Mending: Sashiko/Boro Backpack

Several years ago, I bought a backpack from the Surplus Store on the corner of National and Venice in Culver City. (I love that store. I still go back every time I visit family in L.A.) I carried that backpack to work daily for five years, which is a very respectable lifespan. It had enough room for a packed lunch, a crafty project, and a book (three things I never leave home without) AND a bunch of groceries besides. Alternatively, it could comfortably accommodate clothing, toiletries, and entertainment for a 3-day business trip or, stretched to its limits, a week-long backpacking trip. It had plenty of separate pockets of different sizes so that I never had to go fishing for my keys, wallet, or work ID in amongst the jumble of other random crap. It was a good backpack.

At long last, however, the fabric started to tear around the top of the right shoulder strap--the one I use to pick it up all the time. I no longer trusted it to carry heavy loads without ripping farther. I removed it from service but couldn't quite bring myself to throw it away. After all, we'd been through so much together, and none of the other backpacks I could find offered the same carrying capacity, or so many convenient pockets. I bought two other backpacks whose zippers ceased to function in less than a year, and they barely had enough room for my sewing, lunch, and book, let alone a week's worth of clothing. As Steve and I were packing for a week-long stay on a hippy commune, my eyes kept straying to my poor injured backpack, and I decided it was time to give it a new lease on life. I got out my trusty sewing kit and set to work.

Sewing: Grey Linen Tunic

Despite the fact that I resolved in January to try to do more pottery, what I've been in the mood for lately is sewing. I'm still under a fabric-buying embargo, so when the sewing mood is upon me, I try to think of projects that can be made from fabric I already own. My stash is predominantly a mixture of velvet/satin/taffeta and linen. The fancy fabrics were great when I was going to the Riverside Dickens Fest every year, but less great in the UK where I don't go to any Victorian events. So that leaves linen. I have three pieces of linen in my stash that are destined to become tunics or tunic-dresses. I enjoy making tunics because they're easy, comfortable, and can do double duty as SCA garb and (slightly eccentric) weekend lounge/casual wear.

Sewing: Brown Herringbone Smokkr

Tablet weaving at an
event in simple garb.

When getting ready for the 2017 Raglan Fair, I started working on a new Viking smokkr or apron dress. I got as far as drafting the pattern and cutting out the pieces before finding my old smokkr, at which point I decided to spiff that one up instead of rushing to finish the new one. In the weeks that followed, I slowly chipped away at the new smokkr, picking it up and putting it down as my energy levels and free time allowed, and it's now in a wearable state.

I have very mixed feelings about the smokkr as commonly reconstructed in re-enactment circles. It's a garment that has become more or less the uniform for re-enactors portraying women of the Viking period, but all of the information we have on this garment is based on a few tattered fragments, and minuscule fossilized loops of cloth preserved inside of metallic brooches. Those tattered fragments and scraps can tell us a lot about what the smokkr was made from--fibers and dye plants used, thread count, weave, amount of twist in the yarn--but they can't tell us much about the shape, fit, length, or degree of ornamentation of the finished garment. We do have some visual representations of Viking women on runestones and gullgubber, but they are heavily stylized and difficult to interpret. And yet, there are plenty of re-enactors who will happily criticize any interpretation of this garment that differs from their own. I have some very strong feelings about this, which I hope to write up separately one day, but for now I'd like to focus on the garment that I put together as an expedient way of expanding my wardrobe for a week-long SCA event.