i brought it back from the brink. settle in.

I made this tunic about ten years ago for an ex-boyfriend. I kept it when we broke up (especially since he went to all of one event), and sometimes wear it around the house when it’s cold. This winter I picked it up and realized that the moths had eaten well last summer, and there were massive bare spots. I was going to fix it anyway, and then I realized that I could use it as my entry to Artifacts of a Life.

I was inspired by the Bernuthsfeld tunic, which is earlier than my time period, and nowhere near Hedeby, but given that it’s basically either a tunic that was patched over and over until there as little left of the original fabric, or one that was made of patches in the first place, I figured that chances were good that there were similar mended garments in Hedeby. And then another idea came to me, as so many do, while I was in the bathroom, and I decided to tie the story of this tunic getting mended with the textile fragment found in the ship discovered in Hedeby Harbor. Read my abstract to get the whole story.

The plaid pattern on this fabric is not particularly period, and the entire thing was sewn on a sewing machine (I wasn’t into hand sewing garb back then). I didn’t intend to resew the seams and seam allowances at first, but once I opened up a seam to make it easier to sew on a patch, I decided that not only would it be cool to sew it back together by hand, but it would be necessary because my sewing machine is still at a friend’s house, where it has been for nearly two years. And because I am EXTRA, I sewed the patches and the seams with handspun.

For Artifacts, I sewed the patches on top of the fabric. After the fact, though, I decided that those patches weren’t supporting the damaged fabric enough, so I took almost all of them off, sewed them on again on the inside, then cut away the damaged fibers and whipstitched around the edges. It looks neater and seems stronger.

I took the whole thing apart to sew on the patches, then whipstitched the seam allowances down and whipped the seams back together. I used whatever thread I put my hand on first, whether it was the white BFL or the brown Manx, and loved it. I even did some sewing with period needles, which honestly didn’t slow me down as much as I might have expected. The only area I didn’t take apart and resew was the neckline. I sewed in a linen facing with my machine all those years ago, and it looked really nice, plus I didn’t want it to skew out of shape if I took it apart. I had topstitched the neckline with cotton embroidery floss in gold, and I pulled all that out, spun up some gold wool fiber that I happened to have (this is why I keep inventories of my supplies), and resewed it with that thread.

The story of this tunic is a whole saga. I am so proud of the work I did on it. This is how I discovered how much I love to mend things: I’ve given a second life to this piece of clothing I really liked, and someone else might have chucked in the trash. The bottom still isn’t hemmed, but it will be by the time it gets cold again, and it will keep me as warm as ever.