Kokemäen kansallispuku - national costume of Kokemäki

This entry is a little different and not about cosplay. Instead like the title says, I'll talk a little about my national costume. Mine is from my home area, Kokemäki. A lot of people choose their costume based on where they are from, but you can also pick any costume you like, so it's not limited in any way. The costumes are generally on the expensive side if you want to make it your self or buy new, but you can get some good deals on second hand national costumes. I was given mine as a gift from a relative who'd grown out of it.

The costume was missing a couple of pieces however, and though the skirt is a bit tight on me, the vest for some reason was too large and baggy. It was also missing the headpiece and apron. Finnish national costumes are quite simple and modest, even if they have lovely handmade materials and interesting details, so the most exotic part at least for me is the headpiece, silk cap or tykkimyssy.
Maidens (before the age of confirmation) wear ribbons and adults wear a silk cap, tanu(a linen cap), veil or säppäli(ribbon decorated with spiky metal plates). My costume has a silk cap, and since it's made in a special way I signed up for a community college course to make it.
The hat blocks that are used for the caps are hard to come by so a lot of them are loaned or rented around. If I understood right, there are currently no block makers who'd produce new blocks because the forms are copyrighted. (That didn't stop me from making a plaster cast of it in hopes of maybe making my own block one day...)

The cap bases are made with lining fabric, news paper, strong paper and rye porridge, sewn together, hammered to shape, then ironed and dried. Then a padding is added, and lastly the silk covering is sewn on. The caps are covered with silk that is usually embroidered with silk threads. Some caps use silk jacquards or wide patterned silk ribbons as covering. At the back is a detachable bow made with silk ribbons. If it's not specifically mentioned, you can choose the color for the bow, but similar color to the silk covering is popular. I've seen a photo of this costumes cap with a brick red bow(like the silk) but I chose a dark blue, because I thought it gives a nice contrast and it matches the little pouch.


Often the caps don't have too many colors, but mine is an uninspected costume, so the embroidery is very colorful. Trying to find the right or close to correct colors was a bit of a challenge, but I'm quite happy with the result.

There are three different shapes for the caps simply labeled 1, 2 and 3. Mine's a type one, a smaller but more domed shape with small tight folds on the sides. Type 1 can also be done with three wider folds, but of course, mine's the more difficult kind. The folds work as ease for different head sizes, meaning there's a ribbon that's tied and can be used to tighten the fit.


The caps sit at the back of the head, the smaller & higher type 1 a bit more at the back, a flat type 3 on top of the head. But there's more parts to the cap, it also includes a lace edging called tykki. There are specific laces used for this. If your instructions don't pinpoint a certain lace, there are two or three universal ones that you can choose from. I chose one that isn't maybe considered a universal lace per se, but I didn't like the other options and preferred this one so that's what I made. You can buy machine made lace, or REAL handmade bobbing lace that can be super expensive...  I don't have a lot of extra cash so I decided to make the lace my self and just picked up the pattern from the course : P





I still need to starch the lace, it should sit smoothly around ones head. All of this should be attached with pins to a knitted headband called timppi, but I'm not planning to make one because anything like it won't stay on my head without an excessive amount of pinning ^^; So I'm gonna cheat there as well, pin the lace to the cap and then find a way to attach it to a small bun instead, and hopefully it'll stay on.


The vest needed to be taken in to fit me, but I would have needed to take in the seams so much it would've changed the proportions of the pattern drastically. So instead I decided to be radical and add two seams on the front sides. I folded the fabric inwards and stitched it carefully down, then basted the fold down on the inside.It means the stripes on the pattern have been altered a bit, but it can still be let back out and I rather have a costume I'm comfortable wearing than one that's 100% accurate but ill-fitting.

I was most nervous about the apron, because the fabrics are almost always only made on demand, and my costume isn't really one of the most popular ones so I thought finding the correct fabric somewhere might be challenging. But I got really lucky! My mom visited a local weaving mill, that had made the apron fabric just a year before to celebrate the 100 years of Finnish independence and they still had some left~ Making it was really quite straight forward and simple, only requiring some pattern matching and hand stitching.
No photos of the whole thing yet, I still need to get socks and starch the lace, and then it should be wearable! An interesting little tidbit to finish here, the costumes are mainly based of a real life examples found on a certain area. This costume is based of a dress that was stored in someone's attic, and it was a second day wedding dress of a bride.