I realize that I’ve never really shared this odd little corner of my life. Originally I’d planned to make a web page, back when I was learning about web pages. But Dreamweaver broke my brain, and by the time I’d been introduced to Nvu, I’d forgot all about this. And then I switched computers and forgot all about Nvu… sigh. And then they invented blogs…
But somehow this little Project That Ate New York just never came out of the shadows. Which is too bad, because it had been a huge amount of very intense fun!
So… it appears that back in 2004 (or earlier, I’m just going by the one date I can find on an old jpeg) I decided to make a Barbie for my niece. At that point she was young enough to be interested in Barbies.
And it all started with finding a Barbie, and trying to make her better. Or at least, more specific. Because for me, growing up in the era of Barbie As A New Thing, it was all about what you could do with the Barbie, not what the manufacturer decided to sell you for the Barbie. And that meant your Barbie was never the same as anyone else’s Barbie, and that was half the excitement. (Or so I tell myself now; I can’t remember that far back. Really.)
But anyway….what happened was that I decided to make Arielle a Viking Barbie. A proper Norse Barbie, not a Wagnerian Valkyrie Barbie, or a Xena Warrior Princess Barbie or even a Red Sonja Barbie. Just your basic Viking Age Norse woman of middle to upper class Barbie.
So I started by making her a nice linen undershift. I opted for sleeveless, because I could see that while my Barbie was a little bit flexible, too much fabric around her upper arms was going to be awkward, and binding. I also realized very quickly that scale was going to be a problem. At Barbie-size, pretty much all fabric and thread was starting to seem pretty coarse and ‘homespun’, not fine quality at all. Even at my most anal, I couldn’t make stitches that didn’t seem inordinately sloppy. Perhaps if I’d had, and used, a beading needle? She needed socks. And shoes.
Naalbinding the socks wasn’t too bad. After all, Barbies tend to have pointed ‘highheel’ feet, so turning a heel in her socks wasn’t really important, and she ended up with fairly simple tube socks.
The shoes were trickier, because again, at that scale, any hole I made in the leather vastly weakened the entire shoe. I ended up having to make a simpler shoe than I would have liked, with less construction, less stitching. A bit more like a bog shoe, though I think it was stitched up the back seam. (Mind you, now I’m merely trying to tell from the not-so-good photos. BeraBarbie also predated any good digital cameras in this house. In fact, it seems that a lot of my pictures of her are from scanning her!) In the long run, I think her shoes came across looking like I’d liked, stylewise, so I can’t complain too much.
Then I made her a linen gown. Because she is representing a higher status lady than I often play in DARC, I chose a lovely red linen for her gown. Again, on MY scale it’s a beautiful fine fabric. On BeraBarbie’s scale, it again became a much coarser fabric. Sigh. Almost a hopsacking. And once more, stitching came across as far larger and less neat than I’d have liked. (Obviously something to experiment with – fabric choices and methods of stitching.)
The decorative cord trim on her dress was fingerloop braided, but as I recall, her belt was tablet woven. Unfortunately for the belt, even forgiving the tension problems along the edges, there was a trade off: only having to weave a short piece allowed me a better chance to not screw up the pattern, but only having to weave a short piece on that scale was also awkward, because naturally I didn’t just set up to do a 2 foot piece, and choose the best six inches. Oh no! I set up to weave a six or eight inch piece! (Sometimes I wonder wear my brains are….)
The apron fabric is a bit too boucle to be properly period, but was decorative and colourful, with a handloomed quality. I chose to do it in the tube-style that I’ve come to fancy, though BeraBarbie didn’t really require the extra gores I use for human sized Norse women. I fingerbraided straps that almost matched, and used some small decorative buttons for brooches.
I was very lucky when it came to beads. Darrell had recently acquired a box of beads at an auction, where he’d been more interested in the box and a few of the beads, and there had been a wealth of unloved tiny beads that worked just beautifully.
Overall, I’m sure she’s rather ostentatiously clad. Too many beads, too bright of fabric. But her excuse is that she was going to live with a young girl, and pretty is important in those sorts of relationships.
For outdoor wear I made BeraBarbie a shawl, with a hammered bronze pin, and a tiny replica of the Orkney Hood, complete with the tablet woven edging of fringe that I’d never done on my own.
[Note: This project was completed before I knew about the eventual redating of the Orkney find.
[Note: This project was completed before I knew about the eventual redating of the Orkney find.
The Orkney hood is now assumed to be earlier than Viking Age, Iron Age instead. However, my information on it was acquired back in the mid-90’s when I needed to construct a hood for the pilot project at L’Anse aux Meadows.
To complete the package, I had made her a simple drawstring leather pouch and a hammered bronze knife. And because “Idol hands are Loki’s playthings”, she had a basket of hand-dyed, handspun yarns, some naalbinding to work on, and a drop spindle.
Some time after that I was inspired to create a KettilKen, but his story can wait for another day…
