Stickärmaliv

For a little over ten years I’ve had a dream to recreate the everyday clothing of my female ancestors in the early to mid 19th century. On my fathers side we had a family farm during that time (it still exists today, owned by non-relatives), which lies in the small village (if it even can be called that) of Svalhult north of Bräkne-Hoby, Sweden. This link will take you to a Google Maps-pin close to that location. It’s rural, and as far as I know they were probably farmers or the like.

I have previously written about my folk costume, and how it mainly fits the cathegory of festive wear. Silks and the like were accesible to even the farmers of Blekinge, as the coastal towns of Karlskrona and Karlshamn (the latter is where I grew up) were busy with trade, which gave the people the possibility to buy fabrics. They were thus not limited to only handspun and handwoven fabrics, even if that of course existed and was used, even in their festive wear, though you would probably have wanted as much fine silks and cottons as you could have afforded for those.

Most of my pieces for my folk costume, both bought and recently made, wouldn’t fly under the radar as ‘everyday wear’, so my goal in the end has been to find out as much as possible about what they would have worn and how it was made. The ever inspiring Lina Odell of Blekingelivet brought my attention to a piece of clothing that I had not heard about before (at least not in the context of Blekinge), which supposedly was part of the everyday attire.

So what is the base for this piece of clothing? Stickärmaliv (eng. ~knit sleeve bodice/waistcoat) are present in the folk costume of several other areas in Sweden, but no extant garment has survived to this day in Blekinge. The only surviving evidence of these being used in Blekinge is an account of a woman that speaks the following (loosely translated to English by me):

At home they used ‘stickärmaliv’. It was like normal bodice/waistcoat with wide knit sleeves in black and green, red or black or so, and often in patterned knitting in squares or the like.

Jenny Samuelsson, Listerby, in Dahlin 1937 (p. 29)

Lina, whom I wrote about above, had made herself a Blekinge stickärmaliv, which is absolutely gorgeous. She based the pattern for the sleeves off a pair of mittens in the collections of Nordiska Museet which are knit in red and black with a square-ish pattern as described in the quote. I love that there are several visible mistakes in the pattern of the mittens, and in different ways too. That make me connect to the person who made them a little bit more than if they were all perfect. She based the bodice part on an extant piece in the collections of the school she works at and finished her stickärmaliv. Since then she has written up a pattern and very kindly asked me if I wanted to be a testknitter/pattern tester for her. I of course said yes in a second!

NM.0120307A-B

Lina was kind enough to provide me with yarn to knit the sleeves out of. Black and green yarn from Ullcentrum Öland, where the green is plantdyed with red onionskins. I used a black, felted, woolfabric in my stash for the bodice part, and handwoven linen for the lining. I even made my own hooks and eyes for the closure. Everything was sewn with unbleached linen thread, except for the small pieces of silk tape that covers some raw edges in the back which I sew down with silk thread. A very fun project, and I am very happy to have made it!

Next I will post about the headwear I’m wearing in these pictures – the spethätta.

Leave a comment in the meantime if you like! What is your latest obsession when it comes to history or crafting?

Reference
Dahlin, I., 1937. Blekingedräkten. In: Lepasoonm U. (Ed.), Blekingeboken 1937.

Livstycke

Livstycke and jewellery

Two years ago I took a short course in the sewing of the Blekingedräkt at Blekinge Folkhögskola, taught by Lina Odell who is part of Blekingelivet. As one of the parts of the course we went to Karlshamns Museum to look at preserved originals in their collection. What a treat that was, and what lovely pieces they had in the collection!

One of my favourite pieces in the collection is a livstycke, a waistcoat, in blue silk damask – KN 6656. There are some similar livstycken preserved in different museums, that all show off the beautiful pattern of the fabric on the back. I’ve posted some of my pictures of this particular livstycke below.

