100 Jacket – Daryl's Blog

Zoom Jacket

Dearest readers and followers on facebook…

You make me laugh. Oh the uproar when I posted my near completed jacket and mentioned that I wanted to wear it around the house over my pajamas. Best laugh I’ve had in a week. Like handwoven anything can only be used for special occasions. So here’s the thing…

We are trapped at home in quarantine and I have no plans to leave the house for any reason for the remainder of this year, and probably well into the next.
I have a bulging wardrobe of handwoven stuff to wear for special occasions. Even culling the early stuff, there are 30 years of gorgeous handwoven garments in there, that I have no place to wear. (And some of them are not fitting me too well either, given that the last nine months has padded my lower half just a bit more than I’d like…)
Being trapped at home spending my days either working in my office at the computer, like I am now, or in the weaving studio, or the sewing room, or the kitchen, means that comfy flannel pajamas, now that the weather is cold (I keep my house at 64 degrees) are my wardrobe of choice.
I only dress for Zoom meetings, and trust me there are about 50 options for what to wear.
My beloved go-to knockaround commercially purchased jacket that I throw on when I get out of bed in the morning, and take off at night, hanging it on the coat tree in my room, is getting worn, old, boring, and it needs to move on.
I want something cuddly, roomy, with large pockets, and can also hang on the coat rack every night without getting the center back neck bump from the hook.

Enter this fabric which recently came off the loom.

I blogged about it in the last post, and there is a link in the last post to the details, what I used as a draft, the warp and the weft, in the last post from when I first put this fabric on the loom almost two years ago. I love the colors, and this fabric I knew would be challenging to lay out. The coloring was formed from the engineered gradient in the Noro Taiyo Lace skeins I was using. Though they were engineered to repeat themselves, when a dreaded knot in the skein would appear, or I had to change skeins, the sequence was thrown off. So I did the best I could…

I had lots of unwanted assistance, trying to lay this out, stretched all across the sewing room floor which is in the basement, and all the way into the utility closet. The cat was very amused…

It took two days of moving pieces around to get what I wanted. The fabric wasn’t really wide enough, but fortunately last Friday’s YouTube video shoot was on that very topic, What to do When You Don’t have Enough Fabric. So I shared some of the tips I did in this garment to try to make the most out of what I have. That video should drop next Friday. It is still in edits. (Who am I kidding, she hasn’t started editing yet, she waits until the day before…)

Anyway, I wanted something unfussy, and perhaps crocheted around the perimeter, so I wouldn’t have to fuss with hems, or facings, or bands, whatever. And I wanted big pockets. I pulled my 100 Jacket, chose a larger size than I would normally take, so I’d have roomier sleeves to fit over whatever I was wearing, overlayed the neck from the 800 vest pattern, and extended the fronts 3 inches so they would fall back into a mock collar, but still could overlap to keep my chest warm when I really wanted to snuggle. (It is on my list of topics for my YouTube channel The Weaver Sews, to illustrate how to combine patterns, putting a sleeve on the swing dress, combining patterns for different necklines, etc.)

I got exactly what I wanted, and posted it on facebook last night.

Hahahahahah! The responses were wonderful. I love you all. The outrage that I’d wear this over my pajamas was truly hilarious. Of course it is a beautiful jacket. Of course it should be seen out in the world. But that isn’t realistic right now. I’m not going anywhere. I need to keep safe, healthy and not burden the hospital system because I was stupid. It is worrisome enough that my son, who is an interim general manager at a local Target is exposed every day, so far has tested negative, but is going into the retail season from hell. He is not allowed near the house. NJ lived through hell last April, and we are there again, I’ve lost count of how many have died, almost 17,000 in our state alone. It is as if my whole town got wiped off the map, and half of the next one as well.

And so, I will wrap myself up in a lovely comfy handwoven sweatery coat, and go about my day in comfort. And smile dreaming of a time when I can go out and about and show it off.

So here are some of the observations and details. Because you really don’t know how comfy and snuggly something is until you wear it.

First, since the fabric wasn’t wide enough, I moved the side seams towards the back so I could get a full back from the fabric, and used a crocheted seam finish, overlapping the seam with the fronts. I cover this in the video that will drop next week.

