I’ve never really done seam treatments before. I’ve always loved the way they look, the architectural depth they give to a garment, but I’ve never felt like I’ve had time or that something that I was making rated them. However, I’ve been gone five months now and had brought a dress with me to hand sew, which I did. Then I was still bored so I figured what the hell, so now, you guys get a tutorial/my first attempts story.

First, this fabric is so pretty.  It is hand woven linen.  I picked up the whole piece at a thrift store for $2.  It broke my heart (weird thing to say for a piece of fabric huh?).  I mean, someone put time and effort into making this rather large piece of fabric. More than likely it was a gift, a laborious gift at that, and it was sent, untouched to a thrift store and marked at $2.  So, I decided I was going to do something special with it.

I had seen pictures from a Viking history festival in Europe several women wearing sleeveless dresses around camp and I’ve read excerpts from Rus’ books talking about the sleeveless undergarment and it looked like I had just enough fabric to make one, so I did.  And I hand sewed all of it.  I haven’t hand sewed an entire outfit since I was about 10.  Ability, I still had, but my body was in revolt for most of it.  Still, I love the way it looks and will probably do it again some day.

Anyway, back to the seam treatments.  I ordered a bag of rainbow embroidery floss from Amazon so I didn’t have any two colors that were alike. I picked my colors and the seam treatment I wanted to do, started, and then realized there was no way I was going to have enough floss to do this project.  So, out it all came and I looked for a new design.  This ‘modified’ herringbone seemed to fit the bill and so I started it on my handwoven, hand sewn dress thinking  ‘It’s probably not period but it looks right, good enough’ then I did some research.

Turns out it has been found in at least two places. On a skirt from the 10^th century and on a fragment of pouch found  at the Osberg burial (You’ll have to take my word on this as I don’t have my history books right now and I can’t find any photographs of either extant piece. When I’m home, I’ll update this with what I find). So, score one for sheer dumb luck and maybe, if you want things to be spot on don’t do things in reverse order like me…

So, I’m going to walk you through how I did it but I’m also going to link you to this tutorial here: http://www.embroidery.rocksea.org/stitch/herringbone-stitch/tacked-herringbone-stitch/                                 because her pictures are better and she’s clearly done it before.

First, supplies.  You want scissors, two different colors of embroidery floss or thread (I recommend at least two skeins each. You may need more for bigger projects), a medium embroidery needle and optional, a ruler, pencil and an embroidery hoop. I didn’t have a ruler so I used the straight edge of a card. Don’t judge me.

Now. I say that the ruler and pencil are optional and I know that some of you are balking, but here is why.  I can’t use a grid.  I tried on this piece and as you can see, when I drew lines (and they were straight) the design got wonky, whereas when I just eyeballed it, it came out much more uniform. I also didn’t use an embroidery hoop because I would have been moving it to frequently and my fabric was pretty sturdy so I didn’t really need it. Everyone is different so do what works for you.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I want to apologize, the next couple steps I didn’t think to photograph while I was doing the actual project so they are done with different thread on a scrap piece. This blog is teaching me SO many things.

Next you should split your threads if you are using floss.  A floss strand comes in a twisted set of six small threads.  For embroidery projects I almost always divide them into two sets of three. I find it makes floss easier to work with, it last longer and is still a large enough amount that it can be seen easily. If you are using embroidery thread you don’t break it down but you may need to use a larger eyed needle.

If you’ve never threaded a needle for embroidery before, you will leave one end short and the other long and only knot one end, like this.

Once your needle is threaded and knotted at the end, you can make your first stitch. I’ve started at the bottom hem of the dress. I also chose to slip between the outer layer and the rolled hem so the knot will be concealed  in the hem and therefore less likely to be damaged.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now bring your thread to the top and angle the bulk of the fabric towards your sewing hand (Sorry, I sew right handed, if you are left handed please invert any instructions).  If you’ve made a grid you’ll go to the opposite angled corner, if you didn’t, you’ll just pull the thread till the angles right.

Next, you’ll find the right distance from the seam and stitch back towards your non-dominant hand.

Then you will repeat the stitch for the next line. and continue on until you’ve ran the stitch along the entire seam. Because this stitch is so loose you need to be careful to not pull the thread too tight and bunch the fabric. This is especially true for thinner fabric.

Once that is done, you’ll start going back over the same stitches with the contrasting thread that you picked out.  Set up and the first stitch will be the same but now you are looking for the opposite side of the little x’s you’ve made. In Sarah’s tutorial she does all the secondary stitches in one direction first then goes back and does the other set of secondary stitches. This adds more structural integrity but also requires a lot more thread. I didn’t have much to begin with so I opted for the ‘one and done’ pass.

Now, you’ll cross to the other side of your x and stitch to the top or bottom of the x. In this case, I did the top.

Next you’ll stitch to the opposite side of the x and then between the seam to the opposite side of the next x. Then just continue on with this until  you are done with the seam.

Staying between the seams protects this long stitch from wear and tear and makes the inside of the garment look nice and neat.

So the really great thing about this stitch, and most seam treatments, is that not only do they add visual depth bur, if you are hand sewing the garment, they add structural integrity between the pieces as well, which never hurts.  Overall, this was a great project and I’m really glad I tried it.  It was fun, and didn’t take nearly as long as I thought it would. It is definitely something I will repeat on future projects.