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Lesson #2: Page 5
Needles were of a variety of sizes and materials, the most common seeming to be bone. Personal experience has shown that stitching wool and coarse linen with a bone needle (even fairly fine wools) works very well and the needle quickly takes on the highly polished appearance known from archaeology. However, when stitching medium and fine linens bone does not work so well #1 as the needle needs to be faitly fine. Bone needles this fine tend to be very fragile, and are generally absent from the archaeological record. There are, however, a number of finer metal needles known from archaeology, usually of bronze, but iron and even silver examples are also known. #2 These metal needles were probably used for the finer linens. Many surviving fragments of cloth from the 'Dark Ages' have survived with seams and hems, and even decorative stitching (we will look at decorative stitching later in the lesson), but alas, most of these come from finds later than the period we are dealing with. #3 Although many of these stitching techniques were probably already in use in our period, in this lesson we shall be looking only at those that are most common or are known from 5th-7th century contexts. Different fabrics have different properties and therefore tend to have different types of stitches used on them. Some stitches are found only or predominantly on wool, others on linen and some on both. Below are a selection of seams and hems used in the period. Seams
The 'Thorsberg' seam seems to be the
most widespread #4 and is certainly
very strong. The run and fell seam is the seam most commonly
used on linen.
Hems
The raw edge turned under twice and
hemmed with overcast stitching tends to be the most common method of finishing
a hem. A blanket stitch along a raw edge is particularly common
when edging before making a seam.
1 Of course, it may just be that Anglo-Saxons were more skilled at using a bone needle than 20th century folk, and so did not damage the fabric as much as our modern experiments did. back 2 Iron needles may have been more common tha archaeology suggests since fine iron needles quickly corrode away to nothing. It may be that in many graves and settlement sites these would not be recognised as anything more than iron fragments or stains. back 3 There have been many finds of cloth from waterlogged sites such as London, York, Dublin, Hedeby, etc, but these all tend to be from the 9th-11th centuries when cities sited on rivers (and hence with the waterlogged conditions needed to preserve textiles well) became important. back 4 This
seam stayed in use for a long time and the distinctive wavy join produced
is still seen on poor people's clothing as late as the 17th century in
Ireland and Scotland. back
For those who want to know more about
'Dark Age' stitches I am preparing a page on them. My aim is
to produce simple diagrams for all of them eventually, although I still
have a long way to go to complete them all. At the moment most
are images I have scanned from books and archaeological reports (shhh,
don't tell anyone) and the page is a work in progress. If you
wish to take a look at it follow the link below.
Page
1 | Page 2 | Page
3 | Page 4 | Page 5 | Page
6 | Page 7
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Classroom is a division of The
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The
first obvious thing about stitching clothing in the Anglo-Saxon priod is
of course there were no sewing machines and all sewing was done by hand!
Sewing was usually done using threads of the same type of yarn as the cloth.
The type of stitches used often leave distinct appearances on hems and
seams.
