#fabric content

[makereadgrow]

The Why of Sewing 3: Fabric Anatomy (Fiber Content)

This post is in a series I am starting that is going to talk about concepts in sewing and fiber arts and try and explain some of the whys behind the hows.

The beginner sewist is often (correctly) advised at the beginning of their journey to start with cotton fabric, sometimes specifically woven cotton, but not always. Nevermind that cotton fabric can vary from a tshirt to denim and canvas.

We have learned the difference between a knit and a woven fabric in my previous posts (check the tag #the why of sewing which should bring up the whole series). Let's talk fiber content.

Like fabric structure I basically break fiber down into two groups: natural fibers and synthetic fibers. Below I am going to talk about the fibers you are most likely to encounter as you shop as a home sewist. It is NOT a complete list of fibers, nor could I list the entirety of fabric types made with each fiber.

Natural fibers: these are fibers that come from plants and animals and require minimal processing to be made into fabric.

Wool: This comes from sheep, which are sheared 1-2 times a year. The animal is not hurt in the process and even sheep not raised for fiber production must be sheared for their health. Wool is warm, but breathable. It can be easy to work with in some ways, but it does shrink when washed and so many modern sewists avoid wool. Some folks have sensitivities to wool as well. Wool is most commonly used in suitings and knits.

Image: Shorn sheep in a verdant field (Source: By Roger Kidd, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=13035358)

Silk: Silk is made from the cocoons of silkworms, and generally harvested prior to the hatching of silkworm larvae. Silk is expensive to produce and considered a luxury good. Silk is shiny and lightweight, it can be surprisingly warm. Silk can loose its sheen in the wash and because the fiber is so delicate it can be difficult to sew. There is a lot of misinformation on the production of both silk and wool online. Worm Spit has been educating fiber artists about the process of making silk since 2002.

Image: a vintage style poster showing various stages of the silkworm moth (By Bibliographisches Institut, in Leipzig - Meyers Konversations-Lexikon, 4th Auflage, Band 14, Seite 826a (4th ed., Vol. 14, p.826a), Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2317808)

Cotton: Cotton comes from the cotton plant, there are several varieties commonly grown and it is the most common natural fiber used in textile production. The cotton fiber comes from the seed head of the plant. Cotton can be made into light breathable fabrics and warm cosy fabrics. The list of fabrics made from cotton might actually be endless but here are a few you might encounter: jersey knits, denim, quilting cotton, gauze, lawn, voile, sweatshirting, twills, poplin, oxford cloth, canvas...

Image: the cotton boll, or seed pod (source: Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=689304)

Linen: Linen comes from the flax plant. The fiber comes from the long stem of the flax plant and can be difficult to break down into a usable state. It is also difficult for modern spinning equipment to make into threads, which is why linen tends to be quite expensive in comparison to cotton. Linen is cool to the touch and very strong. It also wrinkles very easily. Coarsely woven linen can be uncomfortable for some to wear. Linen tends to be made into simple plain woven fabric, occasionally knit fabrics, and can vary in weight from handkerchief linen (very fine, almost transparent) to canvas. I recently reblogged THIS POST which had some incredible links regarding linen production.

Image: linen cloth recovered from Qumran Cave 1 near the Dead Sea (Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=248420)

Synthetic fabrics: these are fibers that have been manufactured through industrial processes.

Polyester/Acrylic/Nylon: These fabrics are plastic. They are made from different types of plastic, but ultimately a liquid petrolum product is extruded into a long filiment and made into cloth. They can be made into woven or knit fabric. The way they are made can have many different properties. Generally polyester is what you find in the home sewing world. Polyester is not breathable and because it is oil based it tends to hold on to smells. It melts when it is too hot and therefore can only be ironed carefully. Polyester also tends to be very strong and can help make very sturdy fabrics. Because polyester is very inexpensive to produce it is frequently combined with other fibers to reduce production cost.

A diagram of "dry spinning" polyester fibers (source: https://encyclopedia.che.engin.umich.edu/fiber-spinning/)

Spandex/Lycra/Elastine: this is the stretchy stuff! Generally found in combination with other materials this is what makes fabric go beyond the mechanical stretch that is produced by the fabric structure. In small amounts mixed with cotton it makes a fantastic tshirt jersey, 100% spandex is great for swim and dancewear. As we discussed in the knit article I posted previously adding stretch to sewing does make it more complicated to work with, but used wisely spandex is your friend. Best not pressed excessively as the fiber has a protein structure that breaks down when it is hot. Also if you have a garment or fabric with a lot of spandex content you might want to consider avoiding the dryer.

