Cords, and Rings, Oh My.

The corded skirt!

The Bronze Age corded skirts are definitely a fascinating topic, and they are quite iconic. The one found in the Egtved grave is, to my knowledge, the only complete and undamaged (or almost undamaged) one, and probably the best-known of them as well.

It's basically a band with a long fringe that serves as the skirt part. Not just any simple fringe, though: The individual cords are made from two two-ply yarns each, very tightly twisted, and they are finished in form of a ring at the bottom. That ring is tightly wrapped with some (slightly felted?) wool.

Getting this, of course, means? Right! More tests, and fiddling around, and measuring before and after. It's quite a significant amount of length that is taken up by the cording process, and I've also had to do quite a bit of fiddling and trying different methods and different kinds of wool to end up with a satisfactory process to make the rings.

[caption id="attachment_6487" align="alignnone" width="298"] Getting there! There's a little bit of fibre sticking out of the wrap, but overall it looks good to my eyes.


Neither the cords nor the rings are very large - the cords measure just under 4 mm in diameter in the original. (A lot of the modern re-makes of corded skirts have thicker cords than the originals, by the way.) The cords should end up at about 38 cm length when finished; I figured that I need about 60 cm loop length as the raw fringe to have enough material for the cord, the ring finish, and handling of both.

Last test run showed that I might want some more twist in my yarn for the cords, with the thickness that I did use before. Most importantly, though, it showed that for a change, I don't want to set the twist for the cord fringe before using the yarn, as it will make the cording process a bit easier to do, and will result in a more crisp look. So I'll sit down to some more spinning as soon as the fibre arrives (my first batch has just run out), and then there will be spinning (a considerable amount, since it's a lot of cords), and then... finally... cord-skirt-weaving! (Can you tell I'm really looking forward to that?)

In the meantime, I will work on the belt, which is also finished with cords that end in rings. More practice for the big one!