You can clearly see in the photos above where I’m wearing the jacket that the collar points and lower front edges tend to curl inward. There isn’t a facing for support, so I’d expect that. I kept thinking about my late husband’s dress shirts and the little collar stays that would keep points crisp, and I remembered I have a drawer full of zip ties, and there are some really tiny ones in there. I’ve used zip ties as boning in garments that call for that, so why not as collar stays. I slipped a few behind the crocheted edges and I’ll let you know how well they work. Already there is an improvement, time will tell if they hold.

And I dug through my box of inkle bands, and found this lovely narrow black band I wove to help support the sloppy neckline in a sweater I knit. There was enough left to make a loop at the back neck for hanging my jacket at night on the coat tree. That’s the sad very well worn jacket it is replacing on the left of the coat tree.

There are a couple of negatives that I really can’t do much about, one is that the wool (Harrisville Shetland singles from the 80’s) in the warp isn’t the softest. That yarn typically isn’t meant for next to skin. So the jacket is a bit scratchy, but I have a good tolerance for scratchy wool. The good news is it should wash and dry pretty easily, I tossed the original fabric in the washer and dryer twice to get it to full up. That will be important wearing it every day.

And the other negative of course is that I have a bunch of animals, that insist on curling up when ever I sit down, right in my lap, even the ones that weigh 60 pounds. Animal hair sticks to it. It was challenging crocheting around the edges and constantly pulling cat hair out of the yarn as I pulled up loops. And I do vacuum often I can assure you. But the good news is that unlike a fleece jacket, the hair comes off easily with a lint roller, it doesn’t seem to embed itself into the structure. So I’m hopeful my new comfy jacket will prove to be my best friend in the coming months. I want to wear this so much I wear it out!

And speaking of Zoom… I’ve spent many hours on Zoom meetings over the last number of months, and found that knitting wasn’t really for me a great idea, I was making mistakes on the sweater I was knitting in the decorative patterned border. I don’t multi task well. Really.

So instead, I started pulling out my bags and baskets of thrums from past warps, most of which were hand dyed yarns, maybe 18-24″ lengths, and started tying them together. I keep the large basket of thrums now under the table where I Zoom. Years ago, one of our beloved guild members, who has since passed, came to a September meeting fresh from a MAFA conference. She had taken a workshop with Tom Knisely, a beloved weaver and teacher who has written a number of books, and one of the techniques she learned was something called Zanshi. It is a Japanese technique for using leftover thrums and yarns so nothing goes to waste. Tom talks about it in his book about Table Linens.

Anyway, the guild member showed her sample from the workshop and I was intrigued. Thrums were tied together with overhand knots and the tails just got woven in. Plain weave, couldn’t be simpler. So I started tying my thrums together. Mindless but productive while I sat through endless meetings. I had a beautiful rayon/cotton discontinued yarn from Silk City Fibers called Marbella, in a greyed brown color called Bison for the warp. I kept the warp narrow so I’d have a bit of color building from the short thrums. I’m loving this. And no, I have no idea what I’m going to do with this fabric. I just like to weave…

Stay safe everyone, celebrate this season with whatever silver linings you can find. Life is getting curiouser and curiouser, feeling more like Alice in Wonderland every day, there is some whacky crap in that story, worth a reread!

Stay tuned…

Meanwhile…

Meanwhile there is a tropical storm moving in tonight. Finally, a typical summer… At least we need the rain desperately…

Meanwhile, I launched another pattern for download. And I’m beginning to add Lookbooks for some of the patterns. I’ve had a number of requests from potential buyers to see what people are doing with the patterns. I know this is a thing on Ravelry, and it does help to see what people do with the pattern, and how it fits all different body types. This is one more thing on my never ending to do list, but I’ve managed to post three of them, one for the vest below, and one for the 700/1700 tunics and the 100 jacket. I don’t know if it helps, and obviously the patterns are too new for purchasers to show what they’ve done with them, but I’ve been using these patterns for years, especially the jackets, and I have a collection of mostly in progress, not completely finished versions from all of my workshops.

