Seam Win

Yesterday, I was looking at Heather Rose Jones's Archaeological Sewing page and noticed that it mentioned a seam treatment for wool fabric that looked awfully familiar. The seam treatment in question is described about a third of the way down the page listing seams that were documentably used on wool. The description reads as follows:

Medieval: Wool, right sides together: running stitch seam, raw edges turned under together and overcast. [Hägg 1984, Hedeby (northern Germany), (11)]

I was pleased to see this because this is the exact seam treatment I've chosen to construct my Hedeby-inspired dress. Granted, I chose the method because the pattern I was using required me to use very small seams if I was to succeed in making a garment I could wear at all. But I was pleased to see that I chose a construction seam that the original garment that the Hedeby fragment came from probably used.

More Thoughts About Seams

The other day, I was thinking about stitches to use in the construction of my himation and speculating whether the use of whipstitching to unite the folded edges of two garment pieces from the wrong side, with the seam allowance being stitched down on the inside of the garment, was period for 10th century Byzantium.

Then I found the following comment by Carolyn Priest-Dorman in a web article she wrote about Viking Age stitching:

The running stitch forms the basis for almost all the seams in the textiles that this work discusses. However, it was not the only stitch used in the period to construct joins between fabrics. At Jorvík, a common way to join two pieces of silk or wool fabric was the overcast stitch. It could join raw edges on wool, folded-under edges on wool or silk, or rolled edges on silk (Walton 1989, pp. 407-8). The seams on the tenth- and eleventh-century Hiberno-Norse caps from Dublin provide evidence not only for running stitch but also for whip-stitching. One interesting seam variant from that site involved turning the two edges of a seam toward the inside of the cap and whip-stitching the seam from the outside of the cap (Heckett 1987, p. 167).

Many different methods existed for finishing a seam neatly. At Jorvík, sometimes the folded-under edges of a plain seam were individually sewn to the inside of the underlying textile. Flat-felling, or "run-and-fell," was also common at Jorvík, on linen: the initial seam was sewn in running stitch, and the folded edge was then sewn down in overcast stitch. Variants of flat-felling and plain seams, both of which involved an initial seam in overcast stitch instead of running stitch, were the most common seam finishings at Hedeby.

(emphasis mine)

So close variants of what Laura Mellin referred to as the "Elizabethan seam" also show up in the Viking world during the 10th and 11th centuries. That's almost like...documentation for use of that seam on my 10th century himation.

Sewing for Byzantium--Thoughts About Seams

One of the things I've been thinking about in designing my himation is how to sew and finish the seams.

Most of the seams described as being used in the tenth century or thereabouts are flat-felled in some manner, and feature running stitch as the main stitch to unite the pieces, with the seam allowance being stitched down with whipstitch or in some other manner.

Modern sewers usually use a machine stitch or, if handsewing, an ordinary running stitch, to unite two pieces of a garment. Unfortunately for me, I hate doing running stitch by hand with a passion. I find running stitches tough to make (particularly if one prefers straight seams and lines of stitching), slow, and too weak for garment construction when done by hand (particularly when executed by me).

On the other hand, I have gotten pretty good at doing whipstitching, which today is mostly used for hems. Since most of the garments I have hand-sewn to date are modifications of flat sheets, which only required hemming, I have done a lot more whipstitching than running stitching, and have gotten fairly good at sewing a close, even stitch that doesn't show much on the right side of the garment. An example of my whipstitching (a portion of the hem of the savanion I am making) from both the right and the wrong side of the garment appears in the photographs beside and below this paragraph.

On the Manazan shirt, I followed Peter Beatson's recommendation and used tatbeet seams. With this seam, you fold over the fabric on each edge that you wish to join, and, from the right side of the garment, whipstitch the folded edges together. After that you turn the joined pieces to the wrong side, fold the edges of the fabric (that are now the seam allowance) under, enclosing the raw edges, and whipstitch each folded edge onto the garment. Peter Beatson's illustration makes it very clear what is going on. The resulting seam is very tough and unlikely to ravel but, like the flat-felled seams on blue jeans, is very noticeable. A portion of the tatbeet seam on the body of my Manazan shirt, seen from the outside of the garment, appears in the photograph just below this paragraph.

Then I read this article by Laura Mellin, describing how garments were seamed in the Elizabethan period. Judging by her illustration, the Elizabethan seam was a kind of reversed tatbeet seam. The edges of the fabric would be folded over, and the folded edges would be whipstitched together--but on the wrong side of the garment. If the fabric is prone to ravel, you fold the raw edges of the seam allowance under and sew them down onto the garment (also from the reverse side) with running stitch; otherwise, you just stitch the seam allowances onto the garment with running stitch without doing anything to the raw edges (as Laura's photograph shows).

Aside from the fact that this type of seam would be more conspicuous when done on linen (which I will be using for my himation than on wool (which the Elizabethans usually used for outerwear), this seam appears to be perfect for me--it would be faster to sew and stronger when sewn than any kind of simple running stitch. As for the fabric edges, I could always whipstitch them down, as I'd done for the Manazan shirt, since the result would be less likely to show on the right side of the garment than running stitch would.

How authentic is this kind of seam for a 10th century Byzantine linen garment? I'm not sure. On the one hand, there are certainly early-period garments in linen with flat felled seams. On the other hand, however, the early period stitch types shown on the Archaeological Sewing pages for linen shows seams where the folded edges are stitched together from the inside with a "modified" running stitch, not whipstitching. I can't visualize this "modified" running stitch well enough (despite the illustration) to tell whether it is equivalent to the Elizabethan method I plan to follow. On the other hand, any handsewing that relies on whipstitching will go much faster for me than will handstitching that requires back stitch or running stitch. So I'm going to use the stitch Laura shows, anachronistic or not.