Hurrah! My Gypsy Jacket is done

Last summer, I bought a huge cone of variegated red shaded mohair at one of our fave thrift shops.

Ever since then, I’ve been thinking: Ooooh…. gotta weave myself a red jacket with that yarn….

copyright Noreen Crone-Findlay

Just before Christmas,  I thought- Mmmm… why don’t I warp up that neat red mohair and weave myself a new jacket to wear to Jim’s Christmas concert? (My husband, Jim, is a jazz musician extraordinaire, and his trio always does a jazzy Christmas concert every year).

So… I got warped, and wove and wove and wove…and wove up 2 yummy lengths of freeform weaving yardage for the jacket.

I had scissors clutched in my hand, poised above the yardage, about to cut it out, using a pattern that I had never made before.

Luckily, my little inner ‘Oh Oh Voice’ popped up and asked if I was nuts, and shouldn’t I consider making the jacket up in commercial fabric first before I slashed my way through my yards of handwoven treasure?

I went… oh… what a good idea.

I whipped up the jacket in some stash fabric and was aghast to discover that it looked truly horrible on me! Yikes!

Luckily, it looks fab on my daughter in law.

I was so put off by the whole thing that I folded the fabric up, plopped it on the top of a shelf in the studio and carried on with Christmas-ing.

Last week, when I realized that the concert that the ‘Road to Django’ concert that Jim was playing in on the 23rd was a really important one for him, I thought: I need to make something really spiffy to wear to it!

And discovered that I didn’t have anywhere near enough fabric, as I am quite tall  and that means that there is a lot of me to cover!

So, I warped up and wove the 2 sleeves for my Gypsy Jacket.

And then, started snipping and stitching it all together.

Did I take pics of the process?

No… my camera is stuffed full of step by step photos for my new book, and so I didn’t want to take the time to deal with those while I was frantically building the jacket.

As we were racing out the door to the concert, I had to leave one pocket still on the loom.

Just not enough time to finish the weaving, and to get it stitched onto the jacket.

I had some doubts, as I was putting the jacket together…. I wasn’t sure that it was going to work.

BUT… I love it!

It is the MOST comfortable jacket – and it’s just plain fun to wear.

NOW… I can hardly wait to get warped up for the next one!

Here’s a larger view of the jacket:

copyright Noreen Crone-Findlay

What looms did I use? A 24 inch rigid heddle loom, an inkle loom, a potholder loom, a frame loom, and a 2 inch square vintage weave-it loom.

I stitched it all together by hand, but did use my sewing machine to zig zag the cut ends of the fabric.

Yarns: Mohair, silk, wool, cotton, chenille.

Today, I finished weaving the second pocket and stitched it onto the Gypsy Jacket.

By the way, the concert was FABULOUS!!!