21/09/2010

Looking at industrial fabric

This jacket found me in a second-hand shop the other day:


It is (well, was) a good-quality garment which has seen some ... hard work. There is a spot I will have to do something about, and the lining needs replacing.



This is a fabric of a type I like: the nearer you get, the more details there are. This one has (probably) six different colours/shades. It is all wool, fairly soft woollen type singles sett at approximately 8 ends per cmentimeter.



I have another old jacket - this one I have had (and used a lot!) for more than 15 years:


This fabric is very diferent from the other - worsted, to begin with. 2-ply yarns, 4 colours in the warp, four in the weft, about 14 ends/cm. This, too, reveals more details when you look closely:



Aren't both these a proof of what I have always been saying: why use only one colour, when using a dozen or so gives so much more interesting results?!

And isn't it also interesting that the older one looks bluer than the new one, despite the yellow/ochre and green yarns? (No, it is not a camera problem - it really does look more blue.)  And isn't that proof that colour sampling (too) is A Good Thing?

3 comments:

weaveblah said...

Thank-you so much for your very interesting post, as well as the drafts you have included.

Janet said...

These are fine old jackets. Classic tweed I call them. Donegal Tweed would be the equivalent in Ireland.

Even though they might not be high fashion and might mark me as of a certain age, I still love wearing my tweed jackets and skirts.

Ellen said...

I like your deconstructions. There's a lot to learn from these fabrics.