August 23, 2009 – Fiberjoy

A flu bug took up residence in my body the Wednesday following Sock Summit. For ten days a fever lurked or raged, aches plagued my body rendering me next to useless. Last night I worked late to get this post written and launched as the grandkids will be coming over this evening to spend the next three days with us while mommy and daddy get the truck loaded and move to Idaho. (Mommy will be back late Wednesday). Shortly before I clicked on publish WordPress went down. Fortunately most of this post was saved in the draft file. Whew!

The final story on the Making of Ed’s Vest, what’s now known as the Friendship vest for all the friends that had a role in bringing it to reality.

I began spinning the corriedale and baby camel rovings longer ago than is in accurate memory but in dipping through old blog post I found the project was initially begun in March 08 then put on the back burner until that July when I got serious about getting all the yarn spun for Ed’s vest. Eight ounces of the dark brown corriedale were spun into singles: four ounces were plyed together to create dark brown yarn and two ounces were plyed with spun camel singles to make a variegated yarn. Then I separated two more ounces of the long, light caramel colored, baby camel rovings into thin strips and overlaid those on a second group of four ounces of the dark corriedale which was then spun together and plyed. I also spun four ounces of autumn colored tencel for a yarn with sheen. All of these and an ounce of grey Organic Irish Wool yarn that Jo sent were used in both the warp and weft notating the spacing and yarn sequence to acheive a subtle heathered plaid.

With the ongoing encouragement of friend Grace who suggested I set aside one day a week as a weaving day I finally got the loom warped and the handspun yarn woven on my Norwood four shaft loom last fall. The web (term for freshly woven fabric before it’s finished by wetting and drying it) was taken off, thrown in the washing machine then briefly into the dryer before finishing it with a hot iron , heavily pressing it onto the fabric. The thick padding on my ironing board was replaced with a once folded wool blanket. This allows me to press the iron as firmly as possible against the fabric. Once it was finished, and shown off at the spinning group, the fabric languished, hidden from sight until twelve days before Sock Summit.

In the course of a conversation with a new woman at church I mentioned my goal of sewing Ed’s vest that week but first needed to make a pattern. Turns out she loves sewing and invited me up to her house. Using butcher paper we drew out and cut a pattern using one of Ed’s beloved vests as the guide. I used cotton broadcloth for the back of the vest and a satin lining for the inside front. (view of the Front /back side seam, on top of the inside front lining and back)

The worst problem I ran into while sewing the bottom seams and front seams together was the woven cloth wanting to stretch in contrast to the stable lining. By using lots of pins and patience I was able to persuade them to match. By early afternoon the sewing machine part was finished leaving the handstitching of the French seams for the sides and shoulders left to accomplish. (A huge task!) When I took the vest out the next morning to tackle the French seams I just couldn’t wrap my mind around the concept, though I understood the end result. So, in desperation I called another friend, Constance who has done a great deal of hand sewing and quilting. Leaving it in her capable hands I was thrilled to think it’d be done within the week.

Her seams were fautless with tiny impeccable stitches.

I brought the vest home and set up the Singer with the button hole attachment. I’ve done this before – it’s a breeze. Snap, it’s finished. Ha. No such luck this time. Constance to the rescue. She quickly had it working so I made the first button hole, and she was one her way back home with a cheerful wave goodbye. Forging confidently ahead on the next buttonhole the sewing thread snapped. and snapped. and snapped… by then I was using leftover scrap materials trying to figure out what was wrong. I used a new spool of thread, and tried a new needle. Getting out the manual I dismantled the machine and oiled all the bits the diagrams showed to oil, fiddled with the tension. By then it was late Saturday afternoon. Ed walked in and shook his head saying he’d have had that machine in tiny pieces by then. Then he said, “Some people just aren’t cut out to work with sewing machines.”

I wanted to throw the machine at him.

Ed had excitedly anticipated wearing his handspun handwoven vest to church the next day and wasn’t about to see that dream postponed. He suggested calling a neighbor who also loves sewing and has a very fancy machine to see if she’d help me. Taking vest in hand we walked over after supper. Faithful had her machine set up with the buttonhole attachment in place. She had me sit down and test one of my scrapes. At first it was fine then it too starting acting up. After a great deal of perseverance and patience on her part she finally gave up trying to program the buttonholer to automatically sew the correct hole size and went with a closely spaced, narrow zigzag while hand guiding the material along chalked lines. Whew! By then I was too tired to think about sewing on the four buttons. That job was quickly taken care of before Ed was ready to go to church the next morning.