There's a reason it's a hobby
Oct. 13th, 2005 18:50![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
torquillI went to the fabric store today.
I was looking for a couple of things: fabric to make a car cover from, probably a cotton duck or some such, and knit cotton for a new bathrobe. Shopping for bathrobes is a pain (I dislike terrycloth), and I could just use my current ragged one as a pattern... it's not complex.
For the first, I roughly measured the car, then went to look at prices. For a heavy cover that wouldn't weigh a thousand pounds (like canvas tents), duck would do well... except that it's $7 a yard. For three panels (top and sides) seven yards in length... well, I'd be paying about $150 for fabric alone. Suddenly the professional prices of $150-200 don't seem so outlandish, though they are still out of budget. Sigh.
So that's out, unless I want to sew several covers from old sheets and replace them as they wear out. I might, if Freecycle or Craigslist doesn't turn anything up.
On to the cotton knits. At which point I made a discovery: there is no such thing as a 100% cotton knit fabric at my fabric store.
No T-shirt fabric. No casual knit cottons. No cotton flannel knits. The best I found (most were much worse) was 80% cotton/20% polyester... for sweatsuit material. (!!) WTF? Who the hell wants to wear polyester when they're sweaty?
If I want cotton, it must be woven, apparently, because that's what the quilters want. So I could make a bathrobe out of woven cotton flannel... in a pinch, I could do that, but I wanted knits because they stretch. If the cotton/lycra knit weren't a 50/50 mix I'd use that, but that's still too high in the synthetics for me, even though I'm tolerant of lycra. Bah.
So I browsed the brocades, picked up a few remnants, and figured I'd satisfy my current sewing urge by starting my T-shirt memory quilt (cutting apart old T-shirts and sewing the silkscreened bits onto quilting squares). I have a box upstairs that's been waiting for me to start taking the old souvenir shirts apart... once I have a few pieces I can go to the fabric or quilting store and get some contrasting colored squares.
But now I truly understand why home sewing is a hobby, and why home-sewn items never seem quite right to me. It's all polyester, all of it. Sigh.
I was looking for a couple of things: fabric to make a car cover from, probably a cotton duck or some such, and knit cotton for a new bathrobe. Shopping for bathrobes is a pain (I dislike terrycloth), and I could just use my current ragged one as a pattern... it's not complex.
For the first, I roughly measured the car, then went to look at prices. For a heavy cover that wouldn't weigh a thousand pounds (like canvas tents), duck would do well... except that it's $7 a yard. For three panels (top and sides) seven yards in length... well, I'd be paying about $150 for fabric alone. Suddenly the professional prices of $150-200 don't seem so outlandish, though they are still out of budget. Sigh.
So that's out, unless I want to sew several covers from old sheets and replace them as they wear out. I might, if Freecycle or Craigslist doesn't turn anything up.
On to the cotton knits. At which point I made a discovery: there is no such thing as a 100% cotton knit fabric at my fabric store.
No T-shirt fabric. No casual knit cottons. No cotton flannel knits. The best I found (most were much worse) was 80% cotton/20% polyester... for sweatsuit material. (!!) WTF? Who the hell wants to wear polyester when they're sweaty?
If I want cotton, it must be woven, apparently, because that's what the quilters want. So I could make a bathrobe out of woven cotton flannel... in a pinch, I could do that, but I wanted knits because they stretch. If the cotton/lycra knit weren't a 50/50 mix I'd use that, but that's still too high in the synthetics for me, even though I'm tolerant of lycra. Bah.
So I browsed the brocades, picked up a few remnants, and figured I'd satisfy my current sewing urge by starting my T-shirt memory quilt (cutting apart old T-shirts and sewing the silkscreened bits onto quilting squares). I have a box upstairs that's been waiting for me to start taking the old souvenir shirts apart... once I have a few pieces I can go to the fabric or quilting store and get some contrasting colored squares.
But now I truly understand why home sewing is a hobby, and why home-sewn items never seem quite right to me. It's all polyester, all of it. Sigh.
