Kilt start to finish

[idyllicchick]

ThreadBbdr: You made linen?! Wow! I would love to see that garment. How long did it take you from start to finish?

Wsk: Pretty! I am no spinner, but I know beautiful work when I see it!

Lyrd: It's going to take a lot of trial and error. Choosing the type of wool to use (We're leaning towards a lambswool from New England right now.), experimenting with thread thickness, playing with dying, not to mention the time it will take to actually spin the thread. Then we'll have a slew of weaving experiments to run including how tight to weave the fabric, how thick our warp threads should be versus our weft threads, and lots of practicing! I've only made one kilt, so I'll be practicing that as well. Plus, we'll both be working our full time jobs all the while! I think five years might be a conservative estimate! =)

[matheson]

Choosing the type of wool to use (We're leaning towards a lambswool from New England right now.), experimenting with thread thickness, playing with dying, not to mention the time it will take to actually spin the thread. Then we'll have a slew of weaving experiments to run including how tight to weave the fabric, how thick our warp threads should be versus our weft threads, and lots of practicing! I've only made one kilt, so I'll be practicing that as well. Plus, we'll both be working our full time jobs all the while! I think five years might be a conservative estimate! =)

I imagine it will take less work for someone who does it quite often, but still it is the vast quantity of work + the quality of end product * patience.
However, what I really quoted this for was to say yea! for the NE lambswool, I think you'll like your results a lot. As to the thread thickness, dying etc, I think you'll find that once you've established exactly the type of wool you're going to use it won't take but a day to knock out the other experiments. Certain types of wool will just not take certain dyes, or go thinner than a certain amount, etc. I wish you much luck with your project, however, as it sounds a vast deal more than I could do.

[ThreadBbdr]

I wish I still had it. It was a leine (long) shirt. It was a great project! This was about 30 years ago and I've totally lost track of the Old Boyfriend for whom it was made (we both got married to different people.)

It took me about 6 months to spin all the linen, and I was spinning a LOT. I ended up having to buy some flax, as my crop only produced about 2/3 of what I needed and I didn't want to wait for a whole year to get the rest. I hackeled it all together (that's like combing or carding for wool - arranging the fibers for spinning). The weaving went pretty fast - a couple of months. It was plain weave, 25 inches wide or so and about 20 yards long. If I remember right, it was about 24 epi or so - fairly coarse. I used a "dummy" warp so that I didn't loose any of the handspun. I can tailor a shift or leine in a week by hand. So maybe 9 months altogether plus another four or five months to grow the flax and get it retted (I used wet or bog retting, which is a LOT faster).

I did a lot of crazy things back in the re-enactment days LOL.