Georgette Fabric?

Cheryl, georgette is a heavier version of chiffon, and has many of the same qualities: a creped weave, a lot of drape, and varying degrees of sheerness. You can make really lovely skirts and evening-type trousers with it, as well as dresses and blouses.

I use georgette a lot as a lining for skirts, and an underlining for sheers of all kinds, although most of the georgette I've ever seen was polyester, which I'm using less and less of.

Hope this helps!

Karen Maslowski in Cincinnati

Cheryl wrote:

You can still get wool and silk georgette: expensive but very beautiful. :)

It does seem a tad odd that you can get wool in a fine, semi-sheer fabric, but it's truly lovely when you do! :) My mum wore a wool geogette dress for my wedding, that was sunray pleated. Very floaty and femanine.

That's one I've not seen, Kate. I have a collection of unusual wools, and teach a class on wool, so have made a sample book that I pass around during my talk. It astonishes students to see the many "faces" of wool, including so incredibly sheer that it's more like organza than wool.

And of course silk georgette would be wonderful. I have seen it available from Rupert, Gibbon and Spider; their double crepe georgette sounds luscious:

Kate Dicey wrote:

Nun's veiling is my favourite wool fabric: like challis but finer... Yummmm... :)

This is where I have been buying my silks recently:

Yes, Silk Connection has great prices, especially if you buy in quantity, which I like. Ooh, nun's veiling sounds wonderful! I've never seen it here; do you have a source, like maybe close to Kensington?

No, Kate, I don't think we should go to Henry Bertrand. It looks like much too nice a place for me to be drooling all over the fabrics. :)

Karen Maslowski in Cincinnati

Kate Dicey wrote:

McCulloch and Wallis may have some... :)

Hehehehe... AM will be no help for that, but she could find us some cheap and cheerful fabrics...

Ohhh, that reminds me of the story someone told on the knitting mailing list probably a dozen years ago -- I can't do the story justice, but you will still get the drift. She and her husband were going around to farms looking for a fleece to buy. At this one farm she noticed a very small fleece and asked the farmer about it, and the farmer was terribly reluctant to part with the fleece. Seems it had come from a little lamb that didn't survive. Don't remember the exact story, but the farmer was devastated that this little lamb had died. Well, the lady talked the farmer into selling it and she left with the farmer almost in tears but knowing that the fleece had to be sold.

She took the fleece home, washed it and carded it (or whatever they do to prepare fleece for spinning), and then she spun it very, VERY fine and used the yarn to knit a lace shawl or something similar that was textured so fine that after it was made, she could pull the whole thing through her husband's wedding ring.

A year later after the shawl was done and when they were on their next annual fleece-buying trip, they went back to the same farm to show the farmer what she had created from the fleece of that precious-to-him little lamb, and that time the farmer *did* cry out of joy that his special fleece had been used to make something so exquisite.

It was a wonderful story, and I wish I had saved it.

What's the "V" one? (My brain is stuck on Vicuna... LOL) I just love that. It has such a beautiful hand.

(My DH is a UC grad btw)

Phae, what did your DH major in? Small world, eh?

Viyella? I love that, too, although never see it in stores.

Karen Maslowski in Cincinnati

Phaedr>

Architecture... yes it's a small world.

Yes, Viyella! I just could not remember that word. And I have not seen it in ages either. But I still have some in my "collection". ;)

Phae

I still have an off-white nun's veiling stole my mother made for me back when I was 18 or 19 and going to dinner dances in sometimes-draughty banqueting halls. She figured sitting there with bare shoulders after an energetic quickstep or "Dashing White Sergeant" might not be a good thing, and the silk chiffon one with gold-embroidered edges that my brother sent from India was only good for summer dances. The silk one long since disintegrated, and likewise the trim on the wool one, but some time ago I found some pure wool fringing, put it on and Voila!, wool stole back in business. Over here, I tend to wear it (and lots of others) in summer, as the air conditioning in so many buildings is so fierce that I freeze in summer frocks. In my stash I still have a 54" x 58" length of white wool gauze which I bought in Ohio thinking it would make a winter blouse. Now I want to make that into a foldover triangle shawl, but haven't yet found an appropriate trim for a reasonable price - after all, I'll need 6 yards of the stuff.

Olwyn Mary in New Orleans.