A Sitch in Time - Black Prince

Good morning!  Today on Stitch in time Amber Buchart is wearing armor!  Again this is an excellent series to show in a home economics class.
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The Black Prince was the hero to the English and he died young.  He was a warrior.  He lies in Canterbury Amber Buchart is going to have his cloth armor remade.  This cloth armor identified who he was and was worn over metal armor.  What will this cloth armor tell us about the Black Prince?  Will Ninya be able to come up with a way to recreate this garment?

Amber Buchart chose the Black Prince as her inspiration for the garment because during the Fourteenth Century fashion started to emerge.  The cloth armor is a military item and a fashion item.  It hung over the tomb in Canterbury Cathedral until World War II.  It would have been a significant garment for the Black Prince.

Armor was worn by the fashionable men of the day.  Amber explores an armor collection and talks with an armor historian.  In the Fourteenth Century, cloth armor would have been common.  Armor is “anything protective.”  Padded textiles were the most important part of protection because large metal pieces could not have been made.  Heraldry was also important for the armor because it identified the leaders on the front lines.  That would affect soldier morale for the better.

The cloth armor would have been padded, the one on the Black Prince’s effigy would have been made out of silk.  Ninya will make the cloth armor according to the garment that hung in the cathedral.  There would have been a great deal of embroidery and she had arranged for a team to hand embroider the pieces.  How would have the cloth armor been padded?  It would have been padded with cotton, sheep's fleece, and flaxseed fiber.  Ninya and her team will have to come up with a way to quilt the padded armor.

Amber then meets up with another historian to learn more about the Black Prince.  Not much is known about the Black Prince.  How did he get the name the Black Prince?  In the Sixteenth Century, he was first referred to as the Black Prince.  His tournament arms may have had black in them and hence the nickname.  He was known as a brutal military campaigner and that nickname came from the French.  His court was at the height of fashion.  He wanted to display his wealth and be shown as a warrior.

Ninya and Harriett experiment with how to quilt the garment.  Ninya sews channels and stuffs the channels with cotton.  Harriett spreads out the cotton on a square and then sews the cotton into channels.  The team believes that sewing channels then stuffing them will work the best.  Amber brings the two experiments with her as she examines the original cloth armor.  Old textiles are rare and it takes a special reason for them to be looked at.  Amber talks with a textile historian about the item.  The cloth armor spoke of status and wealth.  Did the Black Prince wear the item?  It would be something that he would have worn.  The textile historian examines the two experimental pieces and determines Harriett’s version would be more correct for the reconstruction.

Ninya and her team start working on the cloth armor armed with that information.  The piece comes together and the embroidery is sewn onto it.  How did this cloth armor turn out?  Tune into this episode to find out more about this garment.

Again, this is a good episode to show in a history class as well as a home economics class.  If there is an independent study student interested in Medieval history, then this is a documentary for them.  Teachers, you are limited by your imagination as to how to use these documentaries.