Documentation or Information on Necklines/finishings

[Tiberivs Ivlivs Rvfvs]

Ave:

My seamstress is preparing my tunica and has questions about how the neck should be finished. Is there any documentation or information about how the seam/finish should look? Is it simply a selvedge edge, or is there a seam/hem?

I'm looking for information for about mid-to-late 1st C, C.E.

Many thanks in advance for the help. If I'm not being clear, I'll try to explain better

Tiberivs

[Crispvs]

I'm not the expert on clothing but as I understand it a tunica would often have been made in one piece, with the weaver leaving a vertical slit in the middle of his cloth. This would mean that the neck would have a natural selvedge edge on it, as would the lower edge of the tunic all round, once you sewed up the sides.

Crispvs

[Carlton Bach]

Generally, you do not need to hem (the neck opening being straight could either consist of the sevedges of two pieces of cloth joined at the shoulder, or be a gap woven into a single piece that made up the tunic). However, at least one original tunic I am awayre of uses hemstitch on selvedges. It works and is comfortable to wear, that much I can attest to, and you can always defend it if you had to use cut neck openings rather than woven in (as most oif us must most of the time).

If you want to use round neck openings (which may have existed as early as Augustan days, and certainly did in Late Antiquity), you almost certainly will need to hem. I have never seen an original anywhere, though, so i can't say how this was done exacty.