Handwoven coat
It's been a month almost, since my last post, but I've been really busy with creation of my biggest project, so far.
Creating coat, from selecting threads, weaving it, until the final design, draping, sewing and fitting, without any previous training in any of this, was enormously hard and challenging task. After almost three months of work, including hours of digging trough library books and internet, I finally designed and tailored one large piece of woven fabric into the wool coat. Here is my result:
Front
Back
The process
I used leather pieces from the old black leather skirt for the front lining, and brown satin lining for all other inside lining.
Designing and fitting
I tried few different ways to fit the fabric, and had a real problem, because of the limited amount of fabric.
The collar making
This part of fabric (brown and blue strip) was originally destined to be a belt but at last minute it turned out that it would give better accent to the coat as a collar,
Sleeves and buttons
Made from two parts, sleeves have also hand made buttons from leftover parts .
Similar are made for the belt at the back, since belt can be detached when not needed
Lining
That was , surprisingly the hardest part of all the process, and I didn't know that it will be until the final end. Sewing it to the black leather that I attached earlier was a realy complicated. Finally I just sew it, without any measuring. It was a pure luck that it turned out good.
Creating coat, from selecting threads, weaving it, until the final design, draping, sewing and fitting, without any previous training in any of this, was enormously hard and challenging task. After almost three months of work, including hours of digging trough library books and internet, I finally designed and tailored one large piece of woven fabric into the wool coat. Here is my result:
Front
Back
The process
 |
| from weaving to the final cut and sewing |
The most complicated part was fitting and using the fabric that I made to design shape of the coat that will use 5 m of fabric and not a centimeter more. It was actually 4.5 m at the end since I previously made a shirt for my daughter from it.
Library really helped in discovering "draping", method of fitting fabric over the model and designing your own pattern.
Cutting hand woven fabric and then sewing it, without any ripping and losing of threads was also a tricky job. But one of the weaving websites had exactly that and explained how to do it. So I got some of that material with glue (not sure how they call it officially)
Weaving
I used 6 black rolls of 100% wool thread and about dozen cotton yarns in combination of colors (dark brown, metallic brown - gold, green, blue/purple, purple)
 |
| Weaving was done in November on my four shaft loom |
 |
| Finished weaving taken off the loom was about 5m long |
Designing and fitting
I tried few different ways to fit the fabric, and had a real problem, because of the limited amount of fabric.
The collar making
This part of fabric (brown and blue strip) was originally destined to be a belt but at last minute it turned out that it would give better accent to the coat as a collar,
Sleeves and buttons
Made from two parts, sleeves have also hand made buttons from leftover parts .
Similar are made for the belt at the back, since belt can be detached when not needed
Lining
That was , surprisingly the hardest part of all the process, and I didn't know that it will be until the final end. Sewing it to the black leather that I attached earlier was a realy complicated. Finally I just sew it, without any measuring. It was a pure luck that it turned out good.
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