About me

I’ve been a member of the SCA for more than 20 years and I’m interested in a bunch of things;

• making clothes (mostly so that my children and I look respectable)
• making tents
• ridiculous projects with my Household
• cooking
• running events

This blog is the documentation people have been hassling me to write for years.

Historically informed vs useful

Pictures of medieval encampments show mostly round tents, with the occasional large double bell and a few more rectangular tents. See?

Lots of people want a tent that they can fit a double bed in.  But if you do that with a circular tent you can end up with quite a large round tent.

You can do it easily if you put the bed between the poles of a double bell.  Or even in a bell wedge, with a double bed low to the ground.

It seems that the goal of historical reenactment conflicts with the desires of the modern world.

I’m going to keep looking for encampment pictures.

added 14/1/2012:  Landsknecht encampment woodcuts

Family sized double bell

We’ve made this tent 4 times now.  It seems to be a popular size – you can fit a double bed and three single beds if you wish, or just a double bed and a lot of stuff!

Here’s my concern though: when you look at pictures of military camps, with lots of tents, most are round!  It would be better (?) to have mostly round tents, with fewer of these double bell sort.  Or find some other pictures, with more rectangular and double bell tents.

Anyway, here’s the layout, with rectangles for the beds and people (click to download the pdf) :

This tent style has had several door concepts:

1. One 2m wide door on the long side
2. Doors at each short end and in line with the poles on the long side
3. A 2m wide door on each of the long sides

I like option 3 the best.  It means that you can open the whole tent to catch the breezes and you can put it into tourney mode with the doors up as verandah’s for extra shade.

This tent uses about 30m of canvas (including extra for a pole and tent bags).  Here’s the cutting pattern (and pdf):

The sewing layout:

And the detailed measurements used to make the shapes.  We usually measure one piece with these measurements and then use that piece as a template for the others.  The wall pieces have a 4omm sewing allowance, with 100mm for the eave.

The small double bell

This was a tent made as a commission.  The new owner wanted a tent that would fit a double bed but would pack down small enough to fit in a small hatchback.

The walls are not permanently attached to the roof, they work similarly to the prototype and the Innilgard tents, with loops and wooden toggles.

The floorplan and dimensions are based on the rectangular prototype tent, but we used bell ends because we knew we could make a pretty tent that didn’t sag.  I’m glad we succeeded.  It’s also good to know that these dimensions work without a ridge pole.  It suggests that the rectangular tent could also work without a ridge pole, as long as we sort out the forces on the ends.

I’m looking for a good picture of a double bell.  Most of the ones in the pictures I have looked at seem to be much larger than the tents nearby and there is only one or two in a field of round tents.  The same goes for rectangular tents too – there are only one or two and most others are round.  It’s a shame that double beds don’t fit easily into a round tent.  Hmmm…

Here’s the plan and elevation of the small double bell tent.  I’ve included a rectangular “person” and a double bed so you see how things fit. Click the image to download the pdf.

The inside seemed pretty comfy and spacious when we went in.  Although there was a bit of disaster when we went to check how it was going in the rain at Festival.  I was glad to work out that the apparent leak was a user error and not our sewing or construction.  The groundsheet we’d provided was collecting all of the drips in at the open door and funnelling them towards the bed.  Lesson for tent users!!

And here’s the pattern I used to cut it out. The pdf includes the pattern layout and the dimensions of each piece.

tents with different coloured roofs

There has been some conversation about how representative a tent that has a different coloured roof and walls is of the period.  For instance, the Innilgard tent.

Here’s a picture I just found

The Siege of Neuss 1474-1475, in book “Geschichte Peter Hagenbachs und der Burgunderkriege” by Conradius Pfettisheim, printed 1477 by Heinrich Knoblochtzer in Strassbourg

Wardrobe audit

Tonight I audited Rose’s Festival clothes and she has the following clothes to wear at a 5 day camping event;

red flemish (cotton)
blue wool pin on sleeves
black wool partlet
black linen partlet
unfinished white linen partlet
black linen apron
green linen apron
green wool surcoat
purple/red tunic with embroidery around the neck (from celsa – was this a borrow or a hand me down?)
red wool hood that will fit until she’s bigger than me
ugly blue wool cloak

Notice the lack of underwear?  Every chemise she owns will still fit, but her arms and legs are too long for her.  The hems are at knee height and the arms at the elbow.  Actually, almost all her dresses are in the same category – fit in the body but the skirts are too short.  The only one that doesn’t “fit” has set in sleeves – I’ll avoid them in future.