What’s important here is that if I used a photo of you in your garment, I cropped all body parts, so you wouldn’t be recognized. Still, if you object to my using your garment, please let me know. And if you have a photo of a garment you made in one of my classes and/or from one of my patterns, especially a finished version, please let me know at theweaver@weaversew.com

The 800 Zippered Vest is fully lined to the edge and has bias bound edges. The vest has a stand-up collar with front separating zipper. View 2 uses the lining as a seam finish on the side, shoulder and neckline/collar seams. Optional yoke on both views. This pattern does not contain directions for sewing. The directions, which contain metric equivalents are available for free from my website https://www.daryllancaster.com/Webfiles/800ZipperedVestDirections.pdf

In addition, a lookbook of garments made from the 800 Zippered Vest is available here https://weaversew.com/wordblog/800-zippered-vest-lookbook/

I’ve only got one more pattern to go in the current collection, which will give me a total of 12! The pattern for the 1800 jacket is done, it is a combination of the 800 zippered vest above and the 400 jacket with waist darts. The directions are rewritten, I’m waiting for the final edits from someone I hired to make sure what I wrote makes sense. The conversations between us are hilarious. Usually she writes that something doesn’t make any sense, and I respond that it would have it they were in class because there would have been an entire class lecture on the fine points of that technique earlier in the morning, and then she responds that people who buy the patterns won’t have been privy to that lecture, so I have to spell it all out. So I’ve added so much to each of the directions for each of the patterns. I keep them separate because whenever something is unclear, I can edit easily and post on a page of my website, without generating an entire new pattern download. The directions are always free, so if you already traced a pattern from one of my classes and need the updated directions, please find them here. As always, if something isn’t clear, please let me know, I’ll try to fix it. And there is the goal to have a YouTube channel to explain many of the techniques I feature in my patterns.

Meanwhile I’m already thinking of how to combine the patterns and what silhouette I want to work on next. A scoop neck top with sleeves…

Meanwhile, I met with a consultant about video equipment and improving the image of my online teaching via Zoom or whatever platform works for the guild hiring me. And they are hiring me. My October Calendar is really filling up with remote guild lectures and a few short workshops. I’m beginning to get cancellations from next year, and I’m really good with that because I don’t see us returning to a normal any time soon. I don’t see me hopping on a plane, dragging 170 pounds of luggage, staying with people, and teaching a 5-7 day class working intimately with students, and returning safely to NJ. Right now there is a list in NJ of 31 states that you have to quarantine from after traveling to… So I’ve edited some of my lectures to list what can be done remotely. I will start on the half day seminars shortly.

So I now have a couple of Canon SLR’s that actually were designed to also work as webcams, in addition to 4K video. I have an AC battery adapter so the camera battery doesn’t die in the middle of a zoom meeting. I have my tech guy coming this week to run an ethernet cable to the garage weaving studio so I don’t have to rely on WIFI. I have the cable company coming to upgrade my modem so I can get 1GB of internet speed. And I purchased a sound system and video lights for recording videos, all that of course contingent on my daughter, who works for me now, learning how to use them. Right now she is creating a logo.

Meanwhile, I’ve mentioned my long time association with Silk City Fibers, which is now a division of Lion Brand Yarns. Alice, who is the director of that division is an old friend and coincidently lives in my town. We are in regular contact about what’s new there and my opinion of the market, the type of yarn, the marketing, and anything else that comes to mind. Last week I was asked if I wanted to be a “weaving influencer”. I suppose I am an influencer. A few thousand friends on facebook, been teaching this stuff since the early 80’s and using their yarn since then as well. I’ve been blogging for more than 10 years, have about a thousand subscribers, and earlier posts have been viewed thousands of times. And of course I always have an opinion. I’m not always right, but my opinion always comes with a thought process that shows how I got there. I met with the powers that be at Lion Brand, via remote conferencing, and largely I said, if you want to toss me yarn, I’ll make yardage out of it, document what I do and what it does, and make clothing out of it to sell my patterns.

And so, at the end of last week, Alice dropped off a small bag of assorted cones, two of them yarns I’d not worked with before. Left to right is Nile, a cotton tape yarn, Cotton Bambu, a heavier parallel plied yarn, great for supplemental work, Linen 14, a fine linen yarn I’ve had experience with before, and Bambu 7, bamboo yarn, pretty much a SSF staple. There was about a half pound of each, which doesn’t seem like a lot to work with, especially if the goal is yardage. But that never stopped me.

I thought about the yarn, and then looked through my stash to see what I could add that was part of their current line. Not much, since my shelves are full of older discontinued styles and colors of Silk City Yarns, all wonderful, but I thought I’d try to stay current. I was able to add these. Clockwise from upper left, Saphira, Skinny Majesty Variegated, and a possible weft, Bambu 7

First I had to figure out exactly what I had. I use a McMorran Yarn Balance and a scale and I can come within a few yards of knowing what’s on the cone.

