Lengberg Bra, Revisited
(Feb 2020)
Introduction
A few years ago I made a lengberg bra for a local event called "Laurel's Challenge". In it, I responded to Mistress Agatha Wanderer's challenge "Under it all" to make underwear appropriate for your persona. Since I was (and still am), a bit all over the place, I decided to make a lengberg bra since it was roughly in the areas I portrayed, and it was something I wanted to make. At the time, less information was available about the "bra". Now I know that it likely should have in fact been skirted, which would solve the issue of it riding up. However, I changed size in th years since then, and wanted a new lengberg bra that would actually fit. Taking apart something with that much construction would have been more work than just making a new one, so I gave the old one away after taking the alcing cords I made out, and decided to start from scratch. Then, Mistress Agatha, who coincidentally was one of the people who wrote the paper on the lengberg finds, actually made a pattern, and wanted people to test it out. Perfect opportunity.
Background
There are a handful of references talking about breast binding or breast bags in historic references. For example, in a 13th century poem called the Roman de la Rose by Guillaume de Lorris, it is said “if her breasts are too full, let her take a kerchief or scarf and wrap it round her ribs to bind her bosom, and then fasten it with a stitch or knot; she will then be able to disport herself”. In Cyrurgia, Henri de Mondevill writes that “Some women… insert two bags in their dresses, adjusted to the breasts, fitting tight, and they put them [the breasts] into them [the bags] every morning and fasten them when possible with a matching band.” Examples of this can possibly be seen in the images shown below. Women appear to be wearing undergarments with pockets for the breasts. In these images, a skirt appears to be attached to the “breast bags”.
In July 2008, an important find was unearthed at Lengberg Castle in Austria during reconstruction. A pile of discarded objects under floorboards from a previous renovation in the 15th century was discovered. Included in this waste were linen fragments that resemble bras. An image of one of these "bras" is shown to the left. As can easily be seen, the bra isn’t too far off from some garments still worn to this day. However, it is believed that there was in fact a skirt attached to this historic bra: "depictions of skirted undergarments in the visual record point to the very plausible idea that this garment originally had skirts attached, which were probably ripped away at some point in order to reuse the fabric" (Case 168). This is very likely an actual extent example of what those historic authors were referencing.
Materials
Midweight white linen
White linen sewing thread
Beeswax
For once, I am making something from an extant find, so guesswork on material isn't needed. The skirted bra was made out of a midweight white linen, with linen thread, since this is what the extant garment was made out of (Case 171). This follows along with many other garments from the time period. There are numerous examples of undershirts from the time period being made out of linen, using a very fine linen thread for construction. This is true of both fancy and plain garments (Arnold 65+).
Design
To make a bra, you need something very individualized to you. People come in a lot of shapes and sizes. There is a bit more construction involved in a bra than just a simple dress (that I already have a pattern for). Because of that, I figured a mock up would be essential. As mentioned, I was testing a pattern by Mistress Agatha. I ended up using modified pieces from her pattern for the main body pieces, but had to design cups to fit me on my own. Since her pattern isn't at the openedly shared point yet, sorry, no pictures of the body piece shapes. For the cups, to begin with, I cut a pair of holes into my mockup so that it would work with my breast, since it is not perfectly round. This ended up being a slight oval. I then draped fabric over my breast and pinned it together to make pattern pieces. Like the original, I placed things so that the seam was vertical, and passed over my nipple. After basting things together and adjusting as needed, I came up with some basic shapes that worked with my body. These are shown in pictures below. There is a tracing for the hole, as well as pieces of the cup. As you can see, the pattern pieces are longer than the hole is wide, and need to be bent to fit against the hole. This in turn creates volume and space for the breast to go. At this point, I was ready to make the final garment.
