Instruction Challenge: Sewing a Viking Hood

As a Viking reenactor, one of my challenges is recreating garments worn centuries ago, with no instructions on how they are put together. I read through several sets of instructions for how to make a reproduction of the hood found in Skjold Harbor. After several tries, I now understand how the squares and rectangles work together.

Explaining how to assemble this hood requires both color-coded diagrams and photographs of the assembly process. The photo on the right shows my completed hood.

The pattern is deceptively simple: two rectangles (1-2 and 3-4) form the hood and sides, and the front and back panels are squares half the size of the rectangles (5 and 6).

I have colored each section’s edges to explain which edges should be sewn together. Black edges indicate the outer seams of the garment, and the dashed black line shows where the fabric folds.

Suggested dimensions for the hood are to make each colored length one foot, requiring a rectangle of material two feet by three feet. If you have an unusually large head or are making a child’s hood, cut a brown paper bag and hold it behind their head. The square should be a few inches larger than their head.

The hood is tricky to assemble because the edges align in an odd fashion.

First, join the two purple edges of (2) and (3) together to form a very long rectangle. Another way to make this hood from a piece of fabric one foot wide and six feet long, removing the need for the purple seam. The purple edge can be a fold or a seam, and sits over the top of the head.

 

 

Next, join the two red edges of (2) and (3) together. This seam sits over the back of the head . The black edges of (2) and (3) are the open front of the hood.

 

Starting at the end of the red seam, pin  and sew square (6) to the back to the hood. You will need to align the orange edges of (1) and (6) as well as the  brown edges of (4) and (6). Don’t start at one of the corners with a black edge, because the fabric can slip and misalign the entire hood.

 

The next step is the hardest. Carefully align the front of the hood to sew the front seams. I like to pin the open front of the hood (the black lines of (2) and (3) closed so they align. This ensures the front square (5) will align with the back square (6).

 

Finally, sew the blue edge of (5) to the blue edge of (1). Now you only need to finish the seam around the open front of the hood and its outer edge.

It looks strange, doesn’t it? When flat, the hood will look like this. I have drawn a person in the hood so you can see how it sits. The dashed lines indicate folds.

 

Building my own Brand

I am an unusual person: whenever presented with an either-or choice, I almost always choose both. I am editor and a writer, a problem-solving engineer and an artist. Sometimes job hunting frustrates me, because many companies want a person to do just one thing, but I do that thing and more. Communicating this on my resume is a challenging.

My other challenge is my name. Anakin is my first name, Steuart is my middle name, and Michele is my last name. I have been mistaken for “Michele Steuart” many times, including the DMV and voter registration. To make life easier, I started using Ana Steuart as a pen name, because it’s a recognizable first name followed by a recognizable last name. This can cause confusion when someone is trying to connect Ana Steuart with Anakin Steuart Michele.

I was looking through examples of resume layouts when I stumbled across this design. The vertical name stands out, but does not distract from the text of the resume.

 

My old resume used Microsoft Word’s table tools to create a graphic header, but the color combination made it distracting.

I played around with table settings in a Word document, rotating and enlarging the text of my name to resemble the example I found. My true breakthrough was the realization that I could use back and gray text colors to separate my full name from the short version I use professionally:

Once I had this graphic element, everything else fell into place. I removed the old heading image from the top of this blog. Then I cloned and edited my professional writing posts from my hobby blog.

Finally, I created a matching set of business cards. I liked the sweeping blue background of this VistaPrint design. I enjoyed the challenge of fitting the rest of my information around the card’s graphics.

Some artists prefer to create everything themselves, controlling every aspect of their work. I prefer to work with what already exists, creating a harmony between what is there and what I can add to the piece. My inclusive thinking makes it easier for me to work within a team.

Heraldic Graphic Design: My Vector Art Contributions

I work as a volunteer for the Society for Creative Anachronism. The SCA is a non-profit group that teaches living medieval history, with modern safety and health concerns.

In the SCA, I am an Art Herald. This means I sit down with clients and help them choose what image should be their household arms. (This is choosing to have a color scheme and design such as House Stark or House Lannister have on Game of Thrones.) Once the client has a design to register, I draw it for them.