Rayon/Viscose/Bamboo/Lyocell/Cupro/Tencel: There are SO MANY names for cellulose fabrics. These are sometimes categorized as semi-synthetic fibers, or even put in with natural fibers. They are all the same thing deep down. Cellulose (generally sourced from trees and plants) is chemically broken down into its most essential parts and then extruded into a filiment. These fibers were originally developed as a silk substitute. Rayons are fine, breathable, and have a drape that clings to the body. They shrink in the wash and can continue to shrink through several washes. They also can be fragile when wet. Rayons are made into both woven fabrics and knits and they tend to be thin and fine fabrics. Rayon fabrics, especially those labeled as bamboo are frequently greenwashed as environmentally friendly, because they are sourced from a renewable resource, but the process of producing cellulose fibers is highly polluting and uses significant amounts of water.

While there are outliers, most textiles you will encounter while shopping for fabric will be made of the above fibers. A deeper dive into these would be fun, but I find at least 3 potential rabbit holes I could go down every single post I make here.

[octal-codes]

The modder argument is a fallacy.

We've all heard the argument, "a modder did it in a day, why does Mojang take a year?"

Hi, in case you don't know me, I'm a Minecraft modder. I'm the lead developer for the Sweet Berry Collective, a small modding team focused on quality mods.

I've been working on a mod, Wandering Wizardry, for about a year now, and I only have the amount of new content equivalent to 1/3 of an update.

Quality content takes time.

Anyone who does anything creative will agree with me. You need to make the code, the art, the models, all of which takes time.

One of the biggest bottlenecks in anything creative is the flow of ideas. If you have a lot of conflicting ideas you throw together super quickly, they'll all clash with each other, and nothing will feel coherent.

If you instead try to come up with ideas that fit with other parts of the content, you'll quickly run out and get stuck on what to add.

Modders don't need to follow Mojang's standards.

Mojang has a lot of standards on the type of content that's allowed to be in the game. Modders don't need to follow these.

A modder can implement a small feature in 5 minutes disregarding the rest of the game and how it fits in with that.

Mojang has to make sure it works on both Java and Bedrock, make sure it fits with other similar features, make sure it doesn't break progression, and listen to the whole community on that feature.

Mojang can't just buy out mods.

Almost every mod depends on external code that Mojang doesn't have the right to use. Forge, Fabric API, and Quilt Standard Libraries, all are unusable in base Minecraft, as well as the dozens of community maintained libraries for mods.

If Mojang were to buy a mod to implement it in the game, they'd need to partially or fully reimplement it to be compatible with the rest of the codebase.

Mojang does have tendencies of *hiring* modders, but that's different than outright buying mods.

Conclusion

Stop weaponizing us against Mojang. I can speak for almost the whole modding community when I say we don't like it.

Please reblog so more people can see this, and to put an end to the modder argument.

[lovelylittlelobster]

As promised, here's the next animation! I've since redesigned my rendition of the Fabricator, so this will probably be the only shot that I finish, but for those curious the original animatic and some other behind the scenes tidbits are below the cut!

(Sorry to make it a YouTube link, but I don't currently know if there is a way to get more than one video onto a post and I didn't want to split this up into two separate posts! Either way, I hope everyone here enjoys, even if it's unfinished :] )

Also! I would like to mention that, since I likely won't be continuing this animation, that my ask box (should be) open for suggestions on what lines to animate next! It still amazes me that there are lines I've yet to hear even in my scouring for every scrap in this franchise, so I'd love to animate the lines that people love if possible! I can't guarantee how quickly I get to any of them, but I'll do my best with the time that I have!

[copypastus]

My gift for @thrumbolt for our acotar themed gift exchange. Rhys's mom with all the baby bats she took in.

[gabugabs]

that's reality tv babeeeyyy /// @infamous-if

[16th-of-a-twigg]

🐿️🗽 Ko-Fi

[larachelledrawsfe]

An encounter that will change his life...

[uno-san]

NO I DO NOT FANTASIZE ABOUT THAT DAMN SWEATER

[cupids-stimboards]

day 9: board based off fave group

event link

👾 🛹 / 🪨 📘 / 💕 🎼

[cats-spilled-wine]

Sooo, it's been some time since I last posted something, but in my defence, I was ✨️busy✨️.

Also, I decided to take a break from digital painting and focus on actually practising more. Yesterday, I was doing a pose/fabric-folds spontaneous practice session, and long story short, somehow ended up with a Greek-statue-like person in my sketchbook.

[teddykaczynski]

truthfully for years i thought i must have been some kind of genetic freak for how acidic my discharge could be and how literally bleached my black underwear could appear and i would try to internet search why that was what was going on and couldnt find any results. i think my search terms werent right, but also truthful information about womens health is just hard to find. and i also didnt think i could ask my mom about it because shes been wearing mormon underwear for years so i was pretty sure if it was possible the same thing could happen with her that she wouldnt have been able to notice. so i was just like. um. ok. hope i dont die from vagina bleach. but it didnt seem to cause any problems so.

[marketableplushieenthusiast]

Oh hey, I can just. Post pics of my plushies. Wild. Social media is amazing.

