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LATE 13TH TO EARLY 14TH CENTURY WOMAN’S CYCLAS Alianor de Ravenglas

Abstract I made this cyclas, or sleeveless overtunic, from two layers of medium-weight linen and hand-stitched it using linen thread. I based the stitching and lining method on those found on an 11th century lined linen shirt. An extant garment, commonly known as Herjolfsnes 37, inspired the pattern. Background

The cyclas is a sleeveless overtunic. It seems to initially have been worn by soldiers over their armor, and came into common civilian by the end of the 13th or the beginning of the 14th century. This type of sleeveless garment appears on women three times in the Maciejowski Bible (dated to roughly 1250) and many of the women pictured in the Manesse Codex (dated to roughly 1325) wear them. At the earlier end of this time span, men wore these garments much more commonly than did women; by the time of the Manesse Codex, men and women wore them roughly equally. Illustrations 1 – 4 show this type of garment on both men and women. Construction

This cyclas is constructed from six main pieces: a back, a front, and four trapezoidal gores (inserted into the side seams of the garment). Illustration 5 shows the cutting layout I used; for a person of my size, it requires 3 yards of 59” fabric. The design resembles similar garments found in the Herjolfsnes excavations, especially Herjolfsnes 37. The gores on the Herjolfsnes garment are notched at the top, where they comprise the bottom of the arm opening; the resulting arm opening would resemble an upside-down teardrop. (See Illustration 6.) This type of arm opening also appears in some of the garments in the Manesse Codex, as shown in Illustration 7 and 8. I chose to cut the gores for my cyclas as trapezoids, which yields an arm hole in the shape of a “D” turned on its flat edge. Cutting the gores in this manner made the garment fit a woman’s chest better than a garment with a teardrop-shaped arm opening would have. Had I chosen to use triangular goes and a teardrop-shaped arm opening, achieving the body width that I desired would have required cutting “shaped” arms openings, which I have not seen evidence of as early as the late 13th century. Illustration 9 shows the difference between D-shaped and teardrop-shaped arm openings.

I chose to line this garment for two reasons. First, based on the illustrations in the Manesse Codex, it is apparent that these garments were on occasion lined. See Illustrations 10 and 11 for examples of this. Second, I felt that one layer of this particular linen would be too lightweight for this type of garment; it would not drape the way I wanted it to. The lining doubles the weight of the fabric and makes the garment hang much better. The lining technique I used is a type of flat-lining; it treats the body fabric and the lining fabric as one; this technique appears in an 11th century lined linen shirt.1 It also combines the seam and the seam finish; all raw edges lie between the layers of the garment (see Illustration 12). The stitch used resembles both overcast stitch (in that it laps over the outermost layer of fabric) and herringbone stitch (in that it makes the figure-8's characteristic of that stitch as it goes back and forth). This seaming method is fairly

1 Jones

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slow to work, but it does eliminate the step of finishing a seam once it has been sewn. Illustration 13 clarifies the process. I used 40/2 white linen thread on all of the seams and finishing. I used white thread rather than a color matching either the body of the garment or the lining because the most affordable way to get linen sewing thread is in large quantities; I cannot afford buy thread to match every fabric I work with. With the seaming technique I used on this garment, the threads are not visible on the outside; since the garment is lined, all of the finishing attaches only to the lining fabric. Before working the top seam (joining the front and back body panels) of this garment, I fitted it to the slope of my shoulders by draping the two pieces on a dress form and then pinning along the shoulder line. A previous cyclas that I made had just a straight seam across the top, and I found the fit less than ideal. The garment gapped a bit at the shoulders. This cyclas lies smoothly along the shoulder line. At the same time that I fitted the shoulder seams, I marked and cut the neck opening. One result of this lining method is that the seams become rather bulky (there are, after all, eight layers of fabric in each seam). Because of this, I decided to finish the arm hoes and the neck opening by turning a hem and then applying a facing, which was cut on the grain. This technique appears in some of the garments from the London finds, as it appears in Illustration 14.2 In the London finds, however, these interior facings were attached using a running stitch; because I assembled this garment using white thread, which I did not want to show on the outside, I attached the facings using a hem stitch and sewed just through the lining material. I cut the facings from the material that was left over after cutting the body panels (labeled “Excess” in Illustration 5).

Once the garment was completely assembled, I let it hang for a few days so that the gores could stretch along their bias edges. Once that was done, I hemmed the garment. At the hem, the bulk of the eight layers of fabric did not matter as much as it did at the neck and arm openings. I used a dress dummy with a hem-setter to mark the hem. In doing this, I started at the shortest point so that I could get the maximum length out of the garment. Once the hem was marked, I trimmed off the excess fabric and turned a double-fold hem. I stitched it down using a hem stitch, being careful to sew only through the lining material, so that no stitching would show on the outside of the garment.

Reflections In all, I am very pleased with this garment. The construction of it was my first attempt at stitching a garment with linen thread, and also the first lined garment I made. It is, however, my second attempt at making a cyclas; the first one lacked the fitted shoulders that I used on this one and the end effect was not what I had wanted. It also is more historically accurate than the previous attempt because it is entirely hand-sewn and uses documentable construction techniques., although I did compromise and use a modern dress dummy to shape the shoulders, the neckline and to pin the hem.

2 Crowfoot et al.

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Illustrations

Illustration 1:

Both of them wear cyclas.3

Illustration 2: Gawain and a Lady.4

The Lady wears a cyclas.

Illustration 3:

Both men wear cyclas; the one on the right is decorated heraldically.5

Illustration 4:

He wears a cyclas with horizontal stripes.6

3 Manesse Codex. 4 Crowfoot et al. 5 The Life of Edward the Confessor. 6 The Life of Edward the Confessor.

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Illustration 5: Cutting Layout

Illustration 6: Line drawing and photo of Herjolfsnes 377

Illustration 7:

This cyclas has a long, teardrop arm opening; the woman’s waist is clearly visible.

Illustration 8:

Another fairly long arm opening

7 Ibid.

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Illustration 9:

Shaped vs. unshaped arm openings

Illustration 10:

Her blue cyclas is lined in yellow

Illustration 11:

This pink cyclas is lined in white

Illustration 12:

4 layers of fabric, ready to seam.

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Illustration 13:

Stitching Method

Illustration 14:

Facing technique used on arm openings and neckline.8

Illustration 15:

The Finished Garment

8 Crowfoot et al.

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Resources Cockerell, S.C. . Old Testament Miniatures, Phaidon Press Ltd – London. “The Maciejowski

Bible.” (Pictures online at http://www.keesn.nl/mac/mac_en.htm) Crowfoot, E., Pritchard, F., & Staniland, K. (1992). Textiles and Clothing c. 1150 - c.1450.

London: HMSO. Jones, Heather Rose (Tangwystyl verch morgan Glasvryn). 2001. “Archeological Sewing.”

http://www.virtue.to/guest_authors/archaeological_sewing.html. Paris, Matthew. ~1250. “The Life of Edward the Confessor.”

http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/MSS/Ee.3.59/ ~1325. Manesse Codex. http://digi.ub.uni-

heidelberg.de/sammlung2/allg/cpg.xml?docname=cpg848