Hats off to handwoven

I have made an astonishing amount of fabric since I started learning to weave in earnest. Since my first warp in August last year I think I’ve woven at least 80 metres of handwoven fabric!

Quite of lot of this fabric was destined for Christmas presents, so I couldn’t really show it off until the gifts were distributed. Now I can finally reveal some of the best bits!

Planning the project

I’ve had this Oliver + S bucket hat pattern in my stash for years and years, and I’ve never made it up. I figured with hand woven fabric it would make a great Christmas present!

Could I do it? Turns out, yes. With knobs on.

I printed out my pattern pieces, cut them in the largest size, and laid them out so I could judge how much length of weaving to do for the inner and outer parts of each hat. Since none of the pieces was very wide, I could see that they would all fit inside the finished width of the cloth.

I was generous with the spacing between each pattern piece because I knew the fabric would shrink in both directions and I wanted to definitely have enough to work with.

Unfortunately I didn’t record how much cloth I actually wove, but it was similar to a large tea towel per inner / outer hat. Maybe 40 inches?

The weaving

I needed to wait until my new Louët Spring II loom arrived so that I could weave the warp I’d pre-wound, because 18.5 inches in the reed was too wide for my little retro-fitted table loom. As Christmas hove into view it was looking grim for me being able to get this woven and sewn up in time!

On the 24th of November I was giddy as a school-girl as the delivery truck finally arrived. I wasted no time putting the loom together and beaming the Parrot warp onto the loom.

Weaving on the new loom is a dream.

Preparing to Sew

Lots of people say that preparing to cut into handwoven fabric gives them chills. I have to say with the time pressure I was under, I was just keen to go, go, go, so I just plunged straight in!

To give myself confidence cutting out curves, I decided to starch the fabric. Boy, I’m glad I did!

I’ve used starch before, for quilting projects, so I know this makes for easy cutting and sewing. This time was no exception! I had no frayed edges, and my fabric pieces were easy to manipulate, even though they were bulkier than typical store-bought cloth.

This time I used flour starch from this recipe. I diluted the thick goopy mixture so I could use a water sprayer to apply the starch, and I ironed the fabric under an old pillow case until it was flat and dry (it smelled pleasant: like toast!).

I cut the shapes using a rotary cutter (and nerves of steel).

The first hat I cut laying the pattern pieces straight up and down the warp, using the suggested grain line. This meant I could pattern match the vertical lines on the hat, and resulted in a very smart result.

The second hat I barely had enough yardage to do both inner and outer layers, so I got creative with the brim pieces and laid them off-grain and on the bias-grain to fit them in. This resulted in amazing colour complexity.

Sewing the hats

Sewing with a bulky handwoven fabric turned out to be not such a big deal for this project, although I did lose some of the hat dimensions to turn-of-cloth-thickness.

I made sure I stay-stitched all the curved edges (there are lots of those!) and I clipped the curves before I stitched pieces together.

The instructions that came with the pattern were easy to follow (I have lots of sewing experience so YMMV), and I believe I just followed them until I was done.

I do recall topstitching at the crown to give a crisp finish, and I trimmed the inner seam allowance there to reduce bulk when the two hats were aligned (one goes inside the other at the end of the build).

I also topstitched the edge of the brim and continued into a spiral quilting pattern to add extra strength (hoping to reduce future floppiness).

Final verdict?

Wow, just wow.

I wanted to keep both of these hats for myself! Luckily, they were both too small for my adult head. 😉

My nieces loved the hats, and I couldn’t have been more pleased with the outcome.

The project took a fair bit of time to complete. From starting weaving to the finished project I took 8 days of elapsed time, which included:

• Dressing the loom (a day),
• Weaving (several days because I also did tea towels and napkins from the same warp),
• Washing and drying, and a first press to finish the fabric,
• Starching and pressing again,
• Cutting, sewing and hand stitching the final step (several more days, IIRC).

Phew!

Basically, it was enormous fun, and I’d do it again like a shot.