Oversized ‘Bum’ Jacket

The fabric used to make this oversized jacket was woven on my loom a while back. Suddenly I saw it made into this type of jacket. It is utterly sumptuous to wear, soft and cosy, lovely to the touch. It’s all in the combinations of the yarns used.

The fabric was woven with a knobby type of cotton yarn onto a base of super soft off-white and grey Alpaca yarn. This was a dream to weave. Most of the time I design a cloth for a particular garment. In this case I just had to weave with these two yarns. The pattern is a twill, a pattern so ancient as to take us far back in history, its traces now only to be found in small samples of cloth with its natural dyes and patterns still intact.

The lining of the main body is of the finest cotton muslin, while the sleeve lining is a silk, making it easy to get on and off. The colour of the sleeves is a lovely light sky blue and the main body is a deeper blue that was dyed with a natural indigo plant dye. This has to be emphasised, as indigo is now made synthetically. Although the process of dyeing is one and the same, the results are subtly different.

The coat has two front pockets. The zip is 22 3/4 inches (58 cm) long. The neck is kind of large. The cuffs and neck-band are 100% cotton, and the garment fits with ease a size 38 (medium). Between the outer and the inner layer there is also a layer of up-cycled soft cotton fabric. I might sew another jacket like this but then it will be in a completely different fabric. The only antidote to throwaway culture is to keep.