Red Plaid Underdress: Washing the Linen

Fabric as received.  The coins are to give scale.

These pictures show the changes in appearance of my linen fabric after soaking it for about 4 hours in lukewarm water, washing it in lukewarm water, and letting it hang up overnight to dry.  Click on any of the photographs to see the image larger and with more detail.

The first photograph shows the fabric as I received it in the mail, before any soaking or washing was done; I've added a .5 Euro coin and a US quarter to the photographs to give the viewer a better idea of the scale of the grid of the fabric's design.  The Etsy vendor's page said that the squares of the grid are 3/4ths of an inch on each side, and that looks approximately right though I haven't measured them.  

In person, the fabric looks more orange in tone, and less rose-colored, than it does in the as-received photograph, and the grid threads appear to be yellow in the direction of the warp and light sage green in the direction of the weft.  As my first post about the fabric shows, I thought that both sets of grid threads were white when I placed my order, but the difference between the photographs of the fabric on Etsy and the actual appearance of the cloth is subtle enough that I feel no need to complain to the vendor or abandon the project.

Fabric after soaking, washing and hanging to dry.

The second photograph shows the linen after the soaking, washing, and drip-drying had taken place, but before anything else had been done with it.  Because it was taken during the day, with natural sunlight coming in the window, it shows the true colors of the fabric.

At the point where I had the washed and dried fabric, it occurred to me that I didn't really know anything else about the rubbing process.  Do you rub the fabric when it is dry, or  while it is damp?  Maria's post doesn't answer this question, but I've seen at least one Internet article claiming that you should keep a spray bottle of water or other means to keep the cloth damp as you rub.  I will try both approaches, on different parts of the cloth, and photograph each, before I decide on how to treat the rest of the cloth.  At that point, it will be time for another update on this project.

The Bag Tunic, Complete

I have finally finished the Egyptian bag tunic I decided to make for the "Black and White" HSF Challenge.

As I feared, I did not manage to finish it for the May 15 deadline. By May 16 I had succeeded in cutting the keyhole neckline, sewing the side seams, and fringing the hemline.  I stitched the seams simply by folding each edge and whipstitching each folded edge together on the wrong side of the garment.  I was planning to enclose the seam by folding the edge back toward the seam and stitching them together, but that may create an awkward lump at the point where the bottom of the armholes starts, so I'm tempted to leave the seams as they are.   

The tunic didn't get done on May 16 because, after sewing up the sides and cutting the neckhole, I tried the tunic on, and found to my dismay that it was way, way too long.  Unbelted, at least six inches of tunic trailed on the floor, making walking impossible. With the tunic belted, I looked as though I was wearing a marshmallow.  Not a good look for me, or for anyone.  

So I cut about 5 inches off of the bottom of the tunic, and started fringing it again.  Now it is just long enough to lie upon my instep when unbelted.  I have to belt the tunic to make the width of it manageable. I've found that there are two viable ways to belt it.  The first involves running the belt through the armholes and tying the belt in front, so that it passes around the front and sides only, leaving the back free.  I like the look of the tunic when belted with this method, but the tunic doesn't seem to stay put very well this way; the cloth at the sides keeps slipping out and dragging on the ground, which usually means that one side soon becomes noticeably longer than the other.  The second method involves putting the belt around my middle from outside the sleeves while my arms are raised to at least shoulder height.  Tying the belt on this way holds the width in place better without looking too awkward; this seems to be the best compromise between grace and practicality.  

I folded the fabric over once around the armholes and sewed down the edges with a running stitch.  (I still dislike doing running stitch, but it doesn't show much in this particular location, and I need the practice.)  I didn't need to use a double fold because the sleeve end, like the edges that were seamed together, was a selvage.  

The neckline is finished with a rolled hem and the black cord is sewn around the finished edge, working from the reverse side so that the stitching doesn't show.  In the past, I have failed miserably at stitching rolled hems, but I discovered a website that explains the technique clearly enough for me to obtain a fairly decent-looking rolled hem; you can check out the directions I used here.  Once the neckline was hemmed, I used one piece of cord to trim the vertical part of the keyhole, and a second piece to trim the round part.  I allowed the cord to extend about 8 inches from each end of the curve so I can use the cord to tie the neckline closed, as in the sketch from Mary Houston's book that I reproduced in my last entry about the tunic. 

