Indigo for Summer Trousers

Indigo blue, the colour of a summer sky seems just right for these light weight trousers woven from handspun cotton, linen, silk and soya bean fibres.

The warp yarns are a mixture lurex, cottons, linens, ribbon and a wonderful, over twisted boucle!  By using each of these yarns in small amounts across the warp they work happily together when under tension.  Remember always to use same yarn for each selvedge to ensure that they all pull evenly.

Woven on a 20″ (50cm) rigid heddle loom with a 7.5dpi (30/10cm) reed the weaving is quite open and airy.  After washing the fabric and line drying on a windy day the fabric blooms and the natural fibres swell to fill the gaps giving you a lovely light fabric with good drape.

My sewing pattern fits exactly onto my hand woven length. Lay out each piece of pattern on single thickness fabric to make sure it all fits exactly.  After cutting out use the WOVEN IRON ON INTERFACING on all the cut edges before overlocking or zig zagging to secure the loose threads. This makes sewing very simple and will give all your seams great strength.

Sarah has designed her own collection of patterns to fit onto narrow widths of handwoven fabric and this trouser pattern comes in a several sizes and incudes three different styles. Her patterns are available on her etsy shop.

         etsy.com/uk/shop/GetWeaving

There is also a trouser pattern in our GET WEAVING book on page 20 with instructions on weaving the fabric, laying out the pattern and construction.

Indigo, with all its varied shades gives such a soft look and it is so nice to use natural fibres at this time of year.  The tee shirt above was also dyed with indigo and woven on the rigid heddle loom with two picks of cotton and one of fabric that has been cut into strips after dyeing. The instructions and pattern for this top is also in our book GET WEAVING on page 16 and is available from Sarah’s etsy shop.

We hope you will feel inspired to add trousers to your handwoven wardrobe and enjoy the pleasure of weaving with natural fibres at this time of year.  Happy weaving to you all from Sarah and Elisabeth.

 

 

 

 

 

 

We hope you will feel inspired to add trousers to your handwoven wardrobe and enjoy the pleasure of weaving with natural fibres.  Happy weaving from us both.  S and E