Well I have no idea about judging, because we don't have contests here. But period correct fabrics are more than available (easily), like fulled wools, (admittedly I do live near several of the best wool mills in Europe), and flat felled seams are just as easy as french on a sewing machine. Overlocking may be necessary, but only if you're using the wrong finish or technique, and hand overcasting using something like whipstitch is just as easy, if a little more time consuming (not much when you take into account the setting up of the machine) - and I can't think offhand of a period when overcasting wouldn't be correct - it was around during early medieval times and tudor times, and it still was by victorian and mid 20th century. In a message dated 09/05/2009 06:43:21 GMT Standard Time, [email protected] writes:
One difficulty is that cloth was fulled much better in various historic periods than what's available now. There are some fulled fabrics available, but more expensive. Anyway, as pointed out earlier, sometimes raw edges are appropriate. So what happens when someone uses a non-period appropriate seam finish to accommodate a not-quite-period fabric? Frequently for 18thC, reenactors will make shifts with French seams (an easy finish with machine sewing), but flat-fell is the way they were done at the time. Likewise with sergeing, would that be "better" than a raw edge? -Carol _______________________________________________ h-costume mailing list [email protected] http://mail.indra.com/mailman/listinfo/h-costume