I played with yarn wraps…

…and adapted the draft from Chaos, which you can purchase from my website here…

…and came up with something that reminded me of summer rain. Think Tropical Storm Isaias.

Meanwhile, I haven’t actually wound a warp or set up a loom since the huge studio move last winter, which seems at this point like a lifetime ago. When I returned from Oregon the beginning of March, the heat had just been installed, but the entire world shut down, and I dug in and made a bunch of new garments, in the basement sewing room, still thinking I had to submit five new works for the Convergence Fashion Show as a guest artist (of course that conference was postponed until 2022). And I started on what seemed like an impossible task at the time, creating downloadable patterns from the ones I developed for classes. I was sitting on a lot of handwoven yardage I had stockpiled, and now my stash is depleted.

So I did what I do best. Create with a small pile in front of me, and see where it takes me…

First up was winding the warp. There are many ways to wind warps, but I wanted to see the colors unfold, so I chose to just do a straight wind off of the draft, as opposed to winding individual chains of each color. The winding was slow, but the sleying would be much faster. The first thing I discovered was the Nile tape lace had to be unwound from the cone like a toilet paper roll, instead of off the top, like typical coned weaving yarns. When exiting from the top, the tape seriously twisted and I knew would never lay moderately flat in the woven surface. So I put the cone on a spool rack, with the rack facing away from me at about a 30 degree angle. The cone unwound easily in that position.

Next hurdle was of course the dreaded slippery rayon, and Silk City Fibers has lots of these. I’ve used them for years. This was one called Saphira, a pretty shimmery yarn with slubs. The color I had has actually been discontinued, but a similar one is available with a black core instead of a white one. Winding a warp with a yarn like this is problematic because any break in movement, like the turn around at the top of the warping mill, causes the yarn to pool around the base, getting caught as the movement resumes. I usually use a nylon stocking around the cone as a drag, which works really really well, except in the move, they are hiding and I can’t figure out where they went. So I used the mesh covering from an Asian Pear, which when tucked around the base, stopped the pooling and the warping could continue.

I loved the way the colors built on one another.

By dinner time yesterday I had the loom’s beater sleyed. Each of these steps was sort of like reinventing the wheel. The chair I usually used for sleying was now in the basement in my sewing studio. So I had to come up with new tools and devices, figure out where my regular tools were now living, figure out where to plug in the magnifying light (in the ceiling as it turned out), and how to adjust the split HVAC system that was spilling copious amounts of frigid air right on me. I figured that out and the room was really comfortable. The new studio worked well. I’m happy and can’t wait to actually spend most of my days out there even when I’m Zooming…

I started threading after dinner.

Meanwhile, my beloved brat of a dog Ranger got his manhood clipped last Monday. He was very depressed and had to wear the “innertube of misfortune”. And of course, that meant he couldn’t wear a bellyband, so my fear all week was that he would pee on everything in my house. We were good until late last night. He saddled up to a shelving tower of handdyed yarn skeins and lifted his leg. So I got to use the new dye sink in the studio and wash all of the offended skeins as I cleaned up the mess. The dye sink worked really well. And incision or no incision, he is now wearing a belly band. The relationship between the two males dogs is slowing changing, it will be interesting to see where this goes. The week for the most part wasn’t nearly has challenging as I thought it would be. I got a lot accomplished locking myself and the dog in my office for hours at a time while he healed. He liked the constant companionship.

Meanwhile, did I mention we are getting hit with a tropical storm tonight? Note to self, pull in anything that isn’t nailed down, like umbrellas, etc. Better yet, send Brianna out to do it…

Stay tuned…

There are no words…

I’ve put off this post long enough. I’ve been writing this blog for more than 10 years. It was meant to be a link to my creativity and my life, to document how they play against each other becoming at times diametrically opposed, and at other times indistinguishable from each other. That is the life of an artist. We never retire, we just keep reinventing ourselves.

This year has been a huge challenge in and of itself, all of the work that I had booked this year, including my trip to Japan has of course been cancelled. Anyone in the arts, who makes their living gig by gig, knows this, that without those venues, we have no income. Don’t cry for me, I’m fine, my late husband saw to that. But there are others who aren’t fine.