I’ve done really well.  Most of the dresses I discarded tonight have been worn since at least our trip to Canterbury Faire in 2009. That’s since she was 3 and she’s now 5.

Tonight I patterned some underwear.  I guess I’ll sew that sometime between now and Festival… I’m also thinking that some more aprons and partlets could be useful, so she can just change apron and partlet each day and keep her one dress clean enough.  Otherwise, maybe she’s ready to just wear plain coloured linen/wool shifts with a belt.  I guess I could button them at the wrist so the sleeves can include growing room but not be annoying.  She could probably dress herself if I went that way…

Or maybe I could just make her another flemish in a lightweight wool with a bag lining – I made the last one in an hour, not including patterning and I made the pattern tonight too.  I just have to test and computerise it.

Tunic for a 5 year old

Tonight I reviewed Rose’s clothes for festival.  While she can still fit in the tunics I made for her three years ago, her arms and legs are too long for them.  I need to make new ones and I think they have to be adult style tunics, to save on fabric.

They’re loosely based on the St Louis shirt and the bocksten bog man’s kirtle. This is the pattern I use for my smocks too.

I’ll make them from the 110cm lightweight linen I have.

Here’s the cutting and sewing layout for the tunic;

I haven’t made them yet, but the pattern is based on the measurements I took tonight:

Shoulder to floor – 94cm

Waist to floor – 64cm

Chest – 57cm

Hip/bum – 64 cm

Arm length 41cm

 

Prototype review

We went camping and wanted to travel light, so we took the new tent for a road trip.

The tent is a good size, fitting our double bed, a comfy  dressing space at one end and space for armour storage at the other.  At the end of the week, we reduced the size of the dressing space and put our daughter’s rope bed at the end.

It was pretty easy to put up in the dark, and easy to fiddle with the next day and later in the week when I added the ridge pole.  I could have put it up by myself.

We tried doorways on the side and at the ends, and in future I will set it up with a doorway at each end.

Here’s the tent set up:

This is after I added a ridge pole and did some substantial fiddling to get it as good as I could.  Here’s what I’m going to do to make it better:

• Stiffer ridgepole or a frame  (I made this ridgepole onsite with a length of scotia and some fibre tape for extra stiffness)
• A valance will look better and make it more water proof (the eave is too short)
• Move the location of the guys to be in line with the poles
• I think I will replace the end triangle.  The walls have a generous overlap, so I’ll still use these walls.

Here’s a picture before I put in the ridgepole:

Looking at the photos, I think I have the width of the roof triangle incorrect.  I think the base of the triangle should be bigger. See?

I’m also feeling like I need an internal frame to get that really straight roof eave and perfect corner.  My corners just sagged until we move the rope to the corner.  Not a full frame, just a rectangle at the eave.  Like my bed curtains, and those circular tents with electrical conduit you see around the place.

Otherwise, I should have used option 1 for my guy pattern.

Details of the arming tent

Edit:  this guy pattern didn’t work well.  I should have gone with option 1.

I’m up to working out how to do the guy ropes for the arming tent.

There are two details of guys from my previous post about this tent.  See the two ropes coming off the single guy?  We call them crow’s feet.

Based on my experience with other rectangular tents, the most important guys are at the corners.  From these pictures, it looks like I have two options;

1. A crows foot going around the corner, with the main guy at the corner.
2. Two crows feet, one at 90 degrees to the other.

I think I’m going with option 2.  Ideally, I would space the guys so I can change my mind, but I’m in a bit of a hurry this morning so here’s what I’m doing;

That’s 12×3=36 cringles.  the set of 3 are 15cm apart, and there is 700mm between them on the sides. The ends are set 20mm from the corner.

I’ll be tying the guys on (no time to make hooks and these pictures don’t show them).

The guy ropes (measured from my drawing +1m) will be 3.3m long, I’ll also need 0.5m per foot, so 4.3m per guy/crows foot.  Total rope required = 4.3m x 6 x 2 = 52m.

The finished geteld

Here’s a picture of a Geteld made to the pattern in my geteld post.

Click on the pictures to see the blog of its construction.