Calontir Clothing Challenge, Layer 2 and 3

This is going to be a big photo dump, because things got done, but not written up, during the Thanksgiving/ Christmas rush.

Layer 2:

A cream Shetland wool gown in diamond twill, handsewn. Seams are French rolled to enclose the raw edges.

Layer 3:

An apron dress, hand woven out of Shetland wool that I spun in the mill, the center panel dyed with walnut hulls.

The apron dress was a bit of an adventure. The plan was to weave with a Z spun warp and a S spun weft.

This created a very textured, nubbly fabric. However, after washing and setting the weave, it became very obvious that while we were winding the yarn onto cones in the mill, an S spun bobbin got mixed in with the Z spun bobbins. This resulted in a stripe of smooth SxS fabric running the entire length of the otherwise ZxS fabric.

I decided to lean into the difference and had Adam help me cut off that stripe.

I then made a walnut dye bath and dyed both the wool stripe and a length of plain linen, as well as some extra yarn, just in case

The wool took the walnut dye really well but the linen barely changed color. I think if I was going to do it again, I would add some alum to the dye bath to help it adhere to the linen.

I cut the walnut strip in half and sewed the two halves together to give me the center panel of my dress.

The original plan was to bind the top with the woven wool, but it ended up being incredibly thick, so I used some of the stocking wool instead.

The seams of the apron were hand sewn, but I was struggling to get the stitches small enough to keep the very loose weave from unraveling, so I did reinforce them with my sewing machine. I was concerned because getting dressed in the wheelchair often involves a lot of tugging the fabric into place and I was really worried that my dress would just disintegrate on me. The reinforcement is the only machine sewing on the outfit.

I loved the look of the felted, twisted fringe at the bottom, so I left it alone with just a small trim to even up the longest ones.

With the actual garment done, it was time to move on to the accessories!