How To Make Twisted Fringe on Brain Tan Leather

After spending considerable time studying museum dresses, I began to recognize a pattern to the fringing that was not just the result of time and wear.

I had also noted, upon cutting the fringe on my dress that the straight fringe strands were very weak and prone to tearing, becoming fuzzy and tangling. Perhaps this is not a problem with modern tanned hides, but with brain tan it is.

What had they done to improve the strength and appearance of the fringe?

The answer was simple and logical. Any backwoods girl who went to bed with wet braids would see it right away. They had dampened it and braided it!

This gave the desired result of not only adding a softer look to the fringe but gave the additional bonus of making the fringe stable and strong!

After twisting, braiding and allowing to dry thoroughly, the fringe is almost impossible to tear.

I started by cutting my fringe the thinnest I could while still retaining the integrity of the fiber. Thin fringe was in, as far as my research went. I practiced on scraps until I got a handle on it. Each part of the hide requires a slightly different width to retain integrity.

Right handed Folks should cut left to right, lefties right to left. Hold the fringe to be cut in your left hand and slide the scissors up the strand pulling the fringe away as you cut.

I used my sewing shears and cut each fringe one at a time, some use a rotary cutter, I am not that proficient with this tool. If you are good with shears you can start the cut and slide the scissors up the fringe without having to chomp away at it, but it takes really good, sharp scissors.


Clean you scissor blades and oil often, make sure no oil remains on the blades to stain the leather, (impossible to ever remove, better stiff scissors than a permanent oil stain!)

Keep in mind that when you cut your fringe, it is going to increase in length at least on quarter of the length, after wetting it, it will be at least on third longer and thinner.

Here is the fringe all cut and laid out ready to start braiding.






I then separated the fringe into manageable strips of three, it takes some experience to know how many strands to use, if you use too few it will not kink, if you use to many it will never dry! Practice on scraps.

 



I then wet down the strips with plain water til saturated and then pulled each strip starting at the top and evenly smoothing to the bottom without tugging. Dampen all the way to the top of the fringe(welt) as this is the weakest point where the fringe meets the main body of leather.

Also, make sure not to wet the main body of the dress as this will leave watermarks, you will end up with a little around the seam where the fringe joins, but you don't want puddle marks on the main body of the dress.




I then gently twisted each group being careful not to over twist at the top or at the ends. Do not over tighten, it will never dry and will overstretch the fringe!


 







At this point I began to loosely braid from top to bottom, making sure to keep the twist even as I went and using the traditional overhand braid.

Do not braid tightly! Make it loose like a braided bread roll. You can tell if it is loose enough when you are done if the braid itself does not kink up but lays flat and pliant.





When I reached the end of the braid, I tied the strands with a scrap of leather, tie loosely, as not to impede drying nor mark the leather. Cut these strips before you start to braid about two to three inches long and wet before tying, you will need a hundred or so depending on how much fringe you do in a day. use a simple knot, you don't need to get carried away or you will never get them untied!







I then took the dress inside and put on the dress form and let dry for 24 hours, making sure that none of the braids were still damp by loosening a braid and checking the inside of the twist to be absolutely sure it was dry.


After drying, I carefully loosened each braid and let hang without pulling on it or combing it with my fingers to make sure the kink had taken and the twist was thoroughly dry.





Here I am cutting and braiding the other side of the dress, one side is more than enough work for one day! 

How my fringe stacks up to museum dresses - Click to Enlarge!

And here we have the final result, a strong twisted fringe that will last several lifetimes!


It will eventually relax and lose most of its kink, but the strength and beauty will remain!



You can always re-braid and re-kink at a later date, just be very carefully to twist each strand exactly as it was done before, changing the twist will create an ugly look! Also, use less water the second time as the fringe is already seasoned.


Some fringe on the dresses I observed was not twisted, but all of it was water treated and stretched to improve its strength, an article I later found said they used saliva on the fringe, but I just didn't have a watery enough mouth for this attempt, and it would be considered a bit unsanitary in these days!


Modern Leather fringe is twisted using a solution identical to what is in windex, basically ammonia, just like a modern hair permanent! You are welcome to try this, but it would not be exactly traditional and windex leaves a bluish cast.


Hopefully you will find this helpful, it took me a long time to figure out what was going on with the fringe thing at the museum, but thankfully, I finally figured it out! let me know how your project goes, I would be glad to help out with any problems you have and would love to see your work or any feedback you might have!

My Two Hide Dress Comparison With Museum Dresses

I changed my mind about fringe and such after seeing the two hide dresses at the Chicago Field History Museum.

Most of these dresses were post-contact and were made from mountain sheep hides. This you can tell by the tail in the front and back at the yoke.

This means the hides were thinner and much smaller.

My hunch has always been that Women began to use Mountain Sheep Hides because they were easily available post contact and had no value for trade with the Europeans.

Also, the great Elk herds had dwindled due to over-hunting and the introduction of European stock, which brought a form of Tuberculosis to the Elk and Buffalo. This caused Women to use what was more readily available to them, yet acceptable, for their clothing.

Since my hides were prepared sans tail and haired hide edge on the belly and legs, I had to improvise. I used deer hide for the tails and the leg and dew claws for the neck edge, sleeve ends and the gusset edge on the hem. This is cheating, I must concede, but after looking over more than a dozen dresses, under close scrutiny, I found that there was much improvising going on all the time.

I saw mountain sheep yokes on elk dress bodies, deer dew claws on the sleeve edges, entire beaded yokes cut off original dresses and re-sewn onto new hide bottoms. Every dress had some type of patching along the hem as well as other areas. Most had the fringe sewn on and then cut. Entire areas of sleeve were patched and or replaced.

