Fits about Fitting

 We are getting ready to begin our Anglo Saxon projects, and I am working on mock-ups. But we are making tunics!  And I have made many tunics before!  Hmm.  Tunics are one of the first things that most people make when they start in the SCA, and most people move on to other types of clothes fairly quickly.  Why? Because tunics are easy to make, but tough to make look good.  It is all too easy to resemble a sack of potatoes.  I have made many other types of historical costume, and I prefer fitting clothing that fits closer to the body.  It is easier to make small adjustments while fitting it on a person, and change the way a garment fits.  When you are dealing with clothing that is draped on the body, you actually have to make much larger changes to make the garment fit better.  I have found I love the earlier time periods the best, so tunics it is.

The way a tunic fits is based foremost on the width of the shoulders.  This determines how wide the central panel of the tunic is for the classic Nockert Type 1 tunic.  There will be gussets under the sleeves and gores on at least the sides of this central panel to help shape the tunic.  If a person is slender, as all people appear to be in images from the 11th Century, the tunic falls loosely from the shoulders, and looks very elegant.  On a large proportion of modern bodies, the shoulders are not the widest part of the body.  If your chest or waist are larger than your shoulders, this makes the central part of the tunic too wide.  You can slant in the top of the tunic to help the shoulders fit better, but there is a limit to how much you can do this to make the shoulders look better.  

Another way of doing this is the Nockert Type 5 tunic that still has a central panel based on the shoulder width, but has much wider gores that go up to the sleeves or to a wide under sleeve gusset.  Essentially, it is an early way of setting in the sleeves, and the shoulders fit much better.  

The suggested 11th C. gown cutting pattern in Dress in Anglo Saxon England (Owen-Crocker) has the standard square gussets under the sleeves, and side gores that go all the way up to the gusset.  This seems to be a combination of both types of tunics.  Since the men's tunics all seem to flare out, and the women's tunics all hang pretty straight, I will probably use both types.

Anyway, 5 curtain panels in, and I am still trying to figure it out.