“I don’t like to say I have given my life to art.
I prefer to say art has given me my life.”~ Frank Stella
This website is the sole property of Cynthia Long, who lives and works in the Pacific Northwest as a web specialist, project manager, and most recently as a program coordinator. She holds certificates in fiction writing from the University of Washington and in web development and design from Shoreline Community College in Seattle, Washington.
Cynthia taught courses on the subject of 14th century women’s clothing for the Society of Creative Anachronism (SCA) for 7 years.
The Medieval Tailor is on indefinite hiatus. Other interests called her and she followed. For now, this is the extent of the demonstrations.
I’m no longer available to answer questions as this site is a decade old and so many things have been discovered and updated. I realize that some of the site is a bit out of date but believe that the transition period from rectangular construction to bias curve construction and the like remain the same.
Hello Cynthia!
Many years ago when I first started re-enactment, I contacted you (many times) to do with starting out and how to make it work- especially with exciting headwear- and you were so kind and also so very helpful. I was hoping that you might give me permission to use the link to your very nice tutorials on eyelets and buttonholes on my website. I have so many enquiries and I just couldn’t explain or show how to do it better than you! Please may I have permission to share your links and demos with Ladies Who Need Help.
Kind Regards,
Rosalie.
Rosalie! What a nice note, you made my day. How kind of you to ask. As long as you’re simply linking to my site and not actually using my text or images on your own site, please link away!
What is your website URL? I would love to visit it.
Bright blessings!
Cynthia
Dear Ms. Long,
I am working on plans for a kirtle and open-sided surcote, but I can’t figure out what a chemise should look like, to fit well under something so tight! If you are still keeping tabs at all on this page, I’d like to pick your brain a bit.
Sincerely,
Tiffany
Hello!
This is what I “know.”
There is a photo of a spaghetti strap chemise in linen in the A History of Costume by Carl Köhler, dirt cheap on Amazon.
There is one photo and most of the photographed clothing in this book was bombed out of Germany in WWII. So we will never be able to look at it and know if it was cut on the bias or not. Bias was so wasteful but this was a conspicuous consumption decade so perhaps having expensive underwear was part of the glamour. Still is really.
Lower classes probably wore the basic rectangular construction chemise.