On drafting a medieval tunic

Many volunteers are kind souls and the volunteer-based museum village Düppel would not be the same without the volunteers. But there are volunteers and volunteers.

F is one of those kind souls who at times seem barely visible but without them so many things would not work. He's always there, always working and always happy to do even the most unglamourous job. If you're looking for him, he's probably around doing something like clearing leaves or weaving fences.

It used to be normal for volunteers to move around the museum in normal modern clothes, however in recent years medieval gear has become the new normal (which I very much approve of), so when F quietly voiced that he would also like some medieval gear but doesn't really posess the right skillset, a bunch of volunteers including me jumped to the task. My part of the task is the tunic. So here's a description how I go about drafting and sewing a tunic suitable for at 12th century German or Slavic peasant representation.

Raw pieces without neck hole and without gores

Sewing around each piece with a 12th century needle (bronze, round hole) and linen thread.

Now you'll notice that you cannot actually see F wearing it. This is because a friend an I joined efforts to measure him and draft the pattern and she writes down pattern sizes with seam allowance and I write them down without. I assumed that the width of front and back panel were with seam allowance, but they were not. 120cm circumference is quite tight for a tunic around a person with 115cm waist circumference, but if you subtract 8cm off that it becomes impossible to wear. So I will do a follow-up post on how to alter medieval tunics.

Finished tunic.