Another Handwoven Garment

I may have caught a bit of a sewing fever, so onto another garment.  This is another one of Ngaire’s yardages that she wove in 2010, here is a link to the blog post about it.  It is a brightly striped twill gamp in 2/8 Orlec and 2/10 black Tencel.

My inspiration for this garment is this little vest that Ngaire wore when she was a teen.  It is an open front vest with no back, very simple and colourful.

To get an idea of the timeline for this....think MC Hammer!  Yup, we’re talking the early 90’s!

I had to create my own pattern and I made it in 2 sizes, small and medium (about size 12).  This was my first effort at pattern making and boy, did I learn a lot.

To work with the yardage I first stabilized it with black iron-on knit interfacing.  This step was absolutely necessary because as soon as I cut into the fabric it frayed like crazy.

This is the end result and I was pretty pleased that I got the pattern to match so well.

Now that I had the vest put together the problems started to rear their ugly head.   Hmmmm, young teen patterns don’t have shaping, yup I forgot the lady bumps!

 I have a work around to fix my slight gaping problem in the yoke area and I know it will work, but it won’t be pretty!  I am going to ease stitch some black elastic along the upper yolk and around the neck area and allow the elastic to gently give some shape.

I think it is going to look really good with my black knit jacket and a white shirt!  And the absence of a back will really cut down on the bulk.

Tulips on the table are a sure sign of spring!

Making a Handwoven Garment

In my last blog post I talked about the yardage I wove, but I didn’t tell you what it is going to be . . . a capelette!  The pattern is really pretty and looks fairly straightforward.  The pattern is New Look number 6007.

Cutting out the pattern pieces was a little tricky because the yardage was really quite thick.  So where I could, I cut out a single piece at a time, much easier on the hands.

I wussed out about sewing it (and using Mom's new machine), so Mom is doing the sewing.  Here is the back of the capelette and you can see the circular form of the garment beginning to develop. 

For the interfacing we went with a light pink 100% cotton; it was both cheaper and higher quality than the interfacing that we can get at our local store.  But the pink fabric is so tightly woven that it was seriously hard to push the pins in.  So using a trick that I picked up on The Great British Sewing Bee (did you know that a new season has just started after a four year hiatus?)  I used flat river stones to weight down the pattern pieces; it worked surprisingly well.

I am doing all of the ironing, so I get to iron the seams open flat and also use the new wooden point presser which is great for ironing into corners.  Mom picked up the point presser at the Guild Silent auction in December and it is a godsend on the collar.

The Judy is trying the capelette on at the end of the day.  We still have to add the interfacing pieces and collar, but it is starting to look like the photo on the pattern!

The capelette is a little shorter than expected, but exactly the length on the pattern. So instead of hemming the bottom of the capelette we decided to add satin tape to finish the edge and keep all the length.  It really adds a lot of interest, it is also a labour of love as Mom used the sewing machine to attach the right side but the inside side needs to be hand sewn so that there is no stitching to mar the satin ribbon.

I was surprised about how much of a mess the wool yardage made while sewing.  I had to vacuum every day to keep a handle on the bits of fluff.  The hardwood floors run the entire house so the little bits would end up in every darn room!

Finally finished, well mostly!  It is absolutely lovely and just what I was hoping for!  The belt isn’t quite done yet because it is going to be made from the same fabric as the capelette with the satin ribbon as an accent.  But, of course I ran out of ribbon and today is Family Day in BC so the fabric store is closed.  So just imagine it with a wider belt with a ribbon accent all around the edges.


Final Garden Photo is a lovely shot of the picture perfect snowflakes that we had last week.  These snowflakes came down while it was sunny and in large fluffy clumps that looked just like the fake snow in the movies.

Sewing With Handwoven Wool

My Polka Drop fabric was woven some time ago, and now it’s time to move on with the sewing, not my strong suit by any means. I’m a competent seamstress, but not an intuitive one, so it's a real challenge for me.

I found two patterns that I liked a lot. The Butterick pattern is a reproduction of a 1952 pattern and I love, love, love it – but it didn’t have set in sleeves or a separate collar. The sleeves and the collar were attached to the back and the front, so they were huge pattern pieces. The Burda pattern had separate sleeves and collar pieces, so this was the basic pattern that I used.When I did my final fabric inspection I found a skip float that was about 12 inches in from the selvedge right across the whole width of the fabric! I had to use every square inch of my 30 inch wide fabric, so to make sure that I didn’t forget it, I marked it with red thread.With a lot of messing around I managed to get the error right at the end of the sleeve, so it would be on the inside hem - whewwwww.

I tried laying the pattern pieces every way I could think of on my doubled fabric, but I just barely had enough to handle the four major pieces. This didn’t leave a lot of fabric unused and what was left was in small pieces and I didn’t have enough left over for my collar!

There wasn't much left over at all, and what was left was oddly shaped and the collar pieces just wouldn't fit!I decided to purchase some navy velvet to use for the collar.

Not only would this allow me to customize the collar to make the coat unique but it would overcome any fabric scratchiness around the neck and face. Here is the jacket at the based stage and other than being too big for my model - it's looking good.I made a huge effort to line up the dots on the back of the jacket, isn’t Ngaire a great model in that perfect hand to the collar pose? Originally I'd hoped to have this swing jacket unlined, so that the reverseable fabric could be seen, but after cutting I knew this was not going to be. Now to sit down and attack the lining and collar!

Network Twill ~ Creating Polka Drops

I love this photo, when these shapes appeared in the heddles, I really got a great foreshadowing of my yardage project. I put on 6 yards of warp 30” in the reed, alternating navy and black 2 ply sport weight weaving wool. As I mentioned in my last post, the weft yarns I chose to use were quite different from each other both in colour and ever so slightly in grist. The only way I could effectively use them was to alternate picks as I wove to ensure that I used both wefts up at the same time and so that they blended in the cloth. I kept each of the wefts separate by labeling one of the shuttles ‘dark’. This helped me to keep track when I wove in the evenings and the light was less than perfect because they really did look alike at first glance. I was lucky to have 2 Leclerc rag shuttles that had been modified for extra large bobbins, so I could really load up the weft.I have woven this pattern several times in the past as scarves, but modified to fairly large grist wool has made the spots less distinct, so I’m calling this yardage Polka Drops as the dots looks a bit splattered to me! This is an 8 shaft network twill created by Alice Schlein and found in Twill Thrills. Polka Drops wove up quite quickly at 10 epi and 10 ppi, but I was definitely slowed down by the constant shuttle switching….what a pain! I was quite disgusted whenever I looked under my loom too….dustbuffaloes abounded. Seriously huge drifts of dark fibre everywhere I looked! The roll of yardage was really quite substantial and stood quite well on its own. Here is Polka Drops unfurled…..I ran out of weft at 5-1/2 yards so I wove up ½ yard with a mid blue weft. I don’t think that my calculations with the McMorran Yarn Balance were off at all, I just didn’t anticipate the amount of stretch that would occur due to weaving under tension. Not sure what purpose I’ll get out of my wee bit of blue yardage, but the main portion is destined to be a 1952 style swing jacket….