Trouser Ponderings.

I've been wondering in the back of my brain for most of the night, since looking at the Alpirsbach pattern yesterday: How would it have been constructed?

You see, the pattern, as published in Fingerlin, I., 2001. Textil- und Lederfunde, in: Landesdenkmalamt Baden-Württemberg (Ed.), Alpirsbach. Zur Geschichte von Kloster und Stadt, Theiss, Stuttgart, pp. 715-818 on p. 737 looks like this:

The whole thing is placed at an angle onto the fabric, as indicated by the little arrows - so you can use the elasticity on the bias to make everything work better.

So far, so good. But... we're in the late 15th, early 16th century here. There's definitely no Burda-style patterns made from paper, and the thing is not lined, so you can't use the lining for construction. Which leads me to the question, as always when looking at garments from medieval times: How do you construct this? Which measurements do you take, and how do you transfer them to the fabric to cut out your thing, especially since there's bits not cut in one piece due to the fabric width?

Of course you can construct one leg first and then use that as template for the other one. But in this case, which one do you do first, the one with the bits of the front and the back strip cut extra, or the one with the solid bit of the ass part cut extra? 

Questions over questions. First step for trying to solve them is printing out the thing and marking it up with all the known bits - which pieces are definitely the same length, which bit correlates to a known body measurement, how are the warp and weft aligned in the extra bits. Which is exactly what I am going to do today, in a bout of slightly brain-bending fun!