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Modern fashion linens are rather flimsy compared with the durable shirtings of the past, so choose linen with as dense a weave as you can find, whatever its weight. For freąuent use a cotton sheeting may be better, but not unbleached calico, which has the wrong colour and feel. For high ąuality clothing a fine cotton lawn is better than a loosely-woven handkerchief linen.

Cutting out

Medieval linen was woven ąuite narrow, from 50 to 90 cm, and the seamstress would use the fuli width without any waste. Today you may still find a fine cotton or linen only 90 cm wide, but most of it is 150 cm, which affects both the cutting and the sewing. If you use 150 cm width it can be economical to cut two or morę garments at the same time, adjusting the dimensions to fit, but first sketch a plan on paper to find the best łayout.

Most of the pieces for body linens are cut on the straight grain, so it is worth practising cutting 'to a thread', straight along the weave. If you then fold hems and seams exactly on the weave, the whole garment will keep its shape after washing. On fine materials, draw out a thread as a guide to cut by.

Sewing methods

Oversewing was the traditional method for joining selvedges, hemming for finishing off raw edges, and both were used together (seam-and-fell) for other seams (Methods, Figs 1, 2, 6).

As sewing machines can't do oversewing and you probably have no selvedges to work with, shirts and smocks may need to be madę up using both hand and machinę stitching. There are two ways of machine-stitching linens: the simplest is to make narrow seams and zigzag or overlock the edges. Morę complicated, but morę comfortable to wear because the seam lies fiat, is to make run-and-fell seams (Methods, Fig 6a), with machinę topstitching to secure the folds.

Shirts and smocks continue on p. 71 and are numbered separately.

1. 1430-40, French

Shirt with front slit and possibly a collar. Separate hose rolled down: the pointed flaps are extensions for tying to the doublet at the back. Ankle shoes. (Decameron, Bibliotheque de TArsenal, Paris, MS 5070, f.330v).

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