Overall, I like this tunic, but if I make another, I will make it narrower.  I should also see if I can find a fabric that is a bit drapier than the ramie I used here; I think that would result in a more graceful looking tunic. 

The Challenge:  #9 Black and White

Fabric:   Three yards of white ramie, purchased from a vendor on Etsy.

Pattern:   Pretty basic.  The tunic is nothing more than a piece of wide cloth, folded in half lengthwise and sewn down the sides at a distance of about 14 inches from the top fold, with a keyhole neckline placed appropriately on the folded edge.  I followed the information pack from the Petrie Museum on issues such as finishing.  Apparently, the Petrie's bag tunics are only shirt length (92 cm/36 inches long by 102 cm/40 inches wide), so I ignored their suggestions on proportions and made the tunic ground length and as wide as my fabric.  That may have been a mistake, but at least the results of it are interesting.  :-)

Year:   The Petrie Museum's bag tunics date to about 800 B.C.E.  They were worn during the Middle Kingdom, but became much more popular during the New Kingdom, according to the Petrie's on-line material on the subject. 

Notions:  Londonderry brand white linen thread, 80/3.  2 yards of black mohair cord from Wooded Hamlet Designs.

How historically accurate is it?   The pattern is based upon historical finds.  The ancient Egyptians were known for their ability to weave very fine cloth, and the sources I mentioned in my original post on this project suggest that they made ramie fabric, though it's unclear whether they used ramie for the clothing of living people and not just for the wrappings of mummies. I'm even less certain about the mohair cord, which is made from goat hair.  The ancient Egyptians certainly kept goats; but did they spin goats' hair into wool to make cord?  Did they use wool cord to trim their tunics?  I don't know; none of the tunics I know about have such trim on them.  Also, I can't be certain about the authenticity of my main construction stitches. All told, I'd say this one is about 60% accurate.

Hours to complete:   About an hour and a half for sewing the seams, 15 or 20 minutes to hem the armholes, approximately 30-40 minutes to try to even out the bottom fringe (the original fringe looked much nicer--I'm not much good at cutting fabric straight) and perhaps an hour to hem the neckline and add trim. Maybe four hours or so, but life kept interfering (which is why the finished product is about six weeks late).

First worn:  So far I've only worn it to check length and experiment with belt placement.  I hope to get some photographs to post here and on the HSF page by the end of this week.

Total cost:   A bit under $40.00 USD (nearly $30 for the fabric, including shipping, and nearly $9 for the mohair cord, including shipping).

Black and White--The Raw Materials

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.

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.

New Article on an Ancient Garment

Today, I found a new article by Marianne Vedeler and Lise Bender Jørgensen, analyzing a Norwegian ancient garment find. The citation is as follows:

Vedeler, Marianne & Jørgensen, Lise Bender. Out of the Norwegian glaciers: Lendbreen—a tunic from the early first millennium AD. ANTIQUITY 87, pp. 788-801 (2013).

Professor Vedeler has uploaded a PDF copy, and is in the process of downloading a Scribd copy, to her account on academia.edu, where it can be downloaded for free to members (membership is free and members do not have to be academics). The URL for the page where the article can be downloaded is here.

This is an analysis of the wool tunic, found on land revealed by the thawing of a Norwegian glacier, that I wrote about here nearly two years ago.  According to the article, the tunic has been radiocarbon-dated to between 230 and 390 CE.  Since it was not found on a body (it was found in a pile, crumpled up instead of folded, and "bore traces of close association with horse dung"), it cannot be said with certainty whether it was made for a man or woman, though the article notes that from the measurements (the chest area measures about 1.08 meters around) it would fit a slender man.

Since the article is available for free I don't need to describe it in detail, but I will mention some interesting details about the tunic's fabric and construction.

