12th century tunic for my husband – the finished 12th century neckline

In my last posting – “12th century tunic for my husband – 12th century neckline inspired by the “blue Dalmatika” & “white Alba” – I showed you my period inspiration for the 12th century neckline for my husbands new tunic. And today I am going to show you the finished 12th century neckline.

Well, it took a while and quite some thinking but eventually I figured the cut out and made a good fitting 12th century neckline. This part of the 12th century tunic project was definitely not easy as I also wanted to incorporate a tablet woven band I made myself. Unfortunately tablet woven bands only stretch little and make it therefore not easy to be applied along round edges…

Well, it didn’t make it much easier that I hardly ever make sample projects from cheap fabric to test a pattern theory. This might put even more stress on me during the beginning phase of a project but so far my ideas fortunately worked out in most of the cases…

However, the 12th century neckline is finished and my sweetheart loves the outcome as well as his new tunic. And I am just glad that the tunic as well as the 12th century neckline fit him so well.

And now let’s take a look at the finished 12th century neckline – enjoy! 😀

In order to be able to show you the whole finished 12th century neckline at once, I pulled the whole neckline part some inches towards me.

As I already mentioned before, the tablet woven band can only be bend to a certain point. The final curve on the left side of the neckline was the maximum I could achieve. While the tablet woven band is quite compressed along the inner border, it is stretched as much as it would allow at the outer border.

This seems to create a very interesting effect which I already noticed at my main period inspiration – the neckline of the blue dalmatica – and about which I wondered for a long time:

I had to lighten the photo of the blue dalmatica neckline but now it shows the interesting detail quite clearly – all this small extra “waves” of fabric underneath the middle of the curved part of the neckline.

The neckline for my husbands tunic is far less curved as the one of the blue dalmatica. However, it still creates the same “waves” underneath the middle of the curved part – just a little less noticeable but they are still there… Small details like this assure me that I made a successful 12th century neckline approach.

Btw. you might have also noticed that the back part of the neckline is not completely straight. This slight curve was intended and follows the natural curve of the neck at this point. This helps to make the neckline more comfortable. Also the right side of the neckline is not completely straight as I worked the top of the line (above the hook) in a slight curve. To give you a better idea of my 12th century neckline pattern, I will try to draw it up for you in the next days. 🙂

And now let’s take a look at the neckline in its “natural” position: 

Btw. the hook was made by a friend of mine: Master Lorenzo Petrucci

And here a picture of the neckline “opened” up:

This wide opening makes it quite easy to put the tunic on and off again and well, according to some period artwork this style of neckline could also be worn open… 

And as this neckline also can be worn open, I made sure to hide the stitches on the backside with which I attached the hook to the neckline. For this purpose I worked a simple line of chain stitch along the stitches and created a small triangle at the back:

This last step was not really necessary but I really like small details like this. I think it creates a cute little detail at the back and it covers the stitches underneath very well. 

I hope you enjoyed todays posting and liked my finished 12th century neckline. And in my next posting I will show you a good technique to secure main tension points of your neckline…. 🙂