Trossfrau Elevation Dress for Meistrin Kolfinna Valravn

When my friend, Kolfinna, received a writ to join the Order of the Laurel (the highest Arts & Sciences award in the SCA), I was very excited to help make it special. I was asked to lead the design and construction of outfits for the elevation ceremony. Two outfits were organized, an early period Slavic outfit, and a 16th century trossfrau ensemble. Svana Mársdóttir took point on the early period outfit and I lead the late period. Of the seven pieces that made up the trossfrau outfit, I made the cloak and the trossfrau dress.

While I've dabbled a bit in 16th century costuming, most of my work has been from the 14th Century. What I've done in the 16th Century has all been based in England. So I started this project by jumping head first into research into the dress of 16th century military camp followers called trossfrau or campfrau. My favorite resources were:

Katafalk's Website

Whilja's Corner Website 

Thimble and Plume's Youtube Channel

and Casa de Kisa's Website

With a basis of understanding of the styles, I worked with Kolfinna on color, material, and design choices. Many of the final decisions we made were not perfectly in line with the most common period practice (eg. most trossfrau dress guards on paintings and woodcuts aren't slashed) but they are strongly inspired by period depictions.

All told, this project (the dress and cloak) was completed in something like 190-210 hours over the course of three months. The trossfrau dress took about 120 of those hours. It was about 50/50 sewn by machine/hand. The process was as follows:

1. Plan, design, and order fabric

2. Pattern over an existing structured undergarment (kirtle)

3. Cut all the fabric: exterior fabric, structural fabric, and lining

4. Construct the bodice (primarily by hand)

5. Line the bodice and attach closures (by hand)

6. Construct the arms (primarily by machine) 

7. Punch/slash all the guards (primarily by stunt sewer, Ishmael Steadfast Reed) 

8. Attach guards the skirts and arms (by machine/hand)

9. [Realize you messed up the sizes and remake the arms entirely]

10. Make and attach the guards to the bodice (by hand)

11. Hem the skirt (by machine)

12. Cartridge pleat the skirt (by hand)

13. Attach the skirt to the bodice (by hand)

14. Attach the arms to the bodice (by hand)

Progress Photos:

Complete Garment:

I'm really proud of how this garment came out, especially on a timeline and learning some new skills in order to comeplere it. In the end, it was machine constructed and hand finished, but there was so much finishing it was something like a 30/70 split. I made some concessions on construction where my materials did not allow for more period construction (like the arm "slashes" really being turned tubes). All-in-all, the dress looked beautiful on Kolfinna and she loved it, which is really all that matters. 

Glamour Shots:

Kolfinna wore this dress beautifully at her elevation. Cassair Warwick (Cecilia Jaeger) took the photo at left, and Lucy of Wiggin took the photo at right.