Tunica hems

[richsc]

Hang on...doesn't Caius Fabius whack his own cattle for leather?

Besides, slaves would have done all of this, from using the drop spindle to weaving, to skinning cattle so don't feel bad if you don't do it yourself.

[Caius Fabius]

HOW RUDE!!!!! :lol:


.....and bone and horn and meat...still haven't gotten enough sinew for a catapult though....

[marsvigilia]

Besides, slaves would have done all of this, from using the drop spindle to weaving, to skinning cattle so don't feel bad if you don't do it yourself.

Unfortunately slaves aren't what they used to be. So hard to get good help. :lol:

[Chuck Russell]

ok, so i guess it's left to teh reenactor since most wool doesnt have selvege all teh way around.

[Lepidina]

Actually for a wool felt, you aren't supposed to hem it because it doesn't unravel. These days we put hems in because the fabric unravels but like others have mentioned, the Romans would have put slevages all around the edges.

I've found that with linen, if you wash it in hot and dry it on hot before sewing it, it doesn't unravel as much. A well-placed running stitch will also keep it from unraveling and give the edge a more "unfinished" look.

deb

[Gordak]

I’ve actually been doing lots of research lately, I’ve even visited a few artisans who make clothing on looms regularly.
Here is what I was told.

You can't just make a panel with 4 selvedges, the ends of the warp can come apart, no matter how dense it’s packed.

So it appears the proper tunic has a selvage on the top and bottom with hemmed armholes.

Modern (machine made) wool bolts are 60 inches long, too long for a Roman tunic to have the top and bottom selvage...
BUT
Since real tunics have been discovered with tucks at the waist. A reasonable reproduction could be made out of factory wool with selvedges at both ends.

Cutting a bolt down in the center, (thus leaving the selvages intact) and stitching it back together, thus shortening the length. (Your belt will hide the seam)

Wallah you have a tunic that won’t fray for a VERY VERY long time.

I already made one this way, Ill post pictures of it when I get a chance.
The result it’s a great tunic that drapes much more dramatically due to the lack of hems.

p.s. However, if you want accurate clavi, you need a loom.

[aitor iriarte]

Fabrics woven using warp-weighted looms didn't have selvedges usually but side tablet woven bands. In fact, they needed always an upper tablet woven starting band to be operative and usually a lower closing one.
It is a good idea, specially on later third, fourth and so on tunics to have a seam concealed by the belt: There are plenty of real tunics from Egypt that show that feature, some are woven in one piece and the feature just shortens them, but others are made out of three pieces (upper with the sleeves plus two 'skirts'. Woven in one piece tunics were expensive and that way, they could make do with narrower looms...

Aitor

[richsc]

Woven in one piece tunics were expensive and that way, they could make do with narrower looms...

Thanks Aitor! As I've been pondering making a WWL, the idea of having one size, wide, and that is the only way to make a tunic, has had me stumped. You can of course configure a narrower warp, but I'm glad to see evidence of sewing smaller pieces together.

[Gaius Opius Fugi]

So this feature is just on 3rd century tunics and later? Or did I just read this wrong?

Cheers,
Adam C.

[Lepidina]

Hi Aitor,

What's the difference between a side woven band and a selvage? I'm kind of confused on that.

Oh, and I just realized something - you mentioned that tunics had 3 pieces because it was cheaper to use narrower looms. Does that mean they were woven sideways from sleeve to sleeve instead of top to bottom? Just curious.

Does anyone have any info for loom sizes back then? All the ones I've seen in pictures have been at least 6 feet or so because people are standing up to weave them.

deb

[aitor iriarte]

Adam,
No, I'm not being excluyent but I haven't investigated earlier textiles... :?

Deb,
In a selvedge, the weft turns around the warp's last thread with more or less complication (several warp threads can be closer spaced near the selvage to make it stronger, or the like). Ancient quality textiles had tablet-woven side selvedges, they were woven as the textile was growing (I suppose that you know what is tablet weaving, it implies using several square or triangular bonen, wooden tablets with several holes in each of them and I've never understood well how it works but it depends on the degree the tablets are rotated among them. The most common use of this technique is for weaving belts or bands) and, so, the borders became very strong and well finished.
Yes, late Roman sleeved tunics were woven with the warp running from cuff to cuff. Teh neck opening was just a slit left open by interrupting the weft along its length (width)
As far as I know, the only information about looms' dimensions athe those given by the textiles themselves. It was very easy to exceed seven feet for weaving cloaks!

Aitor

[Lepidina]

Aitor,

That's really interesting!! I've seen tablet weaving but never tried it. That comes under the category of activites that take longer to set up than to actually do. (Wargames, board games with a bazillion little pieces, and horse shows are also in this category.

That explains a lot about how tunicas are made. I'll have to look closer at the pictures I've seen of early looms and see if I can spot some tablet cards at the edges of the looms. Do you know if this technique was used in other time periods or with other cultures?

The cuff to cuff info is also a real eye-opener. That would really affect the drape of tunicas and explains why a slit was used instead of a finshed neckline.

Do you have any information on textile shops? I'm thinking that if shorter looms were more common, there might have been "sweat shops" where dozens of slaves or workers would be seated on the ground in one room weaving tunic fabrics. Larger looms are not only taller, but take up more space because they need more supports to hold them up. Thus it would be more economical to have a bunch of people weaving on short looms rather than fewer people on smaller looms. Sewing tunicas together wouldn't take that long with skiller sewers.

And really random question - do you know if weaving was more of "men's work" than women's work? Most of the old pictures I've seen have shown women weaving but in Colonial US, men were mainly weavers and women spun. I also saw a bunch of spinner and weaver from Mali and again, men were weaving and women spun. Maybe once the looms got more mechanical and more complicated, it became more of a "man thing". I dunno.

Okay, now you all need to find me a rich bachelor or a winning lottery ticket so I can spend the rest of my life studying ancient textiles.

deb

[John M McDermott]

Here is an example of tablet weaving on a sagum. The work was supervised by Holger Ratsdorf.

[Matthew Amt]

The tunics found at En Gedi were made from 2 panels each, joined at the tops and sides. They were woven sideways, so that the selvege edges are at the top and bottom, and the clavi were actually horizontal on the loom. This appears to be typical for the time, since Jewish law stated that a ritually proper tunic had to have the clavi meeting neatly at the top! You can see that it would be easy enough to make the clavi at different intervals while weaving the 2 panels of a tunic...

Presumably each panel was indeed woven to the size needed, so the sides would be finished edges, too. No hemming of the armholes would be required.

As has been pointed out, it's just darn hard to find modern fabrics that are just the right size! So we hem... (Sew wee hem, good advice!)

Oh, yes, there was at least one linen shirt found at En Gedi that was all one piece, though I believe it was sewn at the sides. All this from Yigael Yadin's book, "Bar Kochba".

Punchy. Been on evil machine too long. Valete.

Matthew/Quintus