Reddit reviews Woven into the Earth: Textile finds in Norse Greenland (None)

The idea behind purple =expensive is really not exactly accurate. Yes, the dye purpura was expensive because of the amount of crushed sea creatures you needed to create the dye. However, because it was crushed sea creature, the color itself is not what we think of as purple - it was more of a maroon. We use purple and violet interchangeably today but it wasn't always the case.

Purple itself is just blue (woad or indigo) and red (madder) mixed together. Depending on the area in Europe and time, it's pretty easy to get those together to create purple. Also, in Norse Ireland there was a litchen purple that is pretty darn bright purple when I've seen it in person.

Black well, most people have one of these guys in their family. If not, you probably are the black sheep. :-) Amazing how many people forget kindergarten ~Ba Ba Black Sheep, Have you any wool?~ which can be dated back to at least the 18th C. Black sheep themselves are nothing new. In fact, in the Greenland digs garments are shown to be woven of a cross weave of white and black wool.

For yellow weld and saffron were common with saffron being the more expensive of the two. Safflower - a dye mentioned in the late middle ages but I'm under of how expensive it would be - dyes boiled linen hot pink.

As far as cultural significance - white was used for mourning up until the 16th C in most of Europe. Green was associated with love and, by a consequence, was sometimes also associated with courtesans. Yellow seems to have a lot of association with courtesans in Italy - with various sources normally stating that yellow scarves are to be worn by courtesans.

In the Elizabethan Court, purple silk meaning purpura dyed silk, not the color purple as we know it, was regulated but so were sable fur and cloth of gold (as in, cloth woven out of actual gold). Still, you could get away with breaking the Sumptuary laws if the Queen gave you it as a gift or if you just paid the fine. It became a status symbol to be able to break the law and pay the fine.

Tl;DR
Colors didn't have the same names as now and anyone could get red, blue, and yellow which means almost every color was available.

Generalizing grossly, for undergarments, you'll want undyed linen woven plain. For top garments, you'll want wool either natural sheep colors or dyed with madder or woad and woven in a twill pattern. Wool yarns should be worsted spun and 2-ply (I think? I want to say 3-ply happens, but isn't as common). I don't have setts in my head anymore, but they're finer than is typically used for modern weaving.

Twill patterns depend on what period you're in, to my recollection.

There are also a ton of different kinds of narrow wares (ribbons, lacing, belts, garters, etc.) which are woven using a variety of different methods, but that is an entirely different barrel of monkeys.

OK, references!

Textile Production at 16-22 Coppergate (goes to a PDF; focuses mostly on 9th-14th/15th centuries) -- Definitely, definitely read this one. It's free and covers textile production from beginning to end.

Textiles and Clothing: c.1150-c1450, vol. 4 of Medieval Finds from Excavations in London

I also want to suggest Woven into the Earth and its partner book Medieval Garments Reconstructed, which are about the medieval finds in Herjolfnes, Greenland. However, the settlement in Greenland was cut off from the rest of Europe for a long time, so the finds don't really represent what was happening on the mainland at the time. You might find the weaving patterns useful, though. Possibly the clothing patterns?

ETA: There was also a recent discovery at a castle in Austria of a bunch of linen fragments of undergarments. Beatrix Nutz is the main researcher, but I'm not sure if she's published her findings yet. I lost track of the research. Here's a blog post about it with some thread counts for the linen.

I am also not sure about post-marriage hair fashion, but here's two pretty decent books on clothing from that era.

http://www.amazon.com/Woven-into-Earth-Textile-Greenland/dp/8772889357/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1405025542&sr=8-6&keywords=greenland+clothing

http://www.amazon.com/Viking-Clothing-Thor-Ewing/dp/0752435876/ref=pd_bxgy_b_text_z

It wasn't the ONLY issue, but the most frustrating one. The pieces for the arm and gores in that area didn't fit together right at all. I ended up having to redraft to make a proper fit. That was just an mild annoyance though compared to the devastation of loosing the fabric from the length issue. Of course, it wasn't devastating for me because I had another use for the wool but for somebody else it would be awful!

If you're interested in the Greenland gowns, I'm sure you already know, but if not I feel the need to point you in the direction of this and this. I haven't actually tried to use any of the patterns given in the second book but the research and photos are simply astounding.

I know by this point most people interested in the topic have heard of and seen these books but they are so interesting I always have to point them out just in case somebody hasn't seen them yet and I can blow their minds the way that lady from Smoke and Fire did for me when she showed me these books.