Tatiana's Sashes
The following information has been posted on behalf of Her Excellency, Viscountess Tatiana Nikolaeva Tumanova, OL. Please contact her if you have any questions.
The long Russian/Ukrainian sash is like the one my husband Garth is wearing here ( http://history.westkingdom.org/Year25/Photos/TN2.htm ). This one was made for him when he was Queen's Champion; the Queen made it for him as a favor and it has his Arms embroidered on one end and a heraldic red rose on the other, with fringes (he's got a favor threaded onto his belt here, but it's not obscuring too much) and it's white, as he's a Knight. I have another one, narrower, that's yellow with red fringes. It's about 4 inches wide and is long enough to wrap around him three times.
You can see one of the ways of "knotting" the sash here -- you place the middle of the long sash across your front, wrap the ends around your back to the front and cross (twist) the ends about each other, then pull the free ends to your sides and thread them through the sash so the fringed ends hang down at your sides. I saw it in Stamerov, although it was in the Ukrainian costume section, it looked pretty neat.
There's another variation where you make the free ends into loops and just tuck them up under the sash so the looped ends stick up above the belt. That version doesn't work quite so well as the one in the picture -- I found I was forever having to tug on the loops to tighten the sash up. The variation Garth is wearing holds up quite well so long as you make sure the ends weave through the sash at your sides towards the back -- too far forward and the thing will come loose.
The last variation is to wrap the sash twice, tie it in a square knot at the front, lap the hanging ends over each other and pull them over the top of the knot and around the sash twice, so the ends hang down from behind the sash, sort of "wrapping" the knot.
Here's the six sash styles I know how to do. I don't know if any of these have actual names, this is just what I call them:
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1 -- Twist with Loops
2 -- Wrapped Knot
3 -- Wrapped Knot variation
4 -- Half-hitches
5 -- Side Knot
6 -- Wrapped Sash