When I started working as an Art Herald, the best art resource was the Pennsic Traceable Art Project. It was created by enlarging images on a photocopier, and the image quality is poor. Two years ago, I asked the other Heralds for permission to completely overhaul it. I envisioned a completely digital version of the Traceable Heraldic Art Project. Not long after I began working on it, Mathghamhain Ua Ruadháin stepped in to help. He has software that can convert line art into vector art, and the server space to host HeraldicArt.org.

Vector art is different from scans of line drawings because it is scaleable. A physical photograph brought to a copy shop can make it twice as large, but some of the details will blur due to the limitations of the DPI (Dots Per Inch) of the photo. Vector art is different because it consists of completely computer-draw lines. Vector art can be scaled from minuscule thumbnails to multistory billboards without becoming pixilated or blurry.

This project is enormous. It incorporates most of the old traceable art, as well as all the backgrounds for heraldic shields . Additionally, we are including heraldic pieces drawn and donated by artists around the world.

One set of artistic compilations was created in 1994 by Herald Torric inn Bjarni. His work is incredibly detailed, but his use of shading and hatching are difficult to translate into vector art. One of my tasks as an artist is to take his artwork and turn it into drawings that are easily converted to vectors. This is a huge project, because he compiled his drawings in a way to save space and paper, often using dashed lines and small notes to indicate how alternate versions of a creature would be drawn. These are scans from a few of his drawings. He also included other scraps of art that allow different creature variants to be drawn.

Note how the dragon has four legs, while the wyvern has only two. Additionally, Torric made notes on basilisks and cockatrices, which I also drew. These combinations resulted in drawing a baker’s dozen different variations of the same dragon.

Here are the first two dragons. The dragon on the left is Sejant, or in a seated pose.

The dragon on the right is Sejant Erect, or sitting with a raised limb.

 

In contrast, these two wyverns have only two legs. They are also displayed as Sejant and Sejant Erect.

 

 

With Torric’s note of the cockatrice head and the beginning of wings in the thumbnail drawing, I was able to piece together drawings. A cockatrice is a wyvern with the head of a cock.

 

A basilisk  is only different from a cockatrice because it has a dragon’s head at the end of its tail.

 

After drawing eight pictures of similar creatures, I was delighted to draw these dragons Couchant, or crouching. The right dragon is Coucant Erect, or crouching with one limb raised.

And here are another two versions of the Couchant dragons, with their wings folded. Having many variations of heraldic animals can be critical when artists are placing images within limited space.

Finally, here is the dragon Dormant, or sleeping. The Hogwarts motto “Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus” seems appropriate here, since you should never tickle a sleeping dragon.

Solving Problems with Design: A LARP Vest

I’m an avid member of the Society of Creative Anachronisms,  but I was a Live Action Role Player (LARPer) for a decade and a half before I changed hobbies. This vest is both the most beautiful and the most complicated piece of fabric engineering that I have created. The Tree of Life embroidery alone took a month.

 I refer to this piece as engineering, because it’s not simply a costume. I needed to have a lot of pockets to hold my notebook, components, tags, and props. I’d originally carried a shoulder bag, but it didn’t have enough pockets or enough volume. The front of this vest has four separate flat pockets, and two larger cargo pockets on the sides.

The large cargo pockets measured 12″ deep, 7″ wide, and about 1.5″ wide. I could easily fit 40 bean bag “packets” into each of the two side pockets. At some point in a large battle, I would be scrambling to transfer packets from the left pocket, where I held my bow, to the right pocket, where I grabbed my packet ammo. Friends sometimes snagged packets out of my pockets in a pinch.

All of these pockets were extremely useful, but I feel the real genius of the project was making the vest adjustable. LARPs run in the spring, summer, and fall, and temperatures will vary from 40 to  90 degrees. I needed a single costume item that I could wear over minimal summer clothing, but would still work layered over an undershirt, overshirt, and chainmail, while still being able to throw a cloak over the whole ensemble. To that end, I put velcro strips in the belt, both to be adjustable and so I could quickly change my under-layers. The top half of the vest is lined protect the embroidery.