Livstycke from Nordiska Museet, beginning of the 19th century. NM.0061899

Already when seeing these beautiful pieces I felt the urge to recreate one for myself, so when my mum Annette and I went to Gotland in 2019 to attend Battle of Wisby we took half a day off to go to Sidengården and buy ourselves some fabric. Annette also made the incredible effort of weaving the lining fabric for both of us, which is a linen/cotton blend. I dyed a white silk ribbon with onionskins and oakleaves to get the golden orange colour below. Many extant pieces are edged with silk ribbon in contrasting colour, and I thought this combination would work beautifully.

Damask from Sidengården, plantdyed silk ribbon and handwoven linen/cotton

To assemble it all I used the way the extant pieces I’ve seen was sewn, which I noted in a little journal I keep for my Blekingedräkt. The outer fabric and lining was basted together, then the side and shoulder seams of the outer fabric was sewn together with backstitches and pressed down, and the lining was folded over itself over the seams and then sewn down with hemming stitches. Some of the pictures of the first original piece above show this beautifully. Then, all edges were folded in and sewn together with a whip stitch, except for the bottom which was lined with the outher fabric after the little gores were sewn in. The bottom instead was covered with the golden silk ribbon. Lastly, a couple of rows of stab stitching was sewn along the two mid front panels, and hooks and eyes were fastened. A good press later, and my new livstycke was done.

This is one of the pieces I’ve made that I’m the most proud of. I think it turned out beautifully, and I can’t wait to get to use it more!

Luvtallrik

One of the more fascinating and beautiful pieces of the Blekinge folk costume is the Luvtallrik. It is a piece of headwear that was worn under the scarves, or by itself if you were a youngster. It is said that the bride should put it on on the third day of wedding, but it is not really clear in what way they were actually used.

If you are able to read in Swedish, or comfortable with using Google Translate, I suggest you head over to Blekingelivet and read their post on the Luvtallrik to get even more information as well as a short tutorial on how to put it on. You can find it here.

There are several luvtallrikar preserved in the museum archives, both at Nordiska Museet, the local museum in Karlshamn as well as Blekinge Museum. They basically consist of an embroidered circle of red woolen fabric, quite often decorated with metal lace, sequins and other shiny things. To keep its shape it is most often stabilised with a wooden plate, which could be a reason for the name, as tallrik is the Swedish word for plate (as in plate for food). Sometimes they are seen with bands hanging from the bottom of the piece, and it is thought by some that the bands only were attached when the headpiece was worn by itself. Most often they were covered with a thin white scarf, a scarf that would be a little bit transparent so the bright red would be seen through it. Kerstin shows a couple of ways to tie the scarf over her luvtallrik in the link above.

My luvtallrik is embroidered with silk from DeVere Yarns, which originally was intended for some brick stitch-embroidery, but I’m way happier with this. The addition of the gold thread is based of a luvtallrik at Nordiska Museet that can be seen both in the pictures above and on this page, and the flower in the middle draws inspiration from this piece, also at Nordiska Museet.

A picture of my luvtallrik in the making together with my recently finished apron.

A close-up of the gold thread and gold lace.

I rushed to finish it late at night, on the evening before I went out and took the photos in the snow that I showed in my last post. Here are some of the photos again that show of the luvtallrik a little bit extra!

Winter wonderland

You would think that we get white winters in Sweden regularily, right? Not where I live, which is in the city of Gothenburg, situated on the Swedish west coast. It is characterised by humid, mild, winters with little to no snow. The start of this year has thus far been different. Minus degrees celcius and a good amount of snow blessed us in the second week of January.

I spent my last vacation day by photographing my folk costume, my Blekingedräkt, as I had just finished my Luvtallrik – a piece of embroidered headwear. The Luvtallrik will have its own blog post, where I discuss the sources and my design choices, but here are some of my pictures from the photo shoot! Almost all the items I’m wearing in the photos are made by me, which I am very proud of. 🙂

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Blekingedräkt: An apron and a skirt

For many years I’ve had two fabrics in my stash. One meter of a wonderful, white, printed cotton lawn, and a couple of metres of a vividly red, handwoven and plant dyed, woolen twill. Both fabrics has kind of a story to them. The cotton lawn I got as thanks/payment for allowing some of my photos to be shown on an exhibition, and the wool twill I bought on an online auction. The seller lived up north in Sweden and had wrote in the item description that the fabric was woven by her grandmother, and after a little email correnspondance I was told by the seller that her grandmother had lived in Blekinge – the county I grew up in! A wonderful coincidence.

