Need help with renasance peasant fabrics

[609wood]

Are there any realistic fabrics that a peasant would wear during the renasance?
I have been thinking of making a simple shirt and pants by using an old shirt as a patern and whip stitching the seams and flipping it right side out. Will broadcloth work or is there something more authentic?
Thank you!

[Kate XXXXXX]

You need to look for thicker, rougher versions of linen, hemp, and wool, ideally, in natural or cheap-at-the-time dye colours.  Muddy greens, greys, reds and browns...  Nothing pure white, nothing too fine a weave or with a pattern in it, nothing black.  Here's an idea of the sort of things to be loooking at in style and colour:

   

[isabelladangelo]

I'd argue with the color point - even in the paintings Kate posted you can easily see peasants wearing black.   The black peasants wore either a) came from an older garment from someone of higher class that the peasant remade or b) black walnut (which was also used for ink and fades to brown over time).

Here are a variety of colors from period Northern European recipes used in the 12th -14th Centuries:


DSCF1356 par Isabella, on ipernity

So, don't worry about color other than for your shirt.  Your shirt/shift/smock/chemise is almost always going to be white or off white.  It will also 99% of the time be linen or a linen/cotton blend.  (Sometimes it is just cotton but that was more for Italy and Spain)  If it is not white/off white, then it is yellow but that was primarily and Irish thing.   

For peasants, linen, linen, and more linen.   In a book written by an Italian in the 1580's, he describes only the lowest of classes wearing linen for their bodices when discussing women's clothing.   If you have a bit of money, go with wool (btw, fabric dot com has some gorgeous wools that aren't pricey.  This brown wool/linen blend would be perfect for a pair of pants[/url].  Stick with stuff that is at least half wool but try to go for 100% wool or a natural (like linen) blend.   Polyester is evil.

Also, for a shirt pattern, look at this blog post:
http://practical-blackwork.blogspot.com/2008/05/huh-rectangles-who-knew.html

Men's shirts and women's shifts were very simple things in terms of construction.