Sewing and Clothes

[bhunter]

I had to do a sewing repair today and needed to find the proper stich and stumbled across this site. I had never really thought about clothing manufacture before the sewing machine and the industrial revolution. Interesting stuff IMHO. BTW, I only managed to stab myself twice with the needle.

Modern vs. Period Construction Technique -

Basic construction of clothing in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries differed drastically from the approach used in modern clothing construction in three basic ways.

The first, and most obvious difference was that everything was sewn by hand. The sewing machine as we know it was not invented until the mid 1800's and was not in general use until the turn of the century. Construction of garments by hand differs in both sequence and technique, which I'll get into during a later demo (The Difference Between Modern and Period Garment Construction).

The second difference between construction now and then was that textiles were not as readily available nor as cheap. The textile was more important than the labor used to construct a piece of clothing. This meant that great effort was taken to use every scrap and often times to piece things up, with nap, grain or pattern suffering in the process. This is actually taken into account in tailor's handbooks. Additionally, there were no standarized dye lots. Many pieces of fabric were dyed in seven to twelve yard increments meaning that, if you ran out of fabric, you did not have the luxury of running down and buying more; it simply would not be the same color and might even be a different quality of fabric.

The third difference lies in the way that clothes were fitted. Fitting was often done concurrently with the construction process and on the body of the person for whom the garment was being made. While there were tailor's pattern books, there were no standard, various sized patterns available.

In general, seam allowances were smaller and, if the garment was to be laundered, the seams were carefully encased to prevent them from fraying.

Linings were often cut in the same shape as the shell and treated as either a foundation or as one with the shell during construction. Separate facings were very uncommon. The lining was usually turned under at the edge of the garment and stitched down to the outer shell.

Bias binding, which we know as the process of cutting strips at a 45-degree angle to the grain of the fabric (to take advantage of the stretch) was almost unheard of. Most binding was made on the straight of grain and eased around corners during hand sewing; an impossible process when sewing by machine.

http://www.renaissancetailor.com/demos_handtech.htm