Barb's Fabric Blog

Musings on Precious Fibers

In the industry the term "precious" fibers is used to describe cashmere, alpaca, vicuna among others.  They are precious indeed both in terms of the limited supply and the lives their produce supports.  Today there was an article in the NY Times describing the downturn in demand for cashmere in Mongolia.  We in the West are not surprised that demand for luxury goods has waned this year.  Manufacturers have re-designed garments to use less of the luxury fiber either in style or size, blending luxury yarns with more affordable fibers and reducing the size range for high value garments.  Shepherds and farmers around the world will feel this shift.  In addition to a lessening demand for sweaters for the fall season, the Mongolian government has put strong limitations on goatherders for environmental reasons.  Evidently the hungry goats have eaten the plains dry, causing major air quality issues in northern China.  Herders in Peru are on a strict regimen to protect the endangered vicuna. Australian sheep farmers are carefully monitoring their markets and teaming with production facilities to hone their product-merino wool — to today's demands for quality, value and sustainability. 

On the one hand we need to participate in the marketplace that provides livelihoods for farmers and mill workers world-wide, but at the same time we need to let go of demands for goods that are depleting our resources in favor of innovative alternatives.  Here at SBDF, we are mindful of this balance.  Although heavily entrenched in the global fashion marketplace, we attempt to offer a wide array of choices for our customers that includes "green" fabrics as well as those that are milled responsibly in the fashion capitals of the world.

In reality all our natural fibers are "precious," and it behooves us to be ever vigilant in our balance between savoring the glory of fine fabrics and supporting the on-going availability of our resources — always mindful of the lives our decisions impact.

Fabric Stash Encore

I've written about the "stash" before, but I thought it was worth re-visiting just to quote another person on the subject.

In addition to sewing, I love to cross-stitch.  It's a comfortable craft that requires less of me, especially if I use a chart designed by someone else and don't change the colors (a favorite habit of mine in years past!)  Now I stitch for the comfort of the rythym and the tactile pleasure of the linen in my hands.  I love to "watch" the design emerge from the fabric as I thread my needle in and out rythmically.  I have quite a stash of charts, fabrics and threads, along with unframed finished pieces.  Sound familiar?  Yes, I have the same type of stash for my sewing passion...fabrics, patterns, and alas, a few unfinished pieces. 

Recently, I received the monthly newsletter from The Silver Needle.  What a wonderful shop!  I hope I live long enough to make my way to OK and visit in person some day, but for now I enjoy their online venue. Lindy writes a monthly newsletter full of info about their latest products and events and sometimes a few personal comments...this one had me at the word STASH.

We had a discussion in the shop today -- centering around THE STASH.  THE STASH is your 'home base, your security, your legacy.' (Some poor souls think it's a nagging reminder of what you haven't done yet...) WE, on the other hand, prefer to regard your PRECIOUS STASH as your Potential for Creativity!  ~Lindy, The Silver Needle Newlsetter, 5.12.09 

Now don't we sewers agree with that concept!  I refer to mine as a collection, one to be savored over time and used with care and planning. The potential energy that exists in that stash is palpable and serves to stimulate, entice, comfort and provide pleasure beyond its actual worth. Women, especially, are too quick to feel "guilty" about unused resouces. Whatever your stash is to you... home base, security, legacy... let's remember that sometimes the potential has a worth all its own.

Textural Fabric

When my husband cooks for us, he makes some marvelous dishes that incorporate many different flavors, colors and consistencies. Last night we had his wonderful chicken salad--poached white meat chicken, granny smith apples, red seedless grapes, raisins or prunes and walnuts-- all blended with a fabulous dressing that he tweaks every time we have it! I love the texture! 

Well its the same way with fabric, isn't it? As you know I am a fan of fiber blends, especially if they are primarily blended natural fibers. Lately, we've seen a number of fabrics that not only have blended fiber content, but are blended in surface interest also! There are some seriously fun fabrics in the newest Back Room collections.

For instance, look at this amazing printed knit. The stripes are knitted and the print appears to be underneath the stripes...this is one of those "how dey do 'dat?"  fabrics.  Here's what we surmise...we think the stripes in the fabric are synthetic and those yarns resist the dye of the print.  If you have another theory, let us now.  We just know we love it! 

