All posts filed under: Textiles & Costume

Terminology: What is matelasse or marseilles cloth?

As I’ve just finished a matelasse waistcoat, it’s high time I (finally) finished my matelasse terminology post and added the term to the Great Historical Fashion & Textile Glossary! Matelasse or Marseille’s cloth (sometimes shortened to marcella or called pique de marseilles) is also known as woven quilting, because it is a weave specifically designed to imitate quilting. It looks like a fine quilt, or like a slightly bubbly, blister-y brocade. Matelasse is sometimes patterned in simple geometrics, or (like my waistcoat), in elaborate foliate designs. It can range from a heavy, bulky fabric, to a fairly light but still puffy and squishy crepe. A very similar fabric (sometimes sold as matelasse, and it’s difficult to tell the difference on some examples), is cloque. From a technical standpoint: Matelasse is a figured fabric made with either three or four sets of yarns. Two of the sets are the regular warp and weft yarns; the other sets are crepe or coarse cotton yarns. They are woven together so that the yarn sets crisscross. When the fabric …

A souvenir fan

Published by The Dreamstress

I’ve mentioned before that one of the things I collect is antique fans. I like that they are small and easy to store, and that they are so evocative of the events they might have been carried at. I wonder where they came from. Were they a gift from a beau? A commemoration of being grown-up enough to go out from a parent? What secrets were told behind them? What faces did they cool after a spirited dance? What frocks were they worn with, and what flirtations did they signal? So many stories in a fan! This particular fan from my collection is particularly gorgeous, and particularly evocative of a fascinating back-story. Whose face was reflected in the mirror. Did she use it to spy on other partigoers? Or to check that every hair was in place? The other side of the fan tells the rest of the story. The fan was a souvenir, brought back from somewhere exotic. Did the owner buy it herself, as a memento from a special trip? Or …

Terminology: Rayon, viscose, acetate, cuprammonium and all those other manufactured naturals

Published by The Dreamstress

My ‘Smooth Sewing‘ trousers for the HSF ‘Innovations‘ challenge were made of rayon (as is the 1940s aloha shirt I paired them with), so it seems high time that I do a terminology post on rayon and the other ‘semi-synthetic’ or ‘manufactured natural’ fibres. Rayon is the generic name for a whole family of fabrics made by dissolving cellulose fibres in chemicals and extruding the resulting viscous solution. Different chemicals and variations in the processes yield different types of fabrics in the rayon family. Viscose (called rayon in the US), cuprammonium (also known as cupra, cupro and Bemberg silk or Bemberg rayon), nitro silk, acetate, modal and lyocell are all types of rayon, as is most ‘bamboo’ fabric – which is simply rayon made from bamboo rather than other cellulose bases. Art silk (or artificial silk), is an older term for rayon, as is mother-in-law silk (which gives an indication about how people felt about rayon when it was first invented). The first manufactured natural fibres have their origins in the exciting experimentation that characterised …