Project Complete: Pink Wool Open Hood

Two new hoods in two weeks? Wha??!

Project:
An open hood of the early 15th  century.

Sources:
You can read lots more about open hoods from the early 15th century in my post on the topic here. For this hood, I was aiming for the low and sharp look that shows up in a few examples in the early 15th century, like this pink hood in the  The Comedies of Terence.

Arsenal, MS 664 reserve, first quarter of the 15th Century, fol 226r | Source

Or on this pink hood from an earlier copy of The Comedies of Terence by a different artist:

BnF MS Latin 7907 A, circa 1400-1407, fol. 81v. | Source

Or this pink hood in 1432 Le Decameron:

Arsenal MS 5070, reserve, 1432, fol. 254v. | Source

Pink, in various shades depending on the manuscript, shows up in hoods fairly often. The paler pinks tend to be found on women lower in the class, while the more vibrant fuchsia pinks are found on women who could be more middle class. This isn't necessarily a hard and fast rule, however, since different manuscripts had specific color schemes, and the correlation could be purely coincidental. Still, pastel colors were more commonly worn by lower class women, since vibrant colors were a sign of relative affluence.

For this hood, I also went for a fairly rope-like, long liripipe, inspired by the two below. Mine ended up shorter by about 14" or so.

Comedies of Terence, fol. 235v | Source & Le Decameron, fol. 333r | Source

Methods
The wool for this hood was given to me by a friend. It's a fulled, medium weight woolen.

I did not differ greatly in my normal hood making method. The only modification was to "hook" the bottom of the wings more than I have in the past. You may be able to make out the faint blue lines of the hood outline here:

Like most of my other hoods, I hand sewed this one. I made sure to include top stitching to keep the edges nice and crisp.

I used a lightweight natural linen for the lining to try to keep the wool from becoming too heavy or insulating so that I can wear it during more of the year than just winter.

Evaluation
This is the first time I've used a lining that wasn't the same color as the outside of the hood, so I hadn't anticipated just how much of the lining would actually be visible when I wear it. This isn't really a bad thing, just not expected.

I like how the stitching turned out on this one. The back seam in particular, which I finished using the "Elizabethan seam" technique, turned out quite nice. 

Conclusion

I was a little concerned that the color wouldn't work well with my complexion, but it works alright. Brings out my rosy glow! All things considered, except maybe going with a matching lining instead, I wouldn't change anything about this hood. Which is always a nice result. 

As always, for more images, check out the Facebook album or see them over on Flickr.