 

See back view to the right.  Notice the print is not evident on th back at all.  Here's the copy I wrote to try to capture this for our customers. 

This incredible printed knit jersey is created with Florida in mind! The print looks to be under the striping giving the appearance of a vision through window blinds. In reality the stripe is knitted and the print created to make it appear that the stripes are on top. Very fun to look at! The colorations are oh so summery! Stripes are soft peach, whisper pink, and soft buttery yellow. The print peeks through in mid-tone aqua, kiwi, toasted coral, chocolate, and nut tones of brown. This is a must have print for a unique top or dress. 48% viscose/47% polyester/5% elastic printed knit from Canvasbacks.) See Royal Palm in The Back Room

This next beauty offers a stunning combination of features. From my perspective the base cloth was dyed, then embroidered, then overprinted and finally crinkled.  The result?  Incredible depth of color and texture.  

  See Cloister Inn in the Back Room

Quality Fabrics in the Market

I'm not much of a consumer these days, but I hauled myself over to the mall Sunday for a few necessities.  While there I felt compelled (LOL) to do some snoop shopping.  I didn't waste my time in the department stores, but went right for the high-end women's clothing purveyors!  I generally enjoy shopping and sometimes making purchases in these stores... not so today!  I've never seen so many poor fabrics in one place!  Really I was shocked... I had heard others complaining about the poor quality, but today I focused and saw for myself what consumers of women's clothing are up against.  In some cases the styling was quite appealing, but the craftsmenship and the fabric was disappointing.  Knits are so thin, nothing like the wonderful viscose knits we see from Italy.  The silks were harsh and lacked the fine hand we are so accustomed to.  Some of the cottons were good quality, but they were few and far between and there was very little linen to be found. 

How fortunate we are as sewers that we still have choices for fine quality fabric.  I hear rumblings from suppliers that this will dry up, but so far we are still able to get the truly fine fabrics from Europe and elsewhere around the globe.  We are snapping up all we can find!

Take a look at this stunning beauty from Italy!  Wool/silk blend--divine!

Hands Across the Generations

I've been thinking a lot lately about sharing... sharing our love of handcrafts.  In January, I made my annual call to my dear friend Alice on her birthday.  Alice is one of my sewing mentors.  What a wealth of knowledge she has accumulated over her 86 years.  There was a time when I spent one pleasure-filled day a week at Alice's studio, happily mingling with other sewers, sharing successes and pondering challenges on our particular projects at the time.  I learned so much there!  And met so many wonderful people (I was going to say women, but indeed there was the occasional man, too) who all shared my enthusiasm for dressmaking and tailoring.  All the techniques I had learned in classes, books and in my own sewing room seemed to come together in that room and make sense!  What a joy to be part of such a community.  I miss it to this day. 

I am fortunate to work in an environment where fabric (my first love) and sewing are the business of the day!  Most of our staff are well-experienced garment sewers and many engage in other handcrafts as well — knitting, stitching, handbags, beading, fabric painting... You can see that this is a very creative place to be!  I count myself lucky to be in such surroundings every day.  If I have a question about how a particular fabric will work for a type of garment, we have a group "think."  Sometimes a beautiful fabric comes into the warehouse and we are not sure how our customers would use it in garment construction.  My question:  What's your vision?  It's so much fun to hear the different responses and the answers open my mind to so many possibilities that had not been there before the question was posed. 

All of us in the creative arts need this kind of community.  How lucky for us that these opportunities exist online.  On Friday, we had a busy day at the warehouse with lots of visitors.  As I worked around the room with our various customers, I was struck by the wide range of age and experience of those present.  All were happily coming in and out of their own reverie to interact with one another (strangers, all) and exclaim over the selections of another customer or offer an opinion on the choices available.  One of the customers was new to SBDF and told me she found us through Pattern Review. We talked about the importance of online communities and she shared with me her view that part of the joy of handcrafting is the cross-generational aspect — the ability to learn from others more experienced and in turn to teach others. So true — a kindred spirit!

I've spent the weekend working on our community at SBDF.  As most of you know from our previous post, our Savvy Sewer Salon has recently been upgraded to a sleeker look with more options for users.  We have active sew-alongs right now and more coming a little later in the spring.  We invite all of you to register in the Salon and participate in whatever way works best for you.  If you're a lurker, that's just fine.  If you like posing questions to sewers who may have different experience than yours, that's just fine.  If you enjoy sharing your progress on a particular project, great.  If you would like to coordinate a sew along or do a book review or tell an experience you've had with a particular technique, great!  We just want to encourage all of you to join us in the Salon as often as you can.  The greater the group, the greater the camaraderie. 