• The neckline of the garment is boat-necked, with a slight, stand-up rim all around. (p. 792-793).
• The garment is woven of several different colors of undyed sheep's wool, including white, brown and black. (p. 790).
• The body of the garment is woven from a 2/2 diamond twill. (p. 790).
• The sleeves of the garment are woven from a different 2/2 diamond twill than the body (determined by which threads of the weave are of which colors). (p. 790-91).  The authors suggest, based on that fact and the fact that the sleeves are sewn with a different quality of thread than the body, that the sleeves may have been added at a later date to what was originally a sleeveless garment. (p. 793).
• The colors used to weave the fabric used in the body of the garment create a houndtooth-like pattern that obscures the fact that a diamond weave was used.  (p. 791; see also picture p. 793).
• The garment was well made and of good quality, but had been much used and was patched.  (p. 793).
• The armholes of the garments are rounded.  (See, e.g., sketch on p. 798).  This is a feature that sometimes is not found in garments of significantly later date.
• Other textile fragments were recovered from the same general area.  According to the article, "Currently, approximately 50 fragments await dating and analysis and, as global warming progresses, more can be expected. They promise to shed further light on dress, textile design and textile production in the first millennium AD—and earlier." (p. 799).

I commend this well-written and well-illustrated article to anyone interested in the clothing worn in Northern Europe during the first millennium CE, and I will continue to keep an eye out for further research on the Lendbreen finds.

EDIT:  (9/10/2013)  The article is no longer available for free download on academia.edu.

EDIT:  (11/20/2013)  The article is once again AVAILABLE for free download on academia.edu.  The link in my post above has been changed to correctly point to the new download link.

More Archaeological News--Third Century Clothing Find in Norway

This seems to be a week for spectacular archaeological clothing finds. Yesterday, I stumbled across this article about the find of a nearly-complete third century C.E. find in Breheimen National Park, Norway. The article has a reasonably good color photograph of the find, which to me looks a bit like the tunic of approximately the second century C.E. found at Martres-de-Veyre (scroll about two-thirds of the way down to the bottom of this page for better pictures) in France. If I'm understanding the Google Translate version of the article correctly, this tunic, like the one at Martres-le-Veyre, is made from woven wool. Unlike the Martres-le-Veyre find, it is believed to have been worn by a man, but, like the Martres-le-Veyne find, it was worn with a belt. It is part of a number of personal items found at the same site in the mountains, including shoes, textiles, jewelry, hunting gear and tent pegs. Perhaps that type of garment was generally used during the period and was not simply regional, as the name "Gallic coat" given to the Martres-le-Veyre find implies.

Also found recently, at nearby Jotunheimen--a leather shoe, of similar vintage, which is a dead-ringer for the Armenian shoe I mentioned in yesterday's post.  Likely that means only that simple sewn leather shoes were used for a long, long time--from prehistory into the Middle Ages.  Still, the resemblance is striking.

An Intriguing Textile Information Resource

Now for something completely different....

This link will take you to something called an "Information Pack" that was prepared by the Petrie Museum about the surviving garments and textile remains in its collection from Ancient Egypt. (There are other routes to the document in question, just Google for "Petrie textile pack.") The Information Pack was supposedly prepared for 14-16 year olds who are studying textiles, but what makes it interesting from a costumer's standpoint is that it provides directions on how to make replicas of various items in the collection, which include several linen garments that might have been either inner or outer garments, a sprang cap, a beaded overdress, and lots more.

There are several examples of a type of linen tunic, referred to as a "Deshasheh dress", that is styled a lot like the so-called "Eura dress reconstruction" (illustrated here in a paper by Jenny Kangasvuo). Unlike the Eura dress, the Deshasheh dress consists of only three pieces--two sleeve pieces (each of which wraps around the shoulder and down to form half of the bodice as well) and a cylindrical piece that covers the rest of the body.

I have been making a lot of shifts lately; round-necked, tie-necked, keyhole-necked, and the Manazan shirt with its interesting collar closure. Maybe the Deshasheh shirt should be next? I'm seriously thinking of adding it to my projects list for 2010. There are other interesting designs that would be fun to make up in linen (the fabric most used by the ancient Egyptians!) too.