And now, life isn’t just about being quarantined to stay safe from a nasty unknown virus that no one seems to know much about. Social media is full of all sorts of people who think they know, or knows someone who knows, but the bottom line is, at least here in NJ, that nothing will ever be the same as we knew it for a long long time.

And on top of that, there is this thing that I find really difficult to talk about. I am after all, a privileged white woman. We fought about shit like this in the 50’s, equal rights for women, for persons of color. Nothing has changed. Nothing has changed in 50 years. Nothing has changed in 400 years. And I really struggled with this post because there is absolutely nothing I can contribute to this conversation because I am a privileged white woman living in a suburban community and I need to keep my mouth shut and let those who are on the front lines speak. I need to listen.

All of the organizations I’m associated with or support, particularly in the arts, have been sending me emails to state their position on where they stand on racial equality. I can’t help but feeling it is all so bandwagon -y. I said as much to my daughter, who very bluntly said to me, “Mom, it isn’t enough to not be racist. It is now more than ever important to be anti-racist. Silence is acceptance of the status quo.” I’m still mulling that over, I know she is right, but I have no idea what that actually means and how I can help, or if I just need to get out of the way.

And so I sit in my basement, proofing patterns, creating new works, doing what I do best, but listening to NPR around the clock, listening to experts, listening to the voices that can make a difference. My public radio station is WNYC, so all the local news comes out of New York City. I’m learning a lot.

I’ve had a number of very meaningful discussions with my son, a sergeant in the Army National Guard in NJ. I listen to him tell me about the rules of engagement, the Geneva Convention, how he is trained foremost in conflict resolution and de-escalation of a situation. He has 10 years experience and two middle east deployments. I listen because there is nothing I can contribute to this. I have to listen to those who know more, have experienced more, and have something to say.

I have been wildly productive in these last three months, and it is a tough thing to just come here and say, “Oh look at my latest project, isn’t it lovely!” Because that seems so clueless and out of touch with what’s actually happening in the world. But it is what I know and what I’m good at. I’m working towards building a digital legacy of everything I’ve worked for for the last 50 years. In my own small world, it counts. I’d like to think I’ve made a difference in my students lives, and that I can continue to do that, until I can’t any more. I’m not sure how moving forward I’ll be able to teach safely, that students will be safe. I’ve had countless discussions with conference planners, arts venues, guilds and other venues that just don’t know where all this will end up.

My original goals were to slowly back away from teaching so I could focus on leaving behind a digital legacy. I never planned for the world to stop spinning the day I returned from teaching for 10 days in Oregon. But it has. And I’m so very grateful for a pension check, and for my children who both happen to be living here at the moment. And for my house full of animals. We have all we need, and we keep each other going, we laugh and we get pissed and we keep putting one foot in front of the other. This is a tough week for us as a family, four years ago probably to the day, we brought my husband home to die. He passed on the 17^th of June. Father’s Day weekend. I can’t see a Father’s Day ad without choking up. It is really hard on my children.

And so, I will post what I finished up last week, because it is good. And it is what I do. And I refuse to try to give it some contextual artsy title that speaks of hidden meaning. I cut up old fur, wove it back together with some fun yarns that were laying around, finishing off a warp that has been languishing for too many years. I’m leaving it untitled. And it has pockets.

And yes, we have launched another pattern my daughter and I. This one is especially important to me because this is the pattern I started with, the beloved Daryl Jacket. I sold variations of this jacket for years in craft fairs, and then when I started teaching, I used this pattern, polished the fit model and launched my career creating a garment construction with handwoven fabric legacy.

There are of course a dozen patterns in my portfolio at this point. We have launched six. The 200 jacket is ready to go, that’s the one with all the darts that is more of a trim fit. Just waiting on the final edits for the instructions. My editor is very thorough.

So here is where you can access all the patterns I’ve launched to date. I’ve never worked so hard, and the days fly by, it is bedtime already. Again…

https://www.weaversew.com/shop/sewing-patterns.html

And as always, the directions for all of my patterns are available for free on my website. One of my friends on Facebook commented, “There’s an entire course in couture construction in your free directions. I am in awe of your attention to detail.” Thanks Marie. Makes it all worth it.

https://www.daryllancaster.com/SewingPatternDirections.html

Stay safe, stay strong, and listen…

Stay tuned…