Good Christian women cover their heads. Or at least they did in Europe for a lot of the Medieval period. Headgear is the first part of medieval garb to be neglected by “noobs,” simply because it isn’t very important in modern western culture.
I am guilty of this–also guilty of wearing renaissance-esque snoods with early period dresses. But I’m learning.
For my new garb, I made a white linen wimple.

After spending some hours on research and coming repeatedly across the answer that “We really don’t know how wimples worked, but they looked like this,” I settled on the “circle with a hole” design for my first wimple. I was inspired by this handy page tucked away on rosieandglenn.co.uk, which made it look simple enough for everyday wear. However, in my research I read that the headband or fillet was worn under (not over) the wimple, so I made that adjustment for myself.
Of course, in my haste, I broke one of my cardinal rules of garb-making. When cutting any hole for your head, always start too small and increase the size. Oops. But it still works despite its mammoth hole.
I spun my own thread (see my earlier post about that) to sew the hems. Perhaps with future wimples I’ll do something fancier than these little rolled hems.
And with a fillet made from a piece of my serpent tablet-weave belt (from yet another earlier post), I have a wimple!


We’ll see how it does on its maiden voyage next weekend. I shan’t be surprised if it does go sailing off my head once or twice. All in the name of science–I mean, reenactment–of course.
Happy Yarning!
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