14th to 15th Century Sewing Kit for La Bella Donna

So, you want to assemble a sewing kit for your Italian Peninsula persona? This is a guide to doing so with sources to point you in the right direction for your place and time. Remember, many things were similar on the peninsula but each city was its own autonomous region with its own dialect and terms for the following items. It’s up to you to do further research to determine the nuances of your city.

tg7S%yOTR1O4XAX4X7T4tw — Giata’s Personal Sewing Kit: linen drawn thread handkerchief to work on, snips, linen thread in red and white, silk thread in white, three different types of spool for winding thread, a thimble, a lump of wax inside parchment paper, two bone bodkins, a yellow wool pouch for snips and bodkins, handmade pins and needles inside a wooden needlecase, all inside a painted bentwood box from an Emilia-Romagna reproduction artist.

If you were to assemble a modern sewing kit you’d probably think of scissors, needles, sewing pins, thread, and an awl. Let’s see what pictorial evidence of those in period looks like. Larsdatter has an annotated list of sewing kit links which is a great place to start. In the photo below of sewing kit finds from London at the Victoria & Albert Museum you can see scaps of silk fabric, a silk pouch, snips, two needles, needlecases, and thimbles.

Sewing kit Thames 14th C VAM — 1380-1450 Sewing Kit finds at V&A Museum: Scissor snips made of iron, silk pouch, silk fabric remnants, thimbles, needles, needlecases.

Starting with scissors, there are 14th-century snips (shown above from V&A) or 14th-15th-century scissors like these:

Sewing scissors Jaume Ferrer - Pannello dipinto dettaglio di San Girolamo Sant Martino e San Sebastiano 1450

For needles, sewing pins, and thimbles there are 15th-century examples:

Costanza Caetani 1480 by Domenico Ghirlandaio sewing — Ghirlandaio portrait of Costanza Caetani showing pins, a needle, and thimble ring, circa 1480

And there are 14th-century examples (including this thimble from Novgorod):

Sewing 14th c thimble russia novgorod museum

There is also this bronze needle circa 1350-1480:

You’ll want to put them in a needlecase. The case can be silver, wood, bone, or leather, like this 14th-century one:

I like to wind my thread on spools. You can use flat ones like these 2-4 notched ones, or cylindrical ones like this circa 1320 fresco of women winding silk thread:

sewing thread spool thread winder extant

Sewing 14th c thread reel upptagning 28687

Sewing a woman winds linen thread Kanonikerhaus in Constance, Germany, c. 1320 — 1320 Fresco – Women winding flax or silk thread

The blogger at medievalpurses.blogspot.com put together their kit by purchasing from Gaukler Medieval Wares, Lorifactor of Poland, and Historic Enterprises – all known for making very good historical replicas:

sewing brass needles from gaukler bown awl and thread reels from historic enterprises and brass thimble from lorifactor — Pictured above are a pair of brass needles from Gaukler Medieval Wares, Canada; a bone awl and one thread reel from Historic Enterprises, USA; and a very nice brass thimble from Lorifactor, Poland.

You’d want to put all your sewing supplies in one place. A bentwood box, used across Europe over the past thousand years for storing all manner of things, could be that place. Here are two 15th-century depictions of bentwood boxes holding yarn or thread: