Collar trim with mountain motif

Collar trim with mountains and lilies

June - July 2023

Materials: Maysville Carpet Warp (8/4 Cotton), 20/2 spun silk weft

Tools: 23 weaving cards

Circumference (collar): 50 cm (19.7 in)

Length (button placket): 20 cm (8 in)

Width: 3.5 cm (1.4 in)

 

Having made a variety of different belts and straps already, I wanted to try the other major historical use for tablet weaving - adding decorative trim to garments. I decided to make a Kosovorotka, a type of traditional Slavic peasant shirt which typically features colorful trim on the collar and sleeves. Sewing the shirt itself was very simple (garments historically worn by peasants tend to be as straightforward as possible) - making and applying the trim was the real point of this project.

I started with the defining feature of this type of shirt, the collar (Kosovortka translates to "skewed collar", and gets its name from the fact that the buttons are positioned off to one side of the collar). I wanted to come up with my own design for this, and, as usual, I did so by messing around with Tablet Weaving Draft Designer. I guess I still had mountains on my mind after my trip to Mexico earlier that year, because I quickly fixated on the idea of making a mountain motif. To fill the spaces between the mountains, I came up with that 3-pointed shape. It wasn't really meant to represent anything, but in hindsight I think it's kind of reminiscent of a stylized iris or lily flower, so let's go with that. I also came up with a novel style for the borders, using a mix of colors to create a border that was consistent but a little chaotic.

 

Since I didn't want the trim to be too bulky, I once again used the thinner 20/2 silk thread as the weft, while continuing to use the 8/4 cotton for the warp. 

 

The collar that I was going to make with this consists of 2 pieces - the standing collar that wraps around the neck and is thus oriented horizontally, and the placket for buttoning the shirt, which extends down from it vertically. Once I had woven more than enough to make the first part, I changed up my pattern, because mountains only really make sense when the band is horizontal. For the vertical portion, I simply replaced the mountains with more of the "lilies".

 

To sew the collar trim onto the garment, I followed this Russian youtube tutorial. This part was a little nerve-wracking, as I had to cut up something I'd spent many hours weaving, and some of the steps could not be undone without re-weaving the trim. Thankfully I didn't make any major errors, although my work was pretty messy, and I ended up doing a few bits of hand-sewing to cover/clean up some of it. 

 

All that was left after that was to add buttons and buttonholes. There were a few possible ways to go about this, and I ended up going with a hidden placket with the buttonholes so as to avoid putting holes in the woven piece.

 

Weaving Pattern

• Mountains and lilies:
  
• As a TDD file (for importing into and modifying in Tablet Weaving Draft Designer)
  
• As an image (ready to be followed for weaving)
• Just the lilies:
• As a TDD file (for importing into and modifying in Tablet Weaving Draft Designer)
  
• As an image (ready to be followed for weaving)

References

1. Tablet Weaving Draft Designer software: https://jamespbarrett.github.io/tabletweave/ 

2. Kosovorotka sewing tutorial: https://youtu.be/HizCNOezCWw