Construction
Once I had a pattern made, I traced everything out onto the medium weight linen I was planning to use for the final garment. In order to make the final fitting easier, I assembled the final garment in a slightly different way. I decided to complete every other part of the bra assembly *before* adding the cups. In this way, I could easily lace things up and see where everything would be. I also decided to have the flat felled seams on the outside of the cup, instead of on the inside, since I wanted the smoother seam to be the one in direct contact with my breast/nipples. The results of that can be seen in a photo.
To get to this stage, I made large folds of fabric where the lacing would be (both sides), and whipstitched this down. Next, with the remaining raw edges, I did double folded hems around both body pieces, also whipstitching them. From here I did hand sewn eyelets along all 4 side seems, using an awl to make the holes. On my original version of the bra, I did lacing on both sides, even though there was no evidence for it. Once a paper was published on the find, it seems I agreed with the authors: "Although the extant garment is missing its right side, the reconstruction is made to lace up both sides to accommodate weight gain or loss. Lacing along one side would misalign the garment if the wearer gained weight and the lacing needed to be loosened" (Case 171). Once I was able to lace it up, I attached the shoulder straps, since now I could better judge how long they needed to be.
As expected, I did in fact have a lot of trouble getting that main central seam on the cup to lay smoothly. I finally gave up, and it will have a little bit of wrinkling, but you can’t really see it under a gown, which is what matters. The seams are completely flat when not on my body, but once you add breasts to the mix, everything of course goes wrong! I tried to keep the seams to period sizes, but the curved nature of the seams made that really hard to do. Seams ended up being between 1/8" and 1/4", instead of the 1/8th to 1/16th of an inch traditionally seen in historical garments of this time (Arnold 65+). At this point, all that was needed was the skirt, which took longer to get to than it should have.
The skirt is very simple: it consists of 2 rectangles that go from my waist to mid calf, and is the full width of the selvage. To make the skirt, I hemmed all vertical edges, and the bottom edge on both rectangles, and then sewed the sides together to make a tube, leaving the top maybe 5" of the seams open. From here, I ran long basting stitches by eye to gather every half inch into a pleat, for both the front and back of the kirt (remember, I left the top few inches of the side seams open, so they are not attached where the pleating happens). It still came out quite uniform and even looking, even though I didn't bother with actual measurements. This half inch pleat size was chosen since it is very close to a size used in extant pleatwork. In the Lengberg finds, pleats averaged 1.4cm, or 0.55” (Nutz, p84). This number was simplified slightly. The fabric was gathered down to the same width as the "bra" pieces, and the top edges of the skirt were bound according to the article “How to Pleat a Shirt in the 15th Century” by Beatrice Nutz. In the article, it is stated that "the trimming strip is equally broad on both sides, first one edge is folded in, and then sewn onto the pleats with a running stitch, the fold fastened with whip stitches, then folded over the edge of the pleats and the border then folded in once more and sewn to onto the other side of the pleats again with whip stitches". I made sure to sew through every pleat with my whip stitches. Finally, the skirt could be attached to the bra, and I had a completed piece!
References
Arnold, Janet. Patterns of Fashion 4: The Cut and Construction of Linen Shirts, smocks, neckwear, headwear, and accessories for men and women c1540-1660, Macmillan, 2008
Case, Rachel; McNealy, Marion; Nutz, Beatrice; "The Lengberg Finds: Remnants of a lost 15th century tailoring revolution" Archaeological Textiles – Links Between Past and Present NESAT XIII 2017 p167-176
Crowfoot, Elisabeth; Pritchard, Frances; and Staniland, Kay. Textiles and Clothing 1150-1450 Boydell Press, 2006
Malcolm-Davies, Jane and Mikhaila, Ninya The Tudor Tailor: Reconstructing 16th Century Dress Costume and Fashion Press, 2006
Museum of London, Texitiles and Clothing: Medieval finds from Excavations in London Board of Governors of the Museum of London, 1992
Nutz, Beatrice. “How to Pleat a Shirt in the 15th Century” Archeological Textiles Review Issue 54, 2012 p79-91