This is a detail of some fabric I hand wove for a bench cushion, and which won the arts competition at Northern Regional Twelfth Night (Dun Carraig, Atlantia) in January 1999. It's woven in a four-harness twill combination pattern using forest green and champagne 3/2 pearl cotton. Pearl cotton is not an authentically medieval fibre, but it does produce a fabric with a similar hand and drape to silk, and is cheap and hard-wearing. Lozenge or diamond patterned fabrics were extremely popular in the Middle Ages, especially for utility textiles, and there are quite a few depictions of cushions woven in diamond twill patterns in twelfth- and thirteenth-century manuscript illuminations.

I haven't gotten a photo of the bench (with or without the cushion) yet, but I also made that myself, from plans published by Earl Dafydd ap Gwystal in both The Oak and Tournaments Illuminated. I am barely a carpenter, much less a cabinet-maker, but once I get around to getting a clear photo of the bench and cushion I'll put it up here.

Here is a detail of a handknit stocking I made in red wool on 2 mm double-pointed needles, at a gauge of 11 stitches x 15 rows = 1 inch. The pattern is based on some surviving sixteenth-century silk stockings, especially those of Duke Barnim XII of Pomerania. My stockings are knit in stocking stitch (stockinette), with a garter stitch band at the top. They are knee-length, meant to be worn gartered, and have a shaped leg, as Duke Barnim's did. Sixteenth-century heel turnings are produced by decreasing along the heel flap, and then folding the edges together and casting off, forming a welt under the heel. These welts are extremely uncomfortable to walk on, so I used a modern heel turning which produces a gusset shaping similar to the Renaissance stockings, but is seamless under the foot.

I made these stockings using a system of swatching, measuring, calculating, knitting, frogging (rip-it!), swearing and starting over similar to the procedure described at Donna Flood Kenton's Hand Knit Hose page (though she politely leaves out the steps after "knitting"). You can use the Sock Calculator to handle the calculating part, and some of the pattern details, though personally I prefer to subtract about 10% from the stitch count to avoid too loose stockings.

Here is a fifteenth-century style man's acorn cap I knitted from black Shetland wool, and then fulled. The cast-on edge at the bottom is turned under and finished with some black ribbon to keep the wool from irritating the forehead. Fulling shrinks the wool and raises a nap on the surface, so it doesn't look knitted. See my Fifteenth-Century Men's "Acorn" Caps (and How to Knit One) for background and instructions on how to make one of your own.

My ongoing research and reconstruction of "Perugia towels" can be previewed online here.

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