Sleeve trim with lily motif

Sleeve trim with lilies

September 2023

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

Tools: 31 weaving cards

Length: ~ 30 cm (11.8 in) per sleeve

Width: 42 mm (1.7 in)

 

Continuing with the Kosovorotka (Slavic peasant shirt) project, I wove some trim for the sleeves to match the collar. Since the cuffs of sleeves don't have a well-defined "up" or "down" direction, the mountain motif wouldn't make sense. So to design this trim, I started with the "lily-only" version of the trim design, which I had used for the vertical portion of the collar. I then widened the pattern by 8 cards, and filled the new space between the flowers with a long snaking zigzag. 

 

As with the collar trim, I used a silk weft thread to reduce bulk. This was also around the time I switched to yet another makeshift shuttle. This one is a hard plastic spatula I got for a dollar at the local salvage yard. I like this one a lot. The straight, rigid edge is great for beating the weft down, and the handle is very convenient. The only downside is that while my right hand just grips the handle, my left hand has to press down on the somewhat sharp upper edge of the spatula, which can get painful after a while (You can see that I put some duct tape on that part to mitigate this a little).

Sewing the sleeve trim onto the garment was much easier than for the collar. I even managed to line it up so that the pattern appears to wrap continuously around the cuff, and I'm quite happy with how this ties together the look of the shirt. I also ended up with quite a bit of extra trim, some of which I attempted to fashion into standalone bracelets, but that didn't really work out.

Weaving Pattern

• 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