Fabric wefts for Luxurious Clothing

At the March meeting, there were several projects that had been woven using fabric strips for the weft.  The photo above shows details in a jacket woven and sewn by Sue Habegger.  She used a rayon challis fabric and cut the strips on the bias to keep them from fraying during the weaving and finishing process.  The resulting jacket is almost like chenille cloth and very elegant.  The photo below is her sketch for the jacket and a samples of original yardage, handwoven twill for the front opening and the cloth for the body of the jacket.   I believe she used a pick  or two of fine yarn between the shots of fabric weft to make the cloth more supple.

 

 

 

Dee Jones brought out a couple of garments she had woven and sewn using fabric wefts.  The first is a vest woven with silk strips.  Dee folded the fabric strips in half as she wove, but  didn't tuck in the ends of the fabric wefts and let them peek out of the finished cloth.   This is a project from several years ago and Dee didn't remember the details about how it was woven, but it looked as though there might be finer thread picks between the fabric shots in this cloth as well. 

 

 

The final jacket (below) was also woven by Dee.  She says it has been worn a lot since she made it, yet is looks like new.  This definitely has fine thread picks between the fabric shots.  Look at the lovely purple lining and elegant buttons!

Rug for the Mud Room

Jackie brought another amazing rug to our meeting on Tuesday.  She wove this rug for her mud room and you won't believe the effort that went into this stunning piece.

First of all, the materials used in the rug are from worn out T-shirts, polo shirts and other knit tops from her family.  She designed her weft plan and then put it on a spread sheet to calculate how long each knit strip should be and when to sew in a dark piece for the meander pattern in the rug. That's right, each strip was calculated individually.

Jackie says she would never use red in her household furnishings, but since she had the red rug warp and it was going into the mud room, she went ahead and used it.  She didn't expect that the rug would swallow the red color so completely.  Yes, it does alter the overall color and appearance, but it certainly doesn't look red.

She encountered a few problems with various knits stretching differently and wasn't too encouraged that the rug would be flat, but somehow after it went over the breast beam, everything was nicely tamed.

 

She had more warp and more knit strips, so she wove two smaller rugs to go with the large one.  No dark pattern, but they are still interesting because of the varying fabric colors.