FABRIC NAMES & DESCRIPTIONS

COLOUR NAMES

FUR & LEATHER NAMES

SEWING TECHNIQUES

EMBELLISHMENTS

BUTTONS

EMBROIDERY

Period Fabrics & Sewing
CLOTH WIDTHS - PATTERNS & DESIGNS - KNITTING
LINENS - WOOLS - TIRETAINES - SILKS - VELVETS - HEMP - COTTON

Please select the link for the following information about period fabrics and making them into clothes.

- SEWING TECHNIQUES
- Looking at stitches and seams
- EMBELLISHMENTS
- Spangles, pressed metal, jeweled bands.
- BUTTONS
- EMBROIDERY
- COLOUR NAMES
- Colour names referred to in documents
- FABRIC NAMES
- Fabric names referred to in documents
- FUR & LEATHER NAMES
- Fur and leather names referred to in documents

Cloth widths
The width of a horizontal loom which required two workers permitted fabric to be made in a length of as much as 30 metres and as wide as two metres. The fulling process required to produce certain fabrics reduced the width of the material to about a metre and a half.

The most common measurements for cloth were the yard (the length of an outstretched arm), the nail (two and a quarter inches wide) and the ell. Of these, the ell was the most common length used for the measurement of cloth. In England, this distance was usually 45 inches if the cloth is English. If it is Flemish, an ell is measured at 27 inches. In 1304, two women wool merchants, Aleyse Darcy and Thomasin Guydichon, are recorded as having sold to the Earl of Lincoln:

..."one piece of cloth, embroidered with diverse works in gold and silk.. eight ells (thirty feet) in length and six ells (twenty-four feet) in breadth"...

for the huge sum of 300 marks. It doesn't record what the cloths intended use was, but it does give us an idea of the possible size of cloth manufacture at that time.

Patterns and designs
Fabric was often woven into brocades and geometric designs. Diamond and square patterned cloths known as diaper were woven from silk, linen and cotton. The fabric was woven in a pattern of one colour only.

Damasks, rich patterned heavy material of silk or linen featured cloth which the pattern appears reversed on the back of the fabric. Intricate patterns of brocaded silk were a feature of silk velvet on velvets. The artichoke (cynara scolymus) was grown plentifully during the medieval period and was featured in many medieval fabric designs from the 13th to 15th centuries.

Knitting
Examples of knitted items have been found in the medieval period, although not many are preserved. In a late 14th century altarpiece, Mary is depicted knitting for a young baby Jesus, although in her essay "Weaving and Gender Division of Labour in the Middle Ages", the author Ruth Karros asserts that knitting was in fact a craft which was restricted to men.

Shown at right is a knitted woolen cap from a London deposit dated around 1500.
Shown at left is a pair of red knitted socks which are housed in the V&A Museum. They are dated somewhere about 300-500 AD, and in good repair and have no moth holes. It appears by the construction of the socks that they are designed to be worn with sandles of some kind. Image used with kind permission of Amanda and Jane at thewomensroomblog.

Linens
Information from the "Tacuinum of Vienna" describes linen clothing thus: the nature of linen is cold and dry in the second degree. It's optimum is light, splendid and of the beautiful kind while it is described as useful to moderate the heat of the body. The dangers of linen, however, are that it presses down on the skin and blocks transpiration. In order to neutralize the dangers, one is instructed to mix it with silk. The effects are described as drying up ulcerations and is primarily good for hot temperaments and for the young, in summer and in the southern regions.

As with most other fabrics, linen came in varying degrees of quality and fineness, from thick opaques to the very fine and the quality varied for it's intended use and the status of the wearer. Linens were used for bedding, napery, underclothing, light-weight summer clothing and veiling.

Processing the flax into fibres, weaving and finishing was primarily done in rural areas. By the mid 14th century, the development in looms abled workers to produce a much longer fabric woven all in one piece, which required great skill and was prized. In the late 14th century, Flemish linens were known as the finest. Some samples of linen damask show a thread count of between 60 to 200 threads per inch, making them suitable for veiling.

Wools
Wool was the staple of medieval clothing for all classes- the quality varying hugely between the worsted fabrics of the poor to the very fine wools produced in England which were exported to Europe. Shown at left, a detail from the illuminated manuscript, the Duk du Berry's "Book of Hours" for the month of July depicting a man and a woman shearing sheep.

By the 13th century, Italians woolens and cottons were being sold internationally and there was an estimated eight million sheep in England alone. By the second half of the 14th century, Paris was at the very top of the field in the production and export of middle range woolens called "biffes". Wools produced in Flanders in the 14th and 15th centuries became better and eventually rivaled the English ones for quality. The shorter the woolen fibre, the tighter the weave and the heavier the finished cloth. The difference between better woolens and the lesser worsteds was essentially the fulling and finishing. After fulling, the wet woolen cloth was stretched, burls removed, imperfections repaired before being placed over a bar and then teased before the final shearing. Dry shearing could be performed by repeated napping and clipping to produce a silky, smooth finish.

Often woolen clothing was dyed twice- once in the wool and again in the piece. Prices for woolen cloth varied depending on the finishing process- the more times a cloth had been sheared and finished, the more expensive the cloth.The illumination shown at left is from the 15th century, from France- Boccaccio's "de Claris Mulieribus". It shows women in the production of cloth, spinning, carding, dyeing and weaving wool.

Wills often made specific mention of woolen clothing and often specified the worth of the garment indicating what quality it might be. In 1313, Anicia atte Hegge, a widow from Hampshire, made a will on the surrendering of her holding to her son which included the stipulation that among other things, she would be provided with various items of clothing including a woolen garment every other year worth 3 shillings.

