This past weekend, Jeane and I were talking about sampling. Both why it’s important and why I, personally, have such trouble doing it. When working on the shirt last year, the benefit of sampling was absolutely clear. I’d never have come up with the final fabric had I skipped that step, and I ended up with a garment that pleases me to no end. Keeping that in mind, why do I still struggle with sampling? After thinking hard about it, I settled on the fact that it’s really, really time consuming. And it means a lot of time and effort to get, well, a scrap of cloth. That’s a tiny bit less appealing than going straight to a project – or minimizing the amount of sampling that I do. That realization hatched another Crazy Idea for this coming year. Lynn, you are also a bit responsible for this. Your thought of working toward, and building, a sample book got me to wonder if we can’t all work together on this sampling thing. As each of us works on a garment, or project, I’d like to toss out the idea that we *all* sample for it and then exchange what we’ve got. For example, if I want to do something in wool, but don’t know about sett, I could hand off two sample setts while I do the third. I’d even be willing to wind\/send a warp if that’d make the process go more quickly. Then we’d each weave off our portion, cut and finish and send to the other two. That way, we’d get a wide variety of samples, at different setts, and help to build out our respective sample books. Jeane even said that she’d be up for joining in. So there’s my next crazy idea. And, I’m totally in for helping you two with sampling as well. Thoughts?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This past weekend, Jeane and I were talking about sampling. Both why it’s important and why I, personally, have such trouble doing it. When working on the shirt last year, the benefit of sampling was absolutely clear. I’d never have … Continue reading