Medieval Dress Sew-Along (Part 3)

Seam finishing on the blue dress (which looks rather gray in photos)!  And at the end of the day, I think I still, inescapably, approach this with a modern clothing mindset. But the finished result is pretty, strong, and it does mimic period construction, after a fashion. So here we go!

After I posted the other parts of the Sew-Along, a friend of mine sent me a screen-cap of the finished side of this set of seams, saying only, "This is sexy." So this is for her.

What you need to know before we really begin is that 1) the shoulder seams are already finished. That happened back during construction. So that will not be covered here. 2) All of these seams are flat felled. Here's a more in-depth tutorial on what that actually means. 3) Some of these can be done in literally any order. Want to do your godets first? Go for it! I did. Want to do them last? Rock on. Some of them, though, need to be done in a particular order. 4) I'm left handed! That may be useful information. If you are right handed, and literally try to sew in the direction that I'm sewing, in photos, it'll probably be uncomfortable. 5) Something I didn't do, something I almost never do, but something which is nevertheless quite helpful to do: IRON all your seams before you start. This won't seem intuitive. But turn the garment inside out, spread your seam allowance open, and press it. It helps, I promise.

Front and back Godets (sometimes called Gores)

Tiny little photo series on the actual process I'm doing, if you don't want to click on the link above:

My back godet is set in a seam, while my front godet is set in a slit. Let's do the back first. We're going to accomplish this in two steps. I want both seams to be felled in the same direction. Notch one side of your back panel seam allowance, where it meets the point of the godet. (Also trim off any top seam allowance you had on your godet, just above the stitching.) Trim the lower portion of that side panel seam allowance down, and fell it away from the center of the dress.

Did that sound like gibberish? This is a photo of the seams meeting (and after completing all the steps above.) The left side seam allowance has been notched at that point, trimmed down (in this case, I trimmed it all the way up, too.) And then I used the seam allowance of the godet to fell the seam, away from the godet.

But do you see, also in the photo above, how my other body panel seam allowance is still intact? And it runs all the way from the neck to the hem. I've trimmed down the unfinished side of the godet, and that and the back seam are all going to get finished in one long stretch, by felling over the body panel seam allowance. It looks like this when it's done. The second seam finish covers all the raw bits at the very top of the first. Everything is encased.

That was really easy! I promise.

Now let's look at the front, set in a slit. Remember how I said to add seam allowance to the top of that one? Don't trim that off! We need it. The seam allowance of our body panels, at the slit, grades down to nothing. So we can't use that to fell anything. We have to fell the entire godet to the outside. I literally like to start from the hem on one side, work all the way up, finish the point, and then work my way back down. The point really is the tricky part, but here's how you handle it.

Make sense? Everything folds down nicely, like wrapping a present. That's why having seam allowance at the top of this piece is SO important. This step also helps to anchor the godet in place, and provides some reinforcement for that delicate insertion point.

The front and back godets are done! And they went pretty quickly. Now let's move on to all that business happening at the side seams.

Finishing the Sleeves

I like to skip to the sleeves at this point, but you'll see where you could jump around here, in a bit. But this is what we're looking at:

(Side note: there's an absolutely LOVELY photo floating all over Pinterest of an orange gusset that's been fully finished, with some arrows drawn on it. It's amazingly helpful! It's what helped me, and I'm sure hundreds of other people figure this process out. I don't know who it belongs to, but that person is AWESOME. But if you want a bit more of a step by step, that's what my goal here is.)

First things first, we want to trim some excess fabric away. Every seam of the gusset will be felled IN, toward the center of the gusset. I like to go ahead and trim the entire thing to start off with. I find it faster, and easier. Part of why I don't notch my gussets in construction is because I actually want to cut those points off on an angle. Like so, just above the line of stitching. Never cut through your stitches!

I also want to go ahead and trim all those gusset sides.

Isn't that nicer?  You'll find a few other bunchy points that need to be trimmed off at various points, most notably where the sleeve is joined. Trim those as needed.

The very first thing we're going to do, super fast, super easy, is one little side of the gusset, where it joins to the sleeve. And we, of course, will use the sleeve seam allowance to accomplish that. It needs to be notched exactly like the body panel in the back godet section. The notch should be where the sleeve seam meets the gusset.

That little piece in my fingers is the other bit I trimmed off before starting to sew. Then I felled just that little 4" strip.

