I ordered black cord and white ramie fabric for my Egyptian bog tunic, and both items arrived this week; you can see them in the photograph to the right.
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| The black cord and ramie fabric for my bag tunic |
I like the ramie very much. It looks a lot like linen, but feels cooler and smoother to the touch. It's finer than the linen I buy from fabrics-store.com for my Viking clothing is, and a bit more translucent. I wonder how, and in what ways, the texture will change when I pre-wash it.
Unfortunately, I had to spend a significant amount of time this weekend on a project related to my job, so I wasn't able to start work on the tunic. That, in turn, will make it tough, maybe impossible, to complete the tunic by May 15. However, I do intend to complete the tunic, now that I've bought the materials for the purpose. I think it will look rather elegant when completed, though not as elegant as a Deshasheh dress would be. It will be an excellent garment to wear in the summer, if only around the house.
EDIT: (5/14/2014) I managed to wash and dry the ramie tonight. It feels just a little bit rougher than it did, but its drape seems unaffected. Happily, the cut ends of the fabric frayed just enough to form a little fringe, just like the fringe you see on some ancient Egyptian garments. That will save me the trouble of hemming the tunic. I won't have time to sew tomorrow night or Friday, but am cautiously optimistic about the weekend.
EDIT: (5/14/2014) I managed to wash and dry the ramie tonight. It feels just a little bit rougher than it did, but its drape seems unaffected. Happily, the cut ends of the fabric frayed just enough to form a little fringe, just like the fringe you see on some ancient Egyptian garments. That will save me the trouble of hemming the tunic. I won't have time to sew tomorrow night or Friday, but am cautiously optimistic about the weekend.
I'm really interested to see how this turns out and what kind of drape it has.
ReplyDeleteSo am I. I'm a bit afraid that it will be too stiff to look well--another reason to hurry up and prewash the fabric.
DeleteOne of the differences is that linen softens with repeated washing, but ramie doesn't. If anything it's the opposite. Personally, ramie prickles my skin in the way that linen never does, and that got worse with each wash until it became an itch. I had to toss the blouse and have never used ramie again :(
ReplyDeleteIsta: That's bad news. On the positive side, it's possible the seller was lying about what the fabric content was. It was billed as "ramie linen" though that may mean nothing more than "it's really ramie, but I don't know if I can get people to buy it if I call it by the right name." The feel of this stuff is okay to me, so hopefully I won't have your problem.
DeleteStella: I was playing around with it tonight and it seems as though it will drape well enough for my purpose. Maybe I'll be able to prewash it tomorrow and get a better idea for how fast this project will be. It should be faster than the bog blouse, because it requires zero fitting. All I need is to decide how long I want it to be and how wide (I may go with the entire width of the fabric for the effect), cut a keyhole neckline, and decide how far up to stitch the sides closed. That's the pattern. The rest is just stitching up the sides, hemming the exposed edges, and sewing cord along the neckline. (I didn't buy enough to sew around the armholes, alas.) I have a clever idea about how to sew the cord on; let's see whether it works out. ;-)
I was going to fringe the bottom of the tunic, but judging from my examination of the fabric it looks as though this stuff won't generate a puffy fringe the way linen would, so I may have to hem the bottom as well.
Excellent! I look forward to seeing photos. I think you might as well go the whole width of the fabric - if you decide it's too wide you can cut it down later, and I suspect that using the whole width is the period thing to do.
DeleteYou're probably right about the period usage being to use the entire fabric width--though in my case, that's 57 inches wide!
DeleteMy recollection is that the ancient Egyptians used ground looms to weave linen, and thus did not have the width constraints of the early European looms. Probably each length of linen was warped and woven to the desired width and length, though I don't have enough depth of scholarship in that era to quote you specific citations. My main concern is that I don't want the ends to come far enough down my arms to be a nuisance when I'm wearing the finished tunic. I'll probably experiment before I make a final decision.