Shout out to Noonaneko on Etsy for this FANTASTIC boy who just came in the mail:

Kiki... My best friend Kiki...

She did a wonderful job designing my son, and he is very small and cute. Truly a wowzers moment.

(More pics below the cut)

Kinda silly how small he is compared to Ogerpon. She looks like she's patting his head!

He is a bit bigger than the trainer mascot plush line tho.

Hehe, varied scale plushies are funny.

[stick-ball]

If we get a scene where Jeremy teaches Jean how to play pool im gonna die. How is my fragile queer heart supposed to take the homoeroticism in that and not overthink.

[ismyteadoneyet]

~ " Even my attacker's eyes shine with the flames of my ancestors.

[...]

' So it's true. ' The stranger's r rolls lightly. Scottish maybe? ' What they say about yer aether. ' " ~

ʙʟᴏᴏᴅᴍᴀʀᴋᴇᴅ ʙʏ ᴛʀᴀᴄʏ ᴅᴇᴏɴɴ - ᴘᴀɢᴇ 31

Larkin Douglas my beloved <333

[ieytdconfessions]

Anon frustrated abt how this fandom treats transfeminine headcanons back to reply to someone asking me to clarify why I am bringing Phoenix vs Zor up in this.

A preliminary point of clarification: I am transmasc, but I also know that a lot of the stuff I see in headcanons about trans women and transfeminine people here are like. Very directly things that people have directed at the like. Real life trans women I know? Feels bad when I see it parroted back here. It is in fact weird to go "Well I can't fathom a trans woman". Fandom isn't praxis, but also, that's weird to say. Yes, even if you are also trans.

The simple answer is that a LOT of people write Phoenix as transmasc, which by itself is normal. I write Phoenix as transmasc. But I also see A LOT of people who tend to decide that Zor was AMAB and that does sort of fall into the same pitfall as "Juniper, character who uses mimicry as deception and who pretends to be at least one woman to further a plot to nuke the world, is a trans woman" and "the Fabricator, character who makes disguises and is consistently The Betrayer who carries out Zor's dirty work at Zoraxis, is the one of the/the only trans woman" does. In that if you are juxtaposing Phoenix as a tiny itty bitty little (usually skinny and androgynous) transmasc excitable chaos gremlin with Zor as a Big Masculine Serious Looming Murder Threat Who Hides Their Face. And then imply that Zor is transfeminine. This is in fact playing into both transmisogynistic stereotypes AND stereotypes about transmascs.

I am not asking for morally pure trans rep in the spies fandom. All of these characters will be "Bad Rep" on some level as spies are essentially fancy cops and Zoraxis is WalMart. However I am seeing a pattern and would like people to think before they post.

(I'll also admit that there are trans woman Fabricator interpretations that I like, but crucially those are headcanons that have any depth at all.)

If you think this is a personal attack on you specifically, no it isn't. If you have a headcanon you think about and it isn't the only time you've thought about it you're fine. This isn't about a single person.

.

[overwhelmedfernfrond]

1 Word Prompt:

-Jetty

Prompt word: Jetty

jet·ty

/ˈjedē/

noun

noun: jetty; plural noun: jetties

a landing stage or small pier at which boats can dock or be moored.

"Ben jumped ashore and tied the rowboat up to the small wooden jetty"

alternatively, a breakwater constructed to protect or defend a harbor, stretch of coast, or riverbank. "engineers constructed jetties in the river to control erosion"

-

Aisha sat on the edge of the slick pier, her long legs dangling just above the agitated sea. She felt the spray of the ocean on the skin of her cheeks, tasted the salt of the sea, waves crashing sonorously against the side of the jetty. Waves breaking rhythmically against the algae-covered, water-warped wood created the perfect backdrop for Aisha’s afternoon.

Sunlight warmed Aisha’s closed eyelids, filling her with a sense of innate comfort despite the impending storm, thundering clouds looming above her and waves upon waves crashing over one another in their eternal onslaught towards the shore. The air was electric, charged with barely restrained power, and others on the pier reacted appropriately, unaware of Aisha’s serenity as they rushed to gather nets, unload carrier ships, and welcome sailors and pirates and all manner of people to the harbour.

“Ey, man, give me that—”

“—aha, good journey?”

“Yes, ma’am, righ—”

“This way, fo—!”

“Sure, we might as well—”

“— Only three gold pieces!”

“Well, did you find it, or—”

What was it like, Aisha wondered, to travel across the sea, to loot, pillage, discover, recover, make a difference, negative or positive? She would never know.

She was content, however, to feel the salt-spray on her face, and listen. Content to live a life of eddies, rivulets running over the dock into others’ lives, snippets of stories to witness, jump from life to life, her own undisturbed, tranquil.

Aisha was just a listener, and a happy one, at that.

-

Thanks for the prompt, and thanks for reading :)

I quite enjoyed writing this

Thoughts?