In fact, the more dresses I examine, the less I buy into the notion that all dresses looked more or less the same. In basic shape, yes. In design I couldn't even find two that were similar. In most cases a silhouette was sought, but to get that shape, just about any kind of patching, gusseting and improvising was allowed.

Certain ideas followed tribal custom, but for every rule I have found an exception. This was a true yesterday as it is today. Some women are followers, some are leaders. Otherwise fashion would have never evolved at all.

A case in point would be the Crow dress on the right. No one would say it followed any rules other than it was made of 3 hides. This Woman followed her own heart. There are tribal hints in the cut of the garment and the wool patches, and some of the bead work could only be Crow.

But from there it takes its own journey into a garment that was never seen before, and perhaps, since. This Lady marched to a different drummer and had the courage to wear what she had created.

It reminds me of a Powwow I attended at Nett Lake, Minnesota several years ago. The Jingle Dress Dancers came out in the dresses that have remained relatively unchanged in design since the 1940's, namely a sort of pocketed shirt dress, for lack of a better description. But one Girl stood out. She had fashioned a modern A Line dress that more or less followed the curve of her body, in a modest, yet fashionable way.

I can still remember the snorts of disgust I heard from all the Elders around me, the whispers and the general attitude of disapproval. Yet, that young Lady danced. I hope she is still dancing in that dress today, or has passed it along to her daughter. I haven't seen one like it since, but I have noticed the loosening of the "dress code" that has shaped Jingle dresses now for two generations. I'm sure she played a large part in that change.

This is what fashion is all about. As times changed, so did the ideas about what would be worn. There was always the first one who was brave enough to try and change things.

My struggle is that I can't make a Pre Contact garment no matter how hard I try. The only way for me to truly create one is to go back into the past and make it. Since time travel is impossible, I have to do the next best thing.

Create a garment that is similar in shape and design using the old methods, and even here I have to cheat, I used a sewing needle, scissors and a cutting wheel since I have no training in using an awl or stone cutting tools, my project would have been a travesty if I had tried to make the garment in ways that I had no training in. So this was my first compromise.

My second was in using Brain Tan Elk hides I had not created myself, nor could I get them made with the hair on the edges, legs and tail intact. Perhaps someone will make these hides for me someday, but for now I must work with the materials I have, or forgo the project altogether.

So I had to use deer tail on my Elk Hide, but I have seen post contact dresses improvised this way in museum, so I can assume when the proper tail or edge was not available, a proper substitute was found even Pre Contact.

My third compromise is yet to come, having no Pre Contact Two Hide dress available to study, other than the one Arikara dress, (on the right), which was simply painted, I have to make some assumptions as to how the yoke was decorated using pre contact materials.

One Nez Perce Dress comes close. It features rows of Dentalium shell, which I have already acquired. It also has bead work. This is my dilemma.

I have no pre contact dresses that feature beads of any kind, but there are resource materials that list pre contact Women having stone beads of many types, Jasper, Obsidian, Jade, soap stone and pipe stone. There is no description of how they were arranged or even if they were attached to the dress or strung as necklaces.

I have to borrow courage from a new Artist friend I met lately, who had the daunting task of recreating a completely feathered Palanquin for an exhibit in a museum in Moundville, Alabama. He had sketches and descriptions, but no detail as to how feathers were arranged. He found resource material on the proper attachment method, but he still had to arrange the feathers in a probable pattern. For this he had to use his imagination or give up the project entirely. He spent many sleepless nights, but finally, in a dream, it came to him what he should do and he did it.

According to him, better he did something than he abandon the project and not allow a reasonable representation to be built for people to admire and learn from.

This is where I find myself, looking at thousands of pictures and examining hundreds of dresses and trying to figure out what was done before trade beads. I think the Nez Perce dress comes as close as anyone will to a pre contact pattern, but the question still remains as to what the bead work would be composed of.

I have stone, bone and wood beads to chose from, (but can find no real documentation as to massive numbers of them being sewn to dresses), as well as copper cones and tube beads, (common pre contact), quill work and pearls.

Note Pearls on legs, arms and just about everywhere else, and this is just one modest example

Since pearls are present pre contact in huge quantities, I am leaning in that direction. No other bead shaped item is as prevalent in all tribes as the common freshwater pearl. Thousands upon thousands have been found in graves. They are shown on garments as well as wrapped around arms and legs.

If copper made it all the way from Northern Michigan and Minnesota to Florida in great abundance, I'm sure trade went the other way and pearls were traded to the Northern Plains.The problem being that the Northern Plains Peoples did not build mounds to bury their dead, preferring platform disposition.

This leaves us with few clues as to their dress, other what has been handed down orally from the peoples themselves and the few post contact garments that follow the custom of the past but the materials changed with the introduction of trade beads.

The Woodland Mississippian Mounds as far as Wisconsin have abundant pearls in them, but few remain intact as they were worn because of inherent damp soil burials. The few that do remain do so because of their closeness to copper plates found in graves, which chemically helped to preserve them. This means that there were probably even more than we could imagine, as they are easily degraded to nothing when deposited in the soil for any length of time.

The Plains People were a wealthy People who traded far for their adornment. They had dentalium shells in great abundance, even though they originated off the Western coast of what is now Canada. The idea they beaded with pearls before trade beads is a logical conclusion. I can't imagine them going without such a beautiful item when their next door neighbors, (the Ojibway and Mandan, as well as many others), were literally dripping in them.

At the same time, I hesitate to create a dress with no solid foundation in evidence. It is obvious that pre contact Plains Women used dentalium shells to decorate their dresses. But what did they use for the bead work?