Practice Makes Perfect...

Practice makes perfect...right?

So, this Fall I sewed a practice shirt to test my pattern on some commercial fabric I had on hand.  Here it is...

I've got my hand woven fabric all marked but I'm not sure how I want to stay-stitch it before cutting.  I've put it aside for a while partly because I'm undecided about how to proceed, partly because this Fall we acquired a new family member through Coco's Heart Rescue.  Meet Sadie--a cuddly companion and home-grown fiber source.  :)

She's a Golden Retriever mix (St. Bernard?) and since this picture has filled out and fluffed out some more.  She's one year old now.  We're pretty smitten.  :)

Shirt Tales

I've got more pics to post to update my progress on my shirt fabric.

A sketch of my overall plan for shirt pattern and a capture of my pixeLoom draft.

The reed is all sleyed--all 312 slots, all 624 threads! 

 Then it's all tied on and tensioned with a bit of waste thread woven in.  Not too bad!

The first few inches of real weaving.  

Up close and personal--count 24 vertical threads...that's only one inch!

  Overshot design detail.  I used two threads of the same thickness of the rest of the weft.  The design will be on the bottom of the shirt and on the ends of the sleeves.  It's 6 inches from bottom to top on the loom.

An underside view of the fabric so far.  Above the overshot design, the weft graduates from dark to lighter blue.  The overshot section is rolled up on the cloth beam.

Almost ready to weave the back of the shirt!

More to come...

The shirt off my back...

I'm working on weaving yardage in order to sew a shirt--a tunic.  I'm using the full width of my Baby Wolf for the first time--all 26 inches!  That means at 24 ends per inch, 625 ends total!  The warp is 10/2 cotton in royal blue.  I wove an overshot pattern in green that will be at the bottom of the shirt.  All the weft--blues and light green--is 22/2 Cottolin.

I have spent many hours scheming, designing and trying out patterns on pixeLoom.  I wound the warp in batches on my warping board.  I removed all the loom's harnesses and adjusted the number of heddles to just fit my pattern so there would be enough by not too many on each harness.  I had to adapt my pattern to share harnesses because of the high epi count.  Winding on the warp with such a thin yarn and at such a width gave me fits, but I accomplished it!

I threaded heddles, sleyed the reed (my husband likes to think of me as a weaving warrior who "slays" things--hee hee), tied on, adjusted the tension and away I went!  I've got the first 15 inches of the front (or back) woven.  I think it's turning out nicely.  I like the texture of the Cottolin for weft with the worry-free cotton warp.

I know people will ask me how many hours it took--No idea!  Maybe 30 so far?

Pics to show progress:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kangaposse/9129313679/

Threading the heddles and sleying the reed: