orbiculi - officers only?

[Robert Vermaat]

Do you mean the woolen legs wraps or the fact hat they were used to pad greaves ?

Woolen leg wraps.

[Robert Vermaat]

That is why I like Aitor's solution to tunic designs. Simple and incredibly effective. Photocopy the original designs on to the tunic, who would have thought that would work but obviously Aitor did and it does!. You could alternatively photocopy onto a single sheet of material and then cut the designs out and stitch them onto the material. Surviving tunics show that even some original designs had been cut off old tunics and put onto new ones to save time and money. The non artists in the group could then have access to all the hundreds of original designs, no need to resort to modern patterns. Even with some fading Aitor's tunic still looks good close up.

I had great results with orbiculi, but can you help me with clavi? I can't seem to find good images that I can use...

[Mithras]

It would be remiss of me not to show two of John's tunics from Comitatus:



This one takes my painted orbiculii one step further to paint clavii as well.



This one is the linen tunic with sewn on clavii and cubiculli taken from a single-woven-in linen Egyptian tablecloth. Very nice!

From my point of view, I find it very hard to find good easy to replicate patterns. I must look up Aitor's technique, it sounds like something I might be able to try.

[Tarbicus]

This stuff looks interesting:
[url:21fht2y8]http://www.saralpaper.com/products.html[/url]

It allows to you trace a design onto fabric, which means you can then paint on the fabric within the outlines you made, and the tracing erases very easily leaving just the paintwork. It has no wax content.

[Graham Sumner]

Paul wrote:

From my point of view, I find it very hard to find good easy to replicate patterns. I must look up Aitor's technique, it sounds like something I might be able to try.

Paul

Get down to the Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester this week-end pronto and see the Clothing and Culture exhibition and while you are there buy the catalogue!

Failing that you are welcome to come and visit and look through my library, I am always happy to help out. That goes for you too Robert.

I certainly recognize the design in the Orbiculi in Johns top tunic they look good although the original designs generally tend to be blue almost black purple. Not too sure about those in the linen tunic I can't see the detail but when I saw John's tunic in York they looked too modern to me.

Graham.