If you are on Facebook, there's a new face there too!  (I've learned it's a sign of spring when all the cyber highways start making road repairs!)  We're new to Facebook this year, but our public profile page is growing.  We post Fabric Facts each week with interesting tidbits about particular fabrics we have in stock.  We post announcements of Sew Alongs and other upcoming events.  We post photos of life around the warehouse or customer projects.  You can post your photos there too — fan photos.  We'd love to have you visit the page often and post to the wall.  What are you looking for on our Facebook page?  Let us know.

So this weekend, I decided it was time to Twitter.  We're just getting started, but we'll do our best to keep new and interesting info coming your way.  We hope to use Twitter to notify you of updates or little tweets about our daily accomplishments at SBDF.  Come follow us on Twitter!

We hope that all of our customers and followers will find a venue that suits their needs for communal sewing talk!  Join us in whatever way/s work for you! 

New and Improved for Spring

We have some new faces for spring!  We recently upgraded the system that powers our Savvy Sewer Salon.  The new interface provides a sleeker look and offers some new features to improve your experience when you visit the Salon.

Salon Home

As you scroll down the Salon Home page, the Forums will highlight in yellow for ease of reading. 

The icons next to each forum will turn red when there are new posts since your last visit. 

You can see other venues from the Sawyer Brook Community on the right hand feature bar.

While we were at it, we did some spring cleaning and organized the forums in like groups:

Concierge--Always there for questions and help on the workings of the forum

Sewing and Collaboration--Active sewers share ideas, techniques, successes and challenges!

The Art of Sewing--Whether its a question for another sewer, some insight on interfacing or fabric care or just a comment on buttons, this is place to discuss!

Sewing Lifestyle--All things fun that are related to sewing.

Forum Pages

In addition to the breadcrumb navigation at the top of the page, you'll find easy to use features for search, print and email.

You can also navigate to any other forum using "jump" at the bottom of the page.

You can now share any forum or topic with your friends on Facebook by using the link at the top next to the RSS feed link.

Users

If you are already registered in the Salon, be sure to check in on Member Settings as there are new features there, too!

OK, my all time favorite new feature??  We can now save a post in draft.  How many times do you get part way through a post and get interupted?  Now you can save and come back later!!  Yay!

Baltic Blues

Yesterday a customer brought something to our attention that we wanted to share.  She had purchased Baltic Jersey, one of our wonderful rayon knits from Bill Blass.  When she pre-washed it, she found that it bled profusely.  Wisely, she had washed it separately so no harm done to other fabrics or garments, but she was kind enough to call and tell us so we could pass on that information. We are aware that fully saturated colors such as the intense marine blue of this jersey are potential bleeders.  We wanted to check it out so we could warn people of this.  Working in a warehouse with a bathroom that is 60 feet away makes handwashing a bit of a chore, but here's what we found!

The bowl on the right is our first dunk...as you can see, plenty of dye is left in the water.  After an hour or so of drying, we tried again...bowl on the left shows a lot less.  We think if we continued, the bleeding would stop.  From our observation, the color of the jersey was not impacted very much.  We will compare it to an unwashed piece on Monday.  We had to wait for air dry... no laundromat at the warehouse either!!!

We went on to test wash several other of the knits and found a lot less bleeding in the less intense colors.  As always, we continue with our mantra about pre-washing all your fabric before going to finished garment. Thanks to our loyal customers who share their experiences.  You can count on us to pass it on!

Eco-Friendly Fabrics II - Lenpur

We were excited to find this new fiber.  We'd read about it, but had not actually "handled" the goods, so to speak!

Lenpur is a cellulose-based fiber made from the bark of white pine branches or pine mulch.  These trees are cultivated for this purpose and the parts of the tree used are only those that do not contribute to the on-going life of the tree.  I first thought, this might be a very rustic product.  I guess it’s the white pine connotation.  I expected a cotton-like flannel or a knit, something like the early organic cotton products.  But no, it is much more akin to a fine rayon, but with a cottony hand. When we actually found a knit made from Lenpur, we were pleased with the exceptional quality. 

