I spent some time this morning mounting samples of the double-happiness ribbon onto the coat fabric, and trying different trims. Here’s my favorite:
This is using the six-stranded weft, and the result is fairly stiff from side to side, but it doesn’t seem to affect the drape too much, since it mostly needs to flex lengthwise, and the warp is quite supple.
The trim is a round rope that I bought from Jo-Ann’s. I tried four trims (although I didn’t stitch most of them down) and it was the nicest I found. The gold braid from Britex was too flat to go gracefully into the facing seam, the narrow flat braid was too narrow, and the bright gold ribbon was too yellow.
I think the ribbon may be a hair too wide, but I’ll sleep on that before making any decisions. Tomorrow morning I’ll try the sample woven with a single strand of thicker metallic yarn, but I don’t really have enough of that to judge well. I should probably have woven a little bit more of the sample before shipping my dobby box back to AVL – ah well, it’s water under the bridge. We’ll see what Sharon says about the six-stranded weft sample – if she thinks that will do, then we won’t need to test the other sample, since I like the six-stranded weft better in any case.
