Racaire's Embroidery & Needlework…

Woman’s hose – try n° 1 (sole)

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I was asked to make a picture of my sole and here we are …

Woman’s hose – try n° 1 – additional info concerning the fitting

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…btw. after I finished the seam of the first stocking the first time -  I had to reopen the seam of the upper leg of the first stocking again and rework it because the stocking was to loose – for the second stocking I worked with some long running stitches for the last fitting – when the stocking was to loose, I just sewed a new line of long running stitches about 0,3 to 0,4 mm away from the last running stitch near the sections where the stocking was to loose and tried it on again until the stocking was fine and than I sewed the parts together with a thicker thread using back stitch

Woman’s hose – try n° 1

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…and here again my new stockings

Woman’s hose – try n° 1

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…and here my new stockings

Woman’s hose – try n° 1 / II

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…ok, my first woman’s hose experiment:
After cutting the fabric I sew the two pieces with a not very strong sewing thread with long running stitches together and tried it on.
The cut for the foot cut worked very well but I had to alter my cut for the lower leg at two sections – because I didn’t consider the seam allowance for the sewing where the foot and the lower leg section come together at the instep, I had to take about one centimeter away at the bottom, also I had to take away about 1cm on the left and right side of the cut because the wool fabric stretches better and more than I thought…

Woman’s hose – try n° 1 / I

Today I decided to make a “woman’s hose” for me – first I started with the instructions of the book “The Medieval Tailor’s Assistant” (page 106+) but I had some problems with the “…When it begins to drag over the foot, snip the fabric on each side…” part.

I am sure that I made some mistakes at this point because it didn’t look right and also didn’t fit at all and therefore I took a look into the book “Textiles and Clothing, C.1150-C.1450: Finds from Medieval Excavations in London (Medieval Finds from Excavations in London)“.

With the sewing machine I added some extra fabric at the bottom – the foot part, because the upper part for the lower leg did work rather well – and tried to get a cut similar to the “Leg and foot pieces of hose from late 14th-century deposits: …” – C on page 188 and D on page 189 – of the book “Textiles and Clothing, C.1150-C.1450: Finds from Medieval Excavations in London (Medieval Finds from Excavations in London)“.

…my next step was that I cut out a piece of fabric that looks like “D” (at the same page, p. 188) and realized that the piece of fabric was to small and I had to add some fabric with the sewing machine as well…

At the left picture you can see my try to make the piece of fabric fit to my foot and during the fitting I tried also to move my foot up and down to get sure that I still can move it properly…

…and in the end I got the cut shown at the picture on the left side – I think it’s because my foot is rather long and thin and I am sure the cut can still be adjusted – but I decided that I will try it for my first “woman’s hose”