In addition to its earth friendly qualities, Lenpur is reputed to have people friendly qualities such as great absorbency, ability to release dampness  and a “anti-odor” mechanism that functions as deodorant!  For the science behind this claim, read this.

Many manufacturers are using Lenpur in performance garments and in undergarments.  We purchased this fabric as an over-run from Linda Loudermilk, a luxury eco-designer. Her ready-to-wear garments are couture quality and she specializes in using fabrics that are made from sustainable  products. 

We are very satisfied with the result in these jersey knits and hope to find more products like these to share with you.

Conifer–Deep Aqua

Conifer–Dark Chocolate

Eco-friendly Fibers

We've had a great time lately learning about some of the new fibers we're seeing from designer workrooms.  Recently we brought into stock a wonderful tweed in gray/green tones. Isn't this lovely to look at?  The yarns are twisted bright olive and silver gray resulting in an overall gray/green coloration.  We named the fabric Amaized!  When you read on, you'll find out why.  Subscribers have the swatch in their mailbox this week.

The fiber is an updated blend of Ingeo and wool.  What's Ingeo?  Ingeo is a trade name for a biopolymer created using corn rather than petroleum  The resulting fiber is similar to polyester, but has some qualities more associated with natural fibers. For those who want a more scientific description of the process, you can check out the manufacturer's web site.  In researching the fiber more we found the following characteristics ascribed to it:  breathability, (some manufacturers are using it for socks), colorfastness, wrinkle resistance,  shrink resistance, stain resistance and hypoallergenic qualities.  This is all good!  We also have read that the fiber blends well with natural fibers. This is the case with our current offering.  We think it's a great suiting which has stability and a subtle crispness for tailored details. 

We went on to find out how this new fiber reacted to a burn test.  We found that it first sputtered like wool, then as the flame grew (rather than self-extinguishing like wool would do) we saw other responses that were new to us!  Take a look:

Burn Test for Ingeo from Sawyer Brook Fabrics on Vimeo.

Based on the burn test we were able to determine that one of our newest knits, Suminigashi, was actually Ingeo rather than polyester or nylon as we first thought.  We'll keep an eye out for more as we go forward.  Many designers and manufacturers are searching out Ingeo to satisfy the needs of their customers who are looking for a green solution in their clothing.  We'd love to hear from you when you sew with any of these fabrics.

Suminigashi- Ancient Japanese Art

When Colleen took the photo of our newest knit fabric, she told me that she thought she knew how the print had been created.  I invited her to write a guest blog. ...Thanks Colleen!

The recent arrival of a printed fabric at the warehouse door took me back to many years ago, the 80’s if my memory serves me correctly, when I took a day class at our local art museum on paper marbleizing. It was such an unusual technique of getting ink on paper (or it can be done with silk) with such stunning results that I never forgot it.

I remembered the process involved a water bath in which eyedroppers of different colors of ink were randomly applied to the surface. The inks floated on top of the water in their separate circles of color. The colors did not automatically mix together.  Then an implement like a knife or skewer, was gently and slowly drawn through the floating inks on the waters surface.  This swirled the colors into beautiful one-of-a-kind patterns. Lastly, a sheet of paper was gently placed on the surface in a roll-on, roll-off motion, so as to minimally disturb the inks.  This transferred the pattern to the paper. The paper was then left to dry.

The finished papers could then be cut and used as blotter edge covers, pencil holder covers, or the edges sheets of paper could be marbleized to make personalized stationary. This was the time before personal computers remember, when people had formal desk set-ups. I, of course, was thinking what cool scarves and such you could make!

So again, when the swirly knit came in, it brought me back to that fun day at the museum. I looked up the technique on the web and found that is called suminagashi. It originated in Japan in the 12^th century and means floating inks.  There are instructions on how to do the technique on ABSOLUTEARTS Blog, eHow, and a step by step pictorial on the DIY Network site, just to name a few I came across. I found differences in the ingredients and techniques in each one as well as varying suggestions on how to achieve better results. There are also crafting kits available like Magic Dip if you want to go that route.

We think this fabric was created by using this technique on a paper medium and then transfering to the knit fabric by a print technique.  Whatever the technique, the result is stunning!

See the fabric at Suminigashi.