schilling-headdress

Mostly everyone that I know have been constructing these according to the pattern suggested in
Gerry Embleton's Dragon #6 from "The company of Saynt George"

Though for period, I personaly don't find the "cordons" (strings) concept very logical as for period construction choice. This is something that would have been done for "bonnet" types of headdresses. Therefor, I believe that the head wrap would have been very plain such as a kerchief or a square folded scarf. So I've made two layouts and, although the second one seams to be more plausible, I'll be trying the first theory to begin with ; The fabric is folded-up at the bottom and the reenforcement piece is sandwiched in the middle.

My coif is made of linen and I used a double-layer of stiff "cotton-linen" canvas to stiffened the forepart. Contrary to what everyone does, by adding the stiffening band only from ear-to-ear, my band goes all around my head and joins in the back. That's why I designed it smaller at the tips. But if the knot concept doesn't work, this would mean that in period, it would have been pined, not tied ; So I'll be trying it both ways and I'll cut off the excedent if the pining technique works best. The canvas piece isn't quite placed in the middle because you have to take in consideration that only the outer layer will be pleated and therefor, must be about 5 inches longer than the inner part.

I've started handsewing the pleats. I think that I'll need about 7 in all. Here's a close-up of the work in progress... The last row was only pined-on temporarely to have an idea of the overall look, it will be staighter once I sew it on... Don't worry !!!

Now this, ladies & gents, was way more time consuming than I had expected. It took me about 4 days to sew the headdress by using tongs all the way because it's so heavy. And it took another 6 hours and a half just to overstitch the wimple-chin-band with the same mini-stitches as the headdress.

After a bit of testing, I decided to modify my original design a bit. Now it works incredibly great. You'll see that I'm able to create just about any styles that were depicted in period with that single piece. Here's what it looks like when layed flat, along with a close-up of one of the tie-tips. The chin band is nearly 2 meters and a half long but depending of the style that you're aiming for, it can very well be made shorter. I just like to have lots of options and to improvise different styles ! :-D