[Ansteorra] Questions about pinking

[Carol Ross]

Hi William,

Pinking occurred very late in period for the SCA so when you say tunic 
do you perhaps mean a doublet?

As for your questions:
  1) Silk and Wool are your best bet for pinking. You do the slashing on 
the bias and that prevents it from raveling too much. Although, if 
studied you will find that in period pinking occurred both on the bias 
of the fabric and not on the bias. Linen is not tightly woven enough to 
pink without it unraveling too much.

2) You can wash it however be aware this can be problematic in many 
ways. First there is how the silk and wool act when washed. Silk softens 
and looses its stiffer structure and well if you are not careful wool 
will felt. And second, the actual pinking itself will start to unravel 
becoming fuzzy edged. You can see in some period paintings that some 
pinking looks fuzzier than others. However, I will tell you that in the 
end I wasn't happy after washing something of mine that had been pinked. 
So, really I would recommend against washing.

3.) The Tudor Tailor website offers the book The Tudor Tailor 
<http://www.tudortailor.com/bookshoptt.shtml> in which they briefly 
discuss period pinking tools. I've not seen any for sale on the net. All 
that being said though I've not looked for any that were made for resale 
online either. More than likely if you truly want to use a pinking tool 
you will need to contact a metalsmith or blacksmith to have them made. 
And finally if you are just going to be cutting a straight line an xacto 
blade works well for this.


Baroness Genevieve
>>> For some strange reason I've gotten it into my head to try to make a
>>> pinked tunic, but before I do that I was wondering if anyone had the
>>> answers to a few basic questions.
>>>
>>> 1)      What is the best type of fabric to use? (Silk, linen)
>>>
>>> 2)      Can pinked fabric be washed?
>>>
>>> 3)      Where can I get period pinking tools?
>>>
>>> If anyone can help, I'd appreciate it.
>>>
>>> William
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