I had always had a plan for the cotton lawn to become an apron, and the wool twill to become a skirt, but it wasn’t really until this year I properly decided that I was going to make an apron and a skirt for my folk costume of it. As always, I find a lot of inspiration in original garments and items, as well as from the amazing women who run Blekingelivet.

Högtidsdräkt – Festive wear
In the mid 19th century – as today – people would dress up for special occasions. . Church on Sundays had its own particular dress, and everyday wear was something different. Weddings, some Christian festivals, etc., meant to dress up in the absolute finest.

See more images on my Pinterest board on Blekingedräkt

The skirt
Looking at what’s in the museums collections and in paintings from the time, it looks like red skirts are common for the absolute finest clothing. Often red skirts with woven patterns (i.e. this one that is seen to the left below), or with silk mixed in, but also some less fancy with just a plain weave, barely fulled wool (like this, seen to the right below). In written and/or oral sources, it is said that the red skirt could have been used by the bride, and otherwise when you wanted to look your best (Swe: “annars till fint”). (Nordlinder, E. 1987)

I have mainly based my skirt off of the left one in the photos above, with the exception of the fabric. My fabric is, as I wrote before, is a handwoven wool twill, with no pattern what so ever. The original has quite a big piece of linen fabric at the front – in Swedish called sparvåd, or djäknalapp. It is there to save the precious fabric, since it is not visible when you wear your apron on top – as you always should. In some instances they have also saved on some of the silk ribbon following along the hem in the same fashion. Smart right? Since I had a limited amount of fabric, I decided to do the same with my skirt. I picked out some handwoven linen scraps from my stash to act as the sparvåd, and sewed my skirt.

A bridal skirt from Blekinge. Notice the linen piece, and also that the fabric below it isn’t the same as the rest of the skirt.

My skirt is entirely handsewn, as I prefer to sew things by hand. It has a waistband, and the skirt is sewn to this. In the front it is flat, with knife pleats going inwards over the hipbones. Over the rest of the skirt the fabric is gathered with what was supposed to be parallell gathers, but the gathering thread broke as I was fixing the gathers. Ah well, such things that happens – we’ll see if I ever get around to fix it. On the left side of the linen piece there is a slit, to get in and out of the skirt, which closes with hooks and eyes. In the future I plan to put a silk ribbon along the bottom, but otherwise it is now done.

The apron
The fabric of my apron might not be perfect. Historically it would have been in a fabric called linong, a thin cotton weave with woven in pattern, as the gorgeous apron that is this museum piece, or this one that is held in the collections of Blekinge Museum – both pictured below. Mine is, as I stated above, a printed cotton lawn, but it gives the same expression as the woven one would.

Here the bride is wearing a red skirt and a white, see-through apron in the painting “Church-wedding in Blekinge”, by Bengt Nordenberg.

My apron is quite simple. It is hemmed with narrow hems in the side, and a wide one at the bottom. The wide hem at the bottom is also mentioned in passing in Nordlinder, 1987, when an oral source tells about the aprons used at the Christian confirmationm, and also in Dahlin’s writing from 1937. My apron is gathered to a waistband that continues out from the skirt of the apron for 15 cm, and is then finished with ties. Much like the apron I made in 2015, except that this one is gathered all the way, and that the ties are different in length.

Now, I’ve been thinking a bit about the pairing of specifically these two items. I don’t really think that a see-through apron like this one would have been worn with skirt with a linen piecing, since part of the point of wearing it over a dark skirt is to have the pattern of the apron shine through. So, they don’t quite match in the end. I’m not sad though – I see it as a reason to make new skirts and aprons. Lucky me! 😉

Literature
Dahlin, I. Blekingedräkten. Blekingeboken (1937). – New print from 1987 by Blekinge Läns Museum

Nordlinder, E. (1987). Kvinnligt dräktskick i Jämshögs socken i Blekinge. Stockholm