The Back and Forth of Research, or, The Tatbeet Seam
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Categories: Ancient

The Back and Forth of Research, or, The Tatbeet Seam

a photo of a seam in orange thread on two pieces of coarse white linen cloth against a blue background
The so-called aketon seam (see bellow): finish the edges, then place right side to right side, join the two finished edges with a whipped or overcast stitch, and unfold to reveal a smooth seam without excess bulk

A challenge in dress and textile history is that people use names for stitches or seams and do not define them or sketch them. Since people use different names for the same thing, and the same name for different things, it can be hard to understand what they mean. An Egyptologist says that seams on garments from Bronze Age Egypt are “mainly of the flat (‘tatbeet’) type, and the very similar run and fell seam … was used for children’s sleeves.” (Rosalind Janssen née Hall, Egyptian Textiles, Shire Publications: Princes Risborough UK, 2001, pp. 57, 58) There are no pictures so what did she mean?

I can’t find that word in library databases or on JSTOR but its on Peter Beatson’s site on Byzantine reenactment under “A Byzantine Shirt from Manazan Caves, Turkey.” They cite a 1987 article by Gilian Vogelsang-Eastwood, which does indeed use that term: its page 136 of Gillian M. Vogelsang-Eastwood (1987) “Two children’s galabiyehs from Quseir al-Qadim, Egypt,” Textile History, vol. 18, pp. 133-142.

All of the seams are of a tatbeet form, which is similar to the modern run-and-fell seam, except that one side of the seam has not been cut down prior to the second tow of stitching.

This is not completely clear, and hand sewers often used a subtle variant of the run-and-felled seam on linen. Rather than sewing the main seam, folding the seam allowance to one side, folding half seam allowance under itself, and fastening it down with whip or running stitch, they first finished the edges then whip stitched the finished edges together. This was popular for many-layered structured garments, but some people have seen it on early modern shirts: I have seen it called the Elizabethan Seam and the Aketon Seam. But at least I have reason to think that other clothing historians in the 1980s used the term tatbeet seam.

PS. I found another book on clothing from Bronze Age Egypt which illustrates all the seams. I have things to do with my hands or away from the computer, but I will edit this post to add a picture and show which of their seams seem to correspond to the seam above! I am afraid that this post will bore many of my gentle readers but in my defense I don’t get out as much as I did before COVID.

Edit 2023-05-28: seams and hems in Gilian Vogelsang-Eastwood’s book on Bronze Age Egyptian clothing

a photo of a screenshot of a book with line drawings of various seams and hem finishes
Page 6 of Gillian Vogelsang-Eastwood, Patterns for ancient Egyptian clothing (Stichting Textile Research Center, Leiden, 1992)
Page 7 of Gillian Vogelsang-Eastwood, Patterns for ancient Egyptian clothing (Stichting Textile Research Center, Leiden, 1992)

(scheduled 2 March 2023, updated 26 May)

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