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I have had the honor over the past little while, of working with some amazing people. I met Dr Beatrix Nutz at textile conferences in Europe. She spoke about textile finds from the 15th century in a castle in Tyrol ... textiles containing sprang. I have since derived the patterns from these pieces. Recently she published the work. The article is titled Enigmatic Beauty _ Headwear of Lengberg Castle, and has been published on academia.edu.  Another project was the work I did with the German Archaeology Institute in Berlin. They were working to reconstruct clothing from a burial site in the NorthWest of China dating back 3000 years, that is 1000BC. The individual was wearing the oldest known pair of pants. My role was to recreate the belt, and several straps. The work of the project is now a 45 minute video titled Die Erfingung der Hose (The discovery of pants). Yes, the original language is German, but you can select the English soundtrack for the video. It is both entertaining and informative. You can order the book-and-DVD from Amazon.
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I set out to make a new sprang top. In the past I'd say the choices are a V-neck, a boat-neck, or you cut out a hole for the neck. Last spring I made a shirt comprised of ten separate pieces of sprang. I was using 'estate yarn' (yarn of an unknown age and unknown fibre content).  While I like the shirt, some of the threads are shattering ... the shirt is not standing up to wear. So I need another one. I purchased new yarn, nine skeins of Berroco Mixer, and made up nine pieces for this new shirt.  Although it might seem overwhelming to set out to make nine pieces, it's no worse than knitting a sweater. I made a center-front piece and a center-back piece. These pieces start at neckline and hem, and work to a place somewhere near the waist. There are two pieces that go over the shoulder, working from hem to hem, and meeting at the shoulder. I also made two pieces, one to go under each armpit ... worked from armpit and hem towards the waist. These pieces were all flat warp. There are three circular warp pieces, two sleeves and a collar. Assembled together, they make a shirt.  The basic stitch is a 2-2 twill, it has a comfortable amount of stretch. The Berroco is a mix of cotton, polyester, viscose and nylon, so I'm hoping it will stand up to washing and wearing.  No need to hem this material. The pieces have selvedges all around.
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