Now, see how the other side of the seam allowance continues from the shoulder all the way down? That's what you're going to use to fell that side of the gusset, and continue on to finish the rest of the sleeve. In this photo you can see that my gusset is, of course, trimmed. I just need to trim down the rest of that sleeve seam, where I notched it earlier.

See? Easy! You do have to ease the corners, where the gusset meets the sleeve, using your fingers to work the fabric flat. It just takes some patience. The same is true for godets, or anywhere you have different angles meeting.

I'm feeling accomplished, though! We're so close. Obviously, these steps need to be done in this order. And before we can finish the shoulder and the rest of the gusset, we need to hop down to the skirt, and work on that some more. This is the part that can be done kind of at any time, prior to the shoulder.

This is where we are now. I need to trim off the seam allowance from the top of my godets.

I also went ahead and notched one side of my body panel seam allowance. Again, we want all these seams to be felled in the same direction. We're going to start with that notched seam allowance, and fell away from the center seam.

Now we're going to repeat the process with the center seam. Felling in the same direction.

Now stop. We want to leave the last skirt seam alone for now. We're going to finish the shoulder, side seam, and that last skirt seam all in one go, and we're going to fully encase all of our raw edges at the same time! Can you see how?

Notch the side seam where it meets the gusset. And that's the same spot where you want to start felling. Fell toward the sleeve.  When you get up to that shoulder seam that's already finished, you can trim a little of the material away from the edge, on the underside, to remove bulk. But it fells nicely, I promise.

Keep going over the shoulder, down to the other side of the gusset.

And keep on going, all the way down to the hem.

And that's that side completed! Repeat the process on the other side, and all you have left is hemming the cuffs and bottom edge!

For previous posts related to this project:
A Basic Medieval Dress (or Tunic) Tutorial Post
Medieval Dress Sew-Along (Part 1)
Medieval Dress Sew-Along (Part 2)

And Now for Something Completely Different

Way back in February, I put together a red dress based on this pattern. The only exception is that I added small gussets, based on past experience. If I understand correctly (having heard this second or third hand) this pattern is a simplification of some of the Herjolfsnes finds, which date to the 14th century, and have shaped, inset sleeves. Translating those garments to straight rectangular construction, if it's loose enough, the gusset is maybe unnecessary. But to make it a bit more fitted through the shoulders (one of the benefits I see of this pattern) the gusset becomes necessary. I could also be totally off base about the origin of Meistara Vigdis's pattern, but one way or the other, if you want it close fitting in the shoulders, add a small gusset. (The shaped armscye and sleeve head offset the need for a gusset, but doesn't completely eclipse it, in the Herjolfsnes finds.)

Anyway, I got it all put together, and then it sat in my sewing basket while I worked on other things, and then just didn't work on anything for a while. I've finally finished the seams on it! And I want to talk about seam finishing just a little bit. First off, the raw edges of fabric should always be dealt with in some fashion or other. This could be as simple as running a wide, machine zig-zag stitch over the very edge of the fabric, after cutting, before construction. It works. It keeps the edges from fraying in the wash. A step beyond that would be to use a serger, if you have one. You might notice in my Sew-Along posts that some of my edges are serged. Those were serged for washing the yardage the first time around. Those edges will still get finished as though they weren't serged.

Period methods of seam finishing are sort of fascinating to me. (I'm a NERD.) But part of what I find interesting is the overall consistency, and the fact that several of the finishes that we can document as having existed for centuries, and maybe even millennia, are still used today in couture sewing, in commercial sewing, and in regular old home-ec sewing. We've made more efficient machines to accomplish it it, but the ways in which the fabric is manipulated have stayed substantially the same. And I love that. Flat felled seams, French seams, and hemming with catch stitch (occasionally indiscernible from herringbone embroidery stitch) can all be found, in some iteration, in modern clothing, and those same stitches are found in scraps of clothing hundreds of years old.

