After using a pair of pantyhose as a skullcap, and covering my husband’s head with duct tape, I attempted to make a pattern using his head for Tim’s headpiece. Even though the sides were reasonably flat (I sketched the locations of the seams based on the screenshots), the center piece was still way curved. There’s several ways to turn a curved item into a flat pattern piece, but none of them would end up looking like the hat Tim wears, with lots of darts and stuff… so now what?

Well I was clearly overthinking the whole thing. He comes upstairs and suggests I look for balaclava patterns, or Snoopy’s aviator hat — so I did. And I found something even better: an actual coif pattern, which is more or less to the time that Monty Python and the Holy Grail is set: 932AD (according to the beginning of the movie). So instead of reinventing the wheel and making a pattern with duct tape, there’s a much better pattern that can be used for a Middle Ages coif as well as an aviator’s cap (great for steampunk!). Cynthia Virtue has the pattern and instructions on her page.

The pattern is sized by “adjusting the measurements to fit your head,” so I measured Marc’s head forehead to nape, jaw to jaw (over the top of his head), ear to ear (over the top), and the width of his forehead from the  outside edges of his brows. I didn’t know how many of those measurements will actually prove useful, but I figured too much info was better than not enough.

I put Ms. Virtue’s pattern pieces into Photoshop, and altered the long center piece first. Using the measurements I took from my husband’s head, I scaled it to the right length and width, saved it to two printable documents and printed them out. After carefully splicing them together, I cut it out with a wide margin in case I needed to add to the length or width of the piece. Then I tested the piece against his head, and even with the seam allowance folded under, I think it’s going to work; it might be a little short, but the width seems good. Excellent.

The second piece is marked “proportional” and I didn’t want to monkey with it too much. I used another measurement I took from about where the side seam would be to his jaw. Using that number, I scaled the side piece accordingly. It seemed a little big, but I printed it out (four sheets this time) and spliced it all together. It wasn’t a little big, it was huge. I’m not sure where I went wrong, but it was way too large. Measuring along the curve, front to back, it was over 6 inches longer than my center pattern piece. To determine the percentage I needed to reduce the pattern to make it the right size, I had to divide the correct measurement by the incorrect one and multiply by a hundred to get the percentage: 15.75 ÷ 22 = .7159 x 100 = 71.59%. I reduced the size of the side piece to 71.59%, printed it out (only two sheets this time), measured the curve, and it was a match to the center piece! Yay math!

Next, I made a muslin with some leftover black broadcloth. The fabric I bought for the costume coif is on the pricey side, so yes, I made certain everything fit the way I wanted it to before I cut into it. The nice thing is, after verifying that the muslin fit (huzzah!), I can line the costume coif with it, since that fabric is rough on the inside.

The ram horns are from Elope (purchased on Amazon), and when they arrived, one of them had been molded badly and was collapsing, right at the base because the foam wall was too thin. I cut a small hole in the center of the base and stuffed polyfill into the hollow horn until it was stable. There is no discernible change in the weight of the horn, but I did add some to the other horn as well, so they’d be balanced. Looking at them, you can’t tell which one was messed up if you didn’t know.

I had a remnant of Pellon 72F Peltex Ultrafirm stabilizer that I decided to try to sandwich between the layers. It’s fusible on both sides, but mostly I wanted something that was a firm base for the horn to rest on, not just fabric. If Tim’s coif was actually leather (and it appears to be) then his ram’s horns (which also appear real) probably didn’t need stabilizing. My “leather” is ultrasuede and the horns are lightweight foam, so they need some firmness since there’s no weight to hold them.

To get the placement of the horns and the stabilizer, I tried to use my tailor’s chalk on the edges of the horns, but the chalk was too hard. Marc suggested baby powder, and that worked great. I rolled the edges of the horns in the powder and placed them where they needed to go on the lining. That left an impression of the horns on both sides, that I then traced with white pencil so if the powder came off, I’d still have my placement. It’s going to be on the inside of the coif, so it won’t show. Next I sketched around the base of each horn (they are not identical), with about a half inch margin, on the Peltex — figuring I could trim it if a half inch was too much.

I pinned the stabilizer in place through the center and put all the pieces together to check the size and placement. They needed to be trimmed a little, and moved forward a bit from where they were, but then they could be ironed on. But wait! 72F Peltex is a double-sided fusible stabilizer — if I wasn’t going to fuse it to the ultrasuede (and I wasn’t), I needed another layer of the broadcloth over the exposed side, or I’d ruin my iron and/or pressing cloth. So I covered the exposed stabilizer and ironed both pieces in place. Since I had the iron out anyway, I pressed a quarter-inch hem around the edge of my lining so I could stitch that down, and not worry about any raveling raw edges. (The ultrasuede won’t fray and doesn’t require a turned hem.)

I’m almost done with the coif… but I can’t quite decide how I want to get the horns attached. I’m still playing with a couple of ideas, but that will have to wait for next time. Stay tuned!