Green Viking Hood
The finished green viking hood is linen, entirely hand sewn and embroidered with linen thread. Stitches used are herringbone stitch to finish the seam allowances and bottom hem, running stitch for assembly and accent around the hood opening, feather stitch for decorative reenforcement of the seams, and Oseberg rings for decoration on the hem.
The piecing of the hood is based on the Skjold Harbor hood find, but is adapted for linen and for the style of decoration I chose to use. As is typical for reenactment, this one is made from two square gores sewn into two long rectangles. The original was made from three squares of fabric, so the fabric was solid right below the hood opening. I wanted to be able to fold back the seam allowances for decorative finishing (see below), so it made sense to have a seam there instead.
The hood was assembled with running stitch first, using linen thread pulled from the selvage of the fabric. Machine-woven fabric typically has much higher quality threads in the selvage so it can feed properly through the machines as it is woven, threads that are very well suited to hand sewing, and already color matched to the body fabric.
I then folded the seam allowances to the outside of the garment and finished them using a tiny herringbone stitch in Londonderry linen thread size 30/3 (medium diameter).
Along the hood opening I finished the edge with a decorative running stitch using the same color of 30/3 thread I also used for feather stitch along the seams. The feather stitch provided a decorative reinforcement for the seams to prevent stitches from popping.
The bottom hem of the hood is turned to the inside and finished in a quick tiny herrinbone stitch again using thread pulled from the selvage of the fabric. To cover those stitches, I decoratively embroidered the bottom hem with Oseberg rings. This embroidery is based on a small piece of wool applique embroidery found in the Oseberg ship burial, and, according to Anne Stine Ingstad in The Textiles in the Oseberg Ship, “This type of small embroidery is known from the graves in Birka, and there too it is placed along the edges of seams and applications.” If you go check out her article, the section on the ring embroidery is close to the bottom.
The inspiration embroidery is a wool core with wool thread wrapped around it and couching it to the fabric. For my version I am using linen thread, size 18/3 (large) for the core, and 30/3 (medium) for the wrap.
And for purposes of sharing on social media, here are a couple collage photos suitable for different platforms.
