Costumes bring back medieval era

Ann-Marie Paul's 22-year-old son, David, learned to walk by pulling himself up on her spinning wheel. Paul, a professional weaver from Millhousen, Ind., has been interested in spinning, sewing and knitting her whole life.\n"I don't remember when I could not knit," Paul said. \nPaul was one of many members of the Society for Creative Anachronism who came to the Quaker Meeting Hall Saturday to join the Society's second Regional Textile Gathering, held in Bloomington.\nSCA chapter members from around Indiana came together to talk about spinning, weaving, bobbin lace-making and what kind of cut the clothes used to have during medieval times. \nThe SCA's chapter in Bloomington uses a hands-on approach to recreate European medieval culture ranging from 600 A.D. to 1600 A.D. The Bloomington SCA chapter is part of an international organization comprising 17 kingdoms in the United States, Europe, South Africa, Japan and Australia. The membership in Bloomington has been steadily increasing to 70 in the last 10 years attracting more students.\nEvery member of the society must to pick a persona -- an imaginary person -- who might have lived in the times from 600 A.D. to 1600 A.D. At the textile gathering, all members showed up in costumes, representing their persona. \nTerry Broberg-Swangin, a 44-year-old graduate student in theology from Notre Dame, wore a violet and green wool tube pinned on one shoulder, a purple hat embroidered with yellow runes, a silver amulet and white Cherokee Rockers. \nBroberg-Swangin was the persona of a Viking woman who was married to the chief of the village. \n"I have chosen a Viking persona because I wanted to explore the Swedish side of my family," she said. \nHer grandfather left Sweden when he was 17, went to Chicago and worked his way up in the steel mines.\nIn the society, Broberg-Swangin is known as Thorhalla. She showed other members at the gathering how to sew an authentic undergrown for a Viking woman. \nA new SCA member, Katherine Davies from Adelaide, Australia, learned how to sew from her mother, who taught her how to make a teddy bear. \nDavies needed to improve from sewing a teddy bear to producing a five-layered Elizabethan gown. Davies regularly studied medieval drawings of clothing and tried to imitate them. \nMembers of the SCA not only make their own costumes because it is "relaxing and an outlet for creativity" but also because buying hand-sewn costumes is very expensive. Some of the elaborate, hand-sewn costumes displayed in the gathering would cost up to $5,000 in a shop, Davies said. \nThe cost of fabric for one costume ranges from $30 to $ 300, depending on whether it is a costume that people wore in everyday life or in festivities.\nSCA members put a lot of effort into their costumes. One yard of lacing takes 50 to 60 hours of work to produce and sometimes the enthusiasm for a project fades and people start a new piece. Broberg-Swangin has a couple of unfinished pieces at home. She told her husband he should never let anyone else finish her sewing projects. \n"Bury them with me," she said. \n-- Contact staff writer Thomas Bender at \ntbender@indiana.edu.