the tools available in that time.

I'm winding my fibre around a little stick, forming a nice, tidy, tight roll. Not too tight, though, and considerably longer than the actual circumference of the little ring, as that seems to work better than making a thicker, shorter roll. I do make a single overhand knot in the cord as Hald suggests; for me, this mostly serves to make sure the ring will sit at the correct height. Measuring the cord to get it to the length it should have is one of the things that gave me a bit of a headache, by the way - these cords are really stretchy.

I then slide the fibre roll off the stick and pull the cord ends through the roll, in opposite directions. The ends come out at the top, and I go over to the other side and back down into the wool roll with each end, aiming to go about a third to a bit more than a third downwards. I will cut off the remaining cord end later on, and the ring will close up. 

On the picture, you can still see the ends of the cords sticking out of the rings; you can also see the rings hanging out on top of the printed-out Egtved Skirt image that I use as a reference and size guide. Getting the rings the correct size is something that felt, and still feels, like a real challenge, as there's only limited information from the picture. They are only seen sideways, apart from the very last one on the very leftmost end of the skirt, which is sort of half-visible - so I don't know how closed they look, or how their tops really look, or how thick they seem from their front. 

The sides of the rings look a bit squashed up in some places, but after a few hundred years of snuggling up to each other, well, I'd say that can be expected.

This is how my rings look right now, lined up on a stick for a comparison: 

I'd say that's close enough for all practical purposes. And I'm really looking forward to what it will look, and feel like when everything is strung up properly!