Here's a beginning ... lightweight sweaters in red and purple for mittens, the bright jewel tones in silk (jacket), woven pinks and burgandy in a wool blend (jacket), and a sort of tweedy wool jacket that's actually a warm tan rather then the grey this photo makes it look like.
A glimmer of an idea has been percolating around in the back of my mind for a while now and is beginning to take on a bit of a shape.
I want to do some experimenting.
Fancy that, huh?
Oh but I really do want to try some things, just for the fun of it.
For one thing, my daughter Tess wants a certain type of mitten and I know exactly how to get her exactly what she wants ... I just have to DO it!
'Frip-Shopping', for those unfamiliar with the term (which would be everyone except for a handful of us) means heading out on a quest to go to every second-hand store a person can find, usually in search of one particular thing or type of thing. Equally usually, it means coming home with a whole bunch of stuff you never even thought of buying - in addition to (or in lieu of) what you set out to look for.
It's one of the most incredibly fun things in this whole entire world.
So what am I going to be in quest of as soon as I can manage to get started on this quest of mine?
Old woolen sweaters, mainly.
Anything else that's 100% wool.
In as many different fabric weights as possible.
Tess wants lightweight mittens, which probably ought to NOT be woolen, but I will most certainly find somebody's old sweater in a different kind of fabric (the kind she wants) and can make more than one pair of mittens out of it - so she will get her mittens and I will have a couple more items to add to my collection of stuff!
So if I don't want all that wool for mittens for Tess, what do I want the wool for?
I want it for my own self.
Woven or knit doesn't really matter to me, so long as it's 100% wool.
Because I'm going to dismantle the biggest men's sweaters I can find, wash them in the hottest water I can manage (boil the heck out of them in my new old kettle maybe) and then dry them on a hot dryer setting. I'm going to felt them is what I'm going to do.
And then I'm going to make myself some of those awesome boots that my friend Marian made for me and which I've just about gotten totally worn out.
Okay, they're not worn out, but the seams are coming loose in the pair I wear all the time.
I'm going to experiment and see what I can come up with for designs.
Ha.
With my luck I'll end up with a really big felted ball all wadded up.
Still, it's worth a try.
I can make myself some boots with however many inside pads I want (cut to exactly fit my feet and stacked up inside the soles of the boots, yep), nice and thick for the winter time. And summer moccasins.
I can make felted bags to hang on my belts, to match the boots.
I can make leggings to match.
I can make mittens to match.
I can make scarves to match.
I can make hats to match.
Being as this is all extremely experimental, second-hand stores - Frip Shops - are my best bet for finding what I'm looking for.
I'm going to be looking for woolen dresses, sized extra large.
And men's sweaters, as big as I can find.
I'm thinking that if I get a big enough man's sweater, I can use the arms for boots - the shrinkage will be considerable, you know, as the hot hot water and hot hot dryer take their toll.
Once it's felted, I can cut it into whatever shapes I want and it won't unravel.
Heh heh.
That means I don't have to worry about anything except for the strength of my seams.
I'm hoping to get the boots from the sleeves, and from the body of the sweater (IF this experiment works) will come mittens, scarf, and hat. The leggings I'm thinking will only happen if I come across a couple of matching sweaters so I can use the second one for the leggings - depending on how big the sweaters are to begin with I reckon.
While I'm out there Frip-Shopping I'll also be on the lookout for 100% cotton, linen, and silk. Those are for the pants, tunics, cloaks, and chitons.
If by chance I find a big woolen blanket I'll be a very happy woman - because I can do a lot with one of those!
Since it's all experimental I'm NOT going to want to invest huge amounts of cash in something that might not work.
If it does work, so much the better - I can expand my Frip-Shopping (since the shops nearest to me will be darned well out of wool, cotton, linen, and silk) and get on with expanding my wardrobe!
The thing about wool and silk especially is that they're warm in the winter and cool in the summer. Believe it. The warmest long johns are silk. Expensive, of course, but worth every nickel. Me, I can't afford them - unless I happen across a skirt that some great big lady has donated to a Frip Shop. In that case I can probably buy said skirt for five bucks and have enough silk to make myself a pair of really great pants (or two or three if the lady was really big) that I can wear in the summer and that can double as under-drawers in the winter. The same goes for wool.
And you know how easy it is to make a pair of pants, right?
Same for tunics, and easier yet are chitons.
So yeah.
I'm definitely looking forward to heading to our local Frip Shop ASAP, to see what I can see. Then it will be road-tripping out in that wonderful thing called Fibonacci (spiral) to the next towns, and then the next ones.
Another great source for already felted wool are the old coats, those really long ones. I got one last summer that I was going to make into pants and some lightweight boots but never got around to it. The coat is WAY too big for me, goes down to my ankles and I can darned near wrap it twice around me. This winter when it was cold COLD I thought what the heck I'm gonna wear that thing!
And so I did.
Very handy, I have to say. Warm as all get-out and plenty long enough so that my legs never got the least bit cold, either! Not only that, it's plenty big enough for me to wear like five sweaters under it if I wanted to - which I never did but I could have.
Yes I'm going to take it apart and make it into pants, because that's what I got it for after all ... and because it's a great color, a dark forest green that I really like. And yes I'll see if I can make some little boots out of it too. It's too thin to be good for winter boots ... unless ... I suppose I could double the recipe, so to speak, if there's enough left after the pants and light boots, and make a pair that's bigger enough to go over the small ones with a thick liner between them and inside soles like the ones I made out of the scraps of that wool blanket I turned into pants and a tunic. The pants turned out great; the tunic not so much.
If ever I get bold enough, I might do a 'tutorial' and stick it into my YouTube channel. You won't believe how quickly you can make a pair of pants - ten minutes and I'm telling you true here. Otherwise, believe me, this woman would not do it. I'm not much of a seamstress, so the simplicity of the ancient styles is something I really appreciate.
Another thing I really appreciate is Frip Shops. Cheap fabric so I can play to my heart's content without worrying overmuch whether or not my experiments are going to turn out.
# UPDATE!
As you can tell by the photo at the top of the post, I did indeed get a few things to begin playing with ...
Now let's see what I can do with them!
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