I have a couple of dresses I wear for tourneys that would be fine for upcoming Great Western War. However, the one thing I DON’T like about researching a given period is that the more you know, the more you realize you don’t know — and how much you didn’t know when you sewed your previous garb! My two dresses both have some difficulties given what I know now. One is the fact that it’s fuchsia linen. The problem isn’t the color so much, although natural dying techniques might not have produced that bright a tone. (Then again, it may.) The problem is that it’s linen — very comfortable, but the wrong color.

It does appear that a Northern European find displays a dyed linen undergarment. We can’t be 100% sure, but the light orangey color does not appear to have been a discoloration — or if it was, it was a faded color. But fuschsia! Nope.

I grant you that I live in Caid. And since I live at 6500′ and am in a cooler mountain atmosphere, I have trouble with the heat of the interior valleys. Blah, blah, blah — and I really dislike wearing the wrong fabric and the wrong color.

I actually don’t have any problem with wearing it as an underdress, which I do in cool weather. It’s still not right, but it looks less wrong and doesn’t bother me as much. I wear wool overgowns over it that do look much more period, and that masks it enough for me. But still…

So I would like to make 3 gowns that are relatively accurate for a transitional 11th-12th c. in England. (I say relatively because the fact of the matter is that early medieval Northumbria was just a lot colder than out here.) I want them for tourney/war wear for Caidan wars Highland, GWW and spring Potrero. I want them out of wool and I don’t want to die when I’m wearing them. Is there hope for me?

I will probably compromise by choosing cooler fabrics that can pass for wool in the proper colors. Bright colors are perfect for wool and that time period — the colors were a glorious clash of green, blue, red, gold — just wonderful stuff. So if a fabric isn’t wool but looks it and is dyed to look like period colors, then it’s all good.

Court is less of a problem, actually. I have some gorgeous olive green silk that dyed beautifully from a too-bright coral, and I have a gold brocade that used to be curtains. Shades of Scarlett O’Hara. True story though, they’re gorgeous. It’s tourney/war wear that is tripping me up.