Woolen clothing and it's properties are discussed in the medieval text "Theatrum of Casanatense" as having a warm and dry nature, the optimum kind being "the thin kind from Flanders". It's usefulness is it protects the body from cold and holds warmth although it's dangers were that it causes skin irritation. Neutralization of the dangers are advised with the wearing of thin linen clothing, presumably underclothing worn between the wool and the skin.

Tiretains
Tiretains are produced with a linen warp and woolen weft. It was commonly believed to be a fabric which was low-priced and lightweight- a fairly popular fabric for those of low status. Recent research suggests that tiretains were bought and used by nobility and royal household accounts show the purchase of it also. It appears to be used for the use of lightweight summer clothing, usually lined with silk and in one instance, lined with fur. One assumes that silk linings were not used in conjunction with a low-cost fabric popular with the lower classes. From these accounts, we can reasonably deduce that tiretains could be of a much higher quality than supposed.

In one record of the 1315 accounts of the Mahaut of Artois, there is a mention of tiretain being purchased at 26 ounces, indicating that silk was an ingredient of that particular piece of fabric. It is speculated that in that particular example, the silk may have replaced the linen warp.

It appears also that kermes, an extremely expensive dye, was used to dye tiretain. In 1268, two kermes-dyed tiretains were purchased for the English king. In 1328 the widow of Louis X owned an outfit of black tiretain, also dyed with kermes. Indeed when the French queen Clemence of Hungary died, it was noted that 4 of her 35 garments were of tiretain of different colours and her husband the king had a coat also lined with tiretain. One assumes that a dye as expensive as kermes was not wasted on a fabric which was not of a suitably high quality, and the fact that it was purchased for king's clothing also indicates that the quality of the fabric was far superior to the rough fabric it was previously supposed to be.

Silks
Silks were expensive in the early part of the Middle Ages but popular with the wealthy, not only for the fabric's luxurious texture but its ability to hold dye and produce brilliant colours not available in other fabrics. Oriental silks were imported from the east and patterned or brocaded silks are written about. Below are some extant samples of Italian silks from the mid-to-late 14th century. They show a diverse range of designs, colours and themes which were probably brighter when new.

In Europe, silks were also being locally produced. By the 14th century, silks from Lucca dominated the market for aristocratic silks. Lucca, Venice, Genoa and Bologna were also known to produce silks of exceptional quality which were much desired by nobility. It is interesting to note that silks were almost always sold by the ounce rather than by the length. Records from 1324 indicate that Paris was producing silk and gold thread brocades and that English Royal household accounts show purchases of Parisian silk from the years 1324 to 1333.

Velvets
Silk velvets were extremely expensive and were a luxury fabric only for the richest of the rich. They were often brocaded with large patterns, often floral.

Velvet is produced with either simple or compound weaves being elaborated by introducing a supplementary warp over a series of very small rods. The rods are removed leaving small loops, which can be shorn or left as loops which form the velvet pile. Both simple and compound velvet weaves can be enriched by sets of yarns on the surface of the cloth which produces a brocade. Mustyrdderyllers is known to be a 15th century cloth from Muster-de-Villiers. It is suggested that the name may also be derived from "mestier de velours" meaning half-velvet- similar to velveteen. Illustrated at right, a French illumination dated at approximately 1470, Boccaccio's de Claris Mulieribus.

Fustian appears to be constructed in the same way as velvets, being described as a coarse twilled cotton cloth sometimes made with a linen warp and cotton weft, woven in the same way as velvet and with a sheared surface. The word fustian can be found in records as early as the 11th and 12th centuries and is associated with heavily wefted materials, especially those with weft floats that could be cut to produce pile. It was made in Italy, Spain, Germany and Holland, and was first mentioned in England in 1114.

Archaeological evidence exists of a garment dated at 1108 in which King Philip 1 of France was buried, was constructed of woolen velvet. A further reference to woolen velvet comes from research where velvet production in the early middle ages was researched and date from Tournai in 1380. It is more usual that the velvets generally produced were those of silk.

According to research by Lydie LaBarthe

"fragments of twill and cotton velvet have been found dating back to 9th century in France. The textile known as pile on pile or double velvet is also one of the oldest known velvet weaving techniques. Three dimensional textiles with looped or cut pile are supplementary weft compound weaves. As early as 2000BC the Egyptians made linen fabrics with extra linen weft pulled out into loops for both effect and warmth."

Hemp
Hemp was known and cultivated for cloth production in the middle ages. There are several references to crops of hemp which were to be harvested for textile use.

One such reference comes from Christine de Pisan in Le Livre des Trois Vertus. She writes of the duties of an aristocratic wife and says that while such a wife may not actually do any of the weaving in her household herseld, she must be knowledgable about every facet of the process so that she may oversee each and every stage of the process- from the selection of the fleeces to the final construction of finished garments. She adds specifically:

"she will have her tenants grow hemp that her chambermaids will spin and weave on winter evenings."

Cotton
The use of cotton for clothing is tricky to document over the medieval period. At some stages, trade routes were active between the cotton-producing nations and then at other periods, cotton was not imported due to trade routes being inaccessable due to factors such as war. It appears that clothing was therefore made of cotton or cotton/linen and cotton/silk blends according to specific time periods.

From the 7th to the 13th century, cotton and cotton/silk blends came out of the far east. Merchants in Egypt exported flax, dyes and cotton fibres. It is not unusual during that period to see references to clothing made entirely or partially of cotton. After that period, cotton became less obtainable in England and France until the late 15th and early 16th century where records of expensive cotton underwear begin to re-surface.

Copyright © Rosalie Gilbert
All text & photographs within this site are the property of Rosalie Gilbert unless stated.
Artifact images remain the property of the owner.
Images and text may not be copied and used without permission.