When working with linen, I choose to finish my fabric in ways that are documentable to linen. Even if the garment I'm making would maybe have been made out of a different fabric (wool or silk, which are sometimes sewn differently).  This website very handily shows various historical seam treatments for linen, with archaeological evidence cited. Yay! Most of those examples use a selvage edge (or two), or linings. Since I'm working predominantly with cut pieces in a single layer, I almost always flat fell my linen seams. Occasionally, when it works better with the garment pattern, I'll run and fell (that's where you press your seam allowance open, fold the raw edge under on each side, and stitch each side down separately--seen in a linen Coptic tunic from the 7th century, not cited at the above website, but I read about it separately). But flat felling offers additional strength and reinforcement to the garment seam, so when I can, I choose that method. The "Seam with applied binding" method shown on that site is intriguing, but I haven't used it yet.

My baseline goals with garb are to 1) make comfortable, flattering clothing that I enjoy wearing; 2) make clothing that's well detailed, so that it will withstand much wearing and washing, and not wear out quickly; 3) make clothing that is, at least from the outside, as close to accurate as I can make it, without expending too much time, money, or energy on any single piece. Of course, if a piece is particularly special, for a special occasion, or meant to be submitted to competition, there are different goals in play. But for my regular clothing, that pretty much sums it up. And of course, my understanding of "accurate" is a topic that's ever growing and developing, and I hope will continue to do so over time.

And frustratingly, after the red dress was completely done, I discovered that the sleeves were uncomfortably small. Note: If it's been six months since you made a thing, and you know you've gained weight, try it on before spending a week and a half doing handwork on it. Six hours later, new sleeves and gussets were installed and re-finished, and I did a tiny bit of very subtle embroidery based on the Oseberg ship burial finds (not an exact replica). I'm quite happy, though mildly frustrated with myself.

Finally, one of the more delightful parts about flat felling your seams is that the dress looks largely similar, when it's turned inside out, to what it looks like right side out. Which you can maybe see from the photos of it lying flat.

 
One of these days, I'm going to post a photo of how I style this, and the other cut. The picture above just shows you that this is not at all fitted. But that's okay! I can belt it on its own, and put on a headcovering, and I'm quickly done. It can also easily go under a Viking-style apron dress, or another 10th century over-dress. I had sort of thought I might be able to wear this under the blue dress, but I really need to try it all on together once it's all done. I think the colors might clash in a bad way. But we'll find out!

Flat Felled Seams

It seems very fitting for my first tutorial to be on the seam finish method I use most often in the SCA. Flat felled seams! I use this seam finish on linen, almost exclusively. It's a seam finish that can be documented throughout history as being used for linen. Given that I live where the climate is generally hot, that's the fabric I use for most of my clothes, regardless of whether it's 100% accurate or not. I like not dying of heat. But here's a fun fact: flat felled seams are also used in modern sewing! Your jeans most likely have flat felled seams. That's because it's a remarkably strong finish that encloses all the raw edges of fabric, so you have no fraying, and reinforces your main seam stitching. And if you're sewing yourself, you don't need a serger! This seam finish works best on straight or very, very slightly curved seams.  I hand-sew this finish, but it can be done with a machine.

Step 1. I do this part with a sewing machine, usually. Sew the seam with a 1/2"-3/4" seam allowance, as you normally would. I've pressed the seam open in the picture, which is best practice. (That means I don't always do it, sometimes I finger press as I go, but when I'm being *good*, I press the seams open.)

Step 2.  Trim one side of the seam allowance down by half.

Step 3. Fold the longer, un-cut seam allowance over the cut seam allowance, so your seam allowance is all being pressed to one side.

Step 4. Fold the longer, un-cut seam allowance in half, enclosing the shorter seam allowance and all cut edges inside the fold. (Yes, the color of the material changed, the photos are from two different garments. Sorry about that!)

Step 5. Pin this fold in place (optional, but it can help you keep everything sorted). You can see the look of the finished piece now. Everything lays nice and flat and pretty.

Step 6. Stitch this fold down. I like to use a small whip stitch right on the very edge, but you can also edge-stitch with your machine, using a medium straight stitch. (Edge-stitching is when you stitch on the very edge of a fold so you don't have any flappy bits sticking up past your stitches.)

And that's it! It takes a while to do all the seams in a garment, but once you're finished, the inside will be as pretty as the outside. I'll try to update this post with a photo of the outside of the garment, but it will vary by your stitching. If you use a machine, you'll see that line of straight stitches set away from your seam line. With the little whip stitch, you barely see the stitches at all.  There are tons of tutorials for this seam finish all over the internet, but it's the foundation for a lot of what I'm going to put here in the near future. I hope it helps someone!