Time Travel Garm

Possibly the most important part of the medieval costume is the Braies. These are essentially linen trousers that run to the knee or below and serve mostly to hold up your hosen (and keep the breeze off your butt). As far as we can tell these were only worn by men, we have some rare later images of women with their dresses up and it just reveals bare legs. This goes along with the historical fashions as they developed, men’s tunics got shorter and showed off the braies turning into trousers. Meanwhile women’s fashions didn’t develop a specific crotch-based underwear garment until the mid Victorian era. If you wish to wear hose as a woman though, I would recommend braies and it’s likely working women probably wore these to keep legs warm.

There are 100 schools of thought when it comes to making braies, all trying their best to recreate the baggy trousers we see depicted. We have no finds of braies, them being the unmentionables of the time and made of linen means none survive.
My favourite method of construction is what I’ll call the ‘crotch flap rectangle’ method. This allows you to construct your braies from a singular piece of linen, with a few crafty tricks. I evolved this from a method of using three rectangles: two leg trunks and a crotch flap. This improved method sticks the crotch flap to the leg trunks and lets you draw out the pattern super easily.

Measuring and Pattern drafting.

Measuring doesn’t have to be as exact with braies, you want them huge then gathered to your waist. Always err on the side of ‘wow that looks like too much fabric’. Any inch smaller than ginormous and you’ll rip them and expose yourself.

You’ll only need two measurements for this pattern;
A – The thickest part of your thigh (There should be a relative increase of your thigh and waist making this work for most people, however if your thighs are particularly thin add a handful of inches)
B – Waist to ankles
The pattern is extremely simple. Make a rectangle that is B long and three times A wide. Then in the middle we will craft our crotch flap, this is done by measuring ¼ of A out from the centre and cutting up to the middle (½ of B up)

Cut this big rectangle out from your linen, and then cut up the two slits for the crotch flap.
Then to begin sewing, fold up the crotch flap to the waistband, and fold the two leg sections in half towards it.

Once this folding is done we have a very simple seam to sew, we need to sew the two leg holes up then attach them to the crotch flap. Seeing the diagram below, blue is where you sew leg to leg and red is where you sew leg to crotch flap. You can, if you wish, leave the blue section unsewn, this looks a bit like some of the depictions we see of tied up braies. I’ll warn this could lead to accidental exposure though.

Next we need to make the channel for our waistband, this is where we’ll feed our belt through. Fold down the top like you’re doing a hem, but wide enough that your belt will fit through the top. (Note, you can use a rope instead of a belt, make sure it’s chunky otherwise it will dig painfully into your hips)

Once this hem is done you need to make two holes for your belt to go in and out of. Do this by cutting a slit through one layer of the waist band, and on the raw edge of this slit doing lots of close whip stitches to create a buttonhole!

Next we need to add the cord to suspend your hosen from. For this you need some thick cord like a lucet cord and a big yarn needle. Stab two long lengths through the sides about an inch apart and tie together to hold in place. These will be your hose ties for holding up your hosen. (Note, if you don’t have a large yarn needle you can poke a hole with a sharp pencil, don’t cut!, and push the cord through. Putting some Sellotape on the cord end can help with this, just remove before shows)

Once the button holes are done and the belt threaded through you have some complete braies! Now you can protect your unmentionables from the saxon hordes.