Right now I’m being scheduled as a private seamstress for our sword figthing club more and more. 😉

As a start I was commissioned with simple medieval coifs. Since they will be used in training historical correctness wasn’t that important for now.

My coifs are a padded version for wearing under a fencing mask. I made them from fabric scraps I still had lying around. On the inside they’re both made from black linen, the black one is linen on the outside as well. For the light one I used fake suede. They’re padded with two layers of polyester padding. And you can bind them with twill ribbon in coordinated colours.

For the light coif I made all visible seams by hand.

And a short excursion how it would be historically (more) correct:

Coifs are usually made from white linen (made from flax, natural colour or bleached if you could afford it). Linen has excellent thermal conduction by the way. It always feels cool on the skin. It also absorbs a lot of water, more than cotton. This is why it was preferred for undergarments.

The padded version of the coif was made as well. I couldn’t find out quickly what they were padded with. But usually plant fibres were used, this means flax or cotton. This variant was meant to be worn under a helmet.