These knitted garters are featured in the book The Typical Tudor: reconstructing 16th century everyday dress (now available on Etsy). They are based on detailed examination of a fragment which may be part of an original garter, contemporary pictorial references, and later comparative evidence as follows:

A fragment of wool knitwork (1540-1560) Museum of London, inventory number NN18752;

A miner (circa 1570) on a memorial brass in All Saints’ Church, Newland, Forest of Dean, Gloucestershire;

Unknown artist (circa 1600) The fiddler’s goodmorrow, The cryes of London (detail), Pepys Library, Magdalene College, inventory number Pl 2973, 422;

Pieter Brueghel the Elder (1568) Bagpiper, The peasant wedding (detail), Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Austria, inventory number GG 1027

Garter (1649) inventory number 1991-491, Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia, US; and

Pair of garters (17th century) inventory number SC7941, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts, US

The instructions were developed by Jane Malcolm-Davies based on research by Lesley O’Connell Edwards for The Tudor Tailor and are part of the ‘Knitting in Early Modern Europe’ project, which was grant funded but the European Commission as a postdoctoral Marie Skłodowska Curie Research Fellowship awarded to Jane Malcolm-Davies (grant agreement 656748).