A) tablet woven cording, suitable for lacing garments, etc....

B) linen thread/yarn of suitable thickness/strength to be made into said tablet-woven cording. There's a place in Maine, Halcyon Yarns, whose web page seems to indicate that they carry a variety of linen yarns, but I don't know how to interpret the yarn sizes, and I'm not exactly sure what would be best to use for this. And I haven't yet had a chance to drive up to Bath and check out their store in person.

When looking at weaving yarn the sizes are given in a format like 16/2. The first number gives the weight of the plys and the second number gives the number of plys. The bigger the first number, the finer the thread. When I weave with linen the thickest I use is 16/2. Recently I've been using 36/2 which gives me about the same thickness as buttonhole twist silk. In general I'd recommend anything in that range. You denfinately want something with multiple plys. The nice thing about the 36/2 that I've been using lately is that it comes in smallish spools, I got it from a lace making friend. I've had the 16/2 for several years and am only about 1/2 though the spool I've used the most.

Is there a reason you want linen for making up? I believe most of the extant examples are made of silk. Not that I believe linen or wool was never used, I just think silk was pretty common, and it's readily available as embroidery thread.

if they lived less than thousands of miles away, I'd join up in a heartbeat!!

--AM

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Originally posted by hauptfrau:

Is there a reason you want linen for making up? I believe most of the extant examples are made of silk. Not that I believe linen or wool was never used, I just think silk was pretty common, and it's readily available as embroidery thread.

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Yes, there is. I am making the assumption that there were equivalent items made of linen which just happen not to survive, since linen seems not to have survived hardly at all. I am also assuming that silk was more expensive than linen, and that my lower-class person would have been more likely to have linen cording (or hemp or such) to thread up clothes than silk cording....

If anyone has seen any documentation of use of silks by lower classes, please, I'd love to know. I just thought it would be a safer bet to stick with linen.