Hargrove No. III - A Plain Cord

 

After far too many delays, I finally finished weaving a sample of Hargroves' No. III, A Plain Cord.

For those of you not familiar, John Hargrove had a book of weavers' pattern drafts published in Baltimore in 1792. Only two copies are known to survive, and fortunately you can see read one on the Internet Archive.  A reprint was published by The American Antiquarian Society in 1979. Unfortunately, like the original book, the reprint is incredibly scarce. If you can find a copy - perhaps through interlibrary loan - Rita Adrosko's Introduction is very informative.

I like rib weaves and I think they don't get as much attention from handweavers as they deserve. I'd not woven this particular Hargrove draft before and I decided to try it using a yarn I'd not used before.

This 20/4 unmercerized cotton was a mill end I bought in 1991 and tucked away in my stash. Rib weaves have a history of being used for work clothes and this cotton seemed like a good candidate for a fabric for a vest or trousers I could make up for gardening wear.

Nominally, this yarn is equivalent to a 10/2 at 4,200 yards per pound, which I typically weave at about 24 epi for tabby. To get a sturdy fabric in a rib weave, I sleyed a little closer, at 30 epi, which is conveniently five repeats of the draft per inch. I wove my sample 8" wide.

To maintain a walking tread, the Hargrove draft adds a fifth treadle. As I don't have a fifth treadle at my disposal at the moment, I had to fudge the tread a bit. I tied up the shafts in order (shaft 1 to treadle 1, etc.)

This meant that tabby is woven by alternately treading 1&2 and 3&4. After each shot of tabby, the two warp-wise floats are treadled on 2 and 3. Starting the weft on the left side, then starting the treadling on 1&2 meant that I always knew which tabby to treadle next.

The yarn behaved well, being just slightly tender at the selvedges - probably because I wasn't using a temple and the fabric drew in quite a bit. Here's a close-up under tension on the loom.

Here, I've used a pink mercerized 10/2 for the weft so that the weave structure is more apparent.

Here's the back of the fabric, also under tension.

After taking the fabric off the loom I sank it into a tub of boiling water to which I'd beat in a good handful of soap flakes. I let this sit overnight, then rinsed in warm water until the water ran clear. The 20/4 cotton bloomed quite nicely and while the hand is firm, it's not unduly stiff. It finished at 40 epi.

Probably

 

Over the years I've developed a fairly ruthless approach to starting perennials. In late autumn I sow seed in flats, cover the flats with 1/4" hardware cloth to keep squirrels and jays from digging in them, and leave them outside to experience their first Pacific Northwest winter. If they survive the wet, the chill, and the occasional ice storm, they germinate sometime in the spring. Unfortunately, so do any weed seeds that managed to drift in.

I know what a lot of perennial seedlings look like, and for things that are new to me I have some good books to help me out. But every once in a while I'm just completely stymied. So I think I've just pricked out seedlings for a dozen pots of Shooting Star, but I'm not entirely certain.

Time will certainly tell.

Dressing Sensibly

Right. So you've put away your dressy holiday clothes, except for the ones that need to go to the dry cleaner due to some course of action you can't quite recall but are pretty sure your friends will rib you about for years to come.

It's time to return to Dressing Sensibly for the Weather in the Northern Hemisphere.  It's time for a nice...LADIES' UNDER VEST.

In 1884 you could subscribe to The National Garment Cutter and use their graded rulers and curved ruler to draft up this practical garment.*

As somebody whose stay-at-home dressing during the winter months used to start with a base layer of Duofold long underwear, I appreciate this garment.

For winter wear, the vest would typically be made of white or natural colored wool flannel (about the weight used in lighter weight Pendleton flannel shirts.) Due to its bulk, sewing with flannel historically used some specific techniques, such as using a herringbone stitch to fix down the seam allowances.

Binding the raw edges would produce a tidier, but more time-consuming finish.

Then there are those 17 button holes.

If you've got a little time on your hands, you could embroider scallops around the neckline.

 And then finish it all off with a some pretty feather stitching.

All illustrations showing techniques are taken from this excellent source. Used copies are a little hard to find in the United States, but it's available on the Internet Archive.

* You can use this draft! It's based on a scaled units in which for a 32" bust, 1 unit = 1". For every bust measurement inch over 32, increase the unit by 1/16th of an inch.  That is, for a 36" bust, 1 unit on the draft = 1 1/4". So, for the 1 1/2 units down from the top, you'd measure down 1 7/8." You'll also want a french curve ruler so that you don't have to draw the curved lines freehand.

Bear in mind that the vest would have been worn over a chemise and then a corset that molded the body to the fashionable shape for the period, so the proportions may need to be adjusted for the modern female body.

Personally I'd be tempted to mix and match time periods and make this up in a grunge-era plaid flannel with embroidery in an eye-watering magenta or neon lime green.