August 1, 2010

Creating Cloth: grey/white basketweave


I'm back in the swing of transcribing weaving drafts from commercial fabrics. This next one is a swatch that the company I work for can't afford to use, as it's from Italy. Basically, we'll see vendors who sell fabric from Europe so that we're up on the trends- then we take swatches and send it out for sourcing, to China if it's a basic or novelty woven, Korea if it's a novelty knit or woven, and Mexico and Guatemala if it's a basic or jacquard knit. The cheaper production price prevails always for a vast majority of the fashion world, always looking for trade agreement discounts (NAFTA, CAFTA) or fabric finishing tax breaks. Here is a two year old article on the garment industry. Based on what I know and have learned about the industry, it appears to be pretty accurate, even today.

This swatch is 60% wool 40% poly. It's gloriously soft in a wooly way, with such thin threads. I wish I had yardage to make a scarf or, if I had better tailoring skills, a jacket. This construction is a basket weave variation, the draft below:
6 shafts, 6 treadles, 12 thread repeat.

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