Elleth wrote:Oh my word.... that is AWESOME!!!!
I love love love love it!!
(that neck must have taken quite a bit of finagling to figure out the angles)
I do very much love how you combine the WETA-ness with real world useful things.
And your kit as a whole is coming together incredibly well!
It's making quite the ensemble already.
I'm quite curious to hear your experience over the seasons as to how boiled wool compares in the wearing to a thick wool broadcloth.
I've been meaning to try lodenwool in some capacity at some point - it sounds like an interesting fabric.
Thank you so much for such good comments
Designing the neck-line wasn't as bad as you might think, If I'd tried to do it with trial and error it probably would have been but, luckily, I didn't. Geometry is one of the only parts of math I've ever been good at. After working out all the angles and length's I cut it in cheap curtain backing fabric (which I use for all my patterns) to check it would work, and it did. The same goes for the angles on the linen trim.
Boiled wool 'v' Broadcloth
That's a difficult question to answer but I'll try
The green waistcoat thing in the first image (made from an army blanket) is essentially boiled wool and the black tunic is a wool broadcloth of very similar thickness to the waistcoat so that will give me some point of comparison.
Wet weather:
If I'm out in rain (wearing both) my arms will get wet quite quickly, water seems to soak through the tunic fast where as the waist coat will keep rain out for about two hours (same goes for my old cloak, I'm hoping pure boiled wool will preform better) Conclusion: boiled wool is more waterproof than broadcloth.
Windy weather:
Wearing my new cloak a few days ago in quite high winds I couldn't feel anything through it at all, where as with two layers of broadcloth (the tunic and brown surcoat) I still feel the wind chill however the green waistcoat will cut out most of that. Conclusion: boiled wool is more windproof than broadcloth.
Note: The brown surcoat is technically tweed but it's an old weave and is quite similar to broadcloth
Cold weather:
Cold still weather is definitely the decider, what I've found is that (if it's not windy) broadcloth will keep me warmer, possibly because it's less dense so there's more trapped air and more insulation, Broadcloth also breaths better. These two reasons are why I've stuck with broadcloth under layers for warmth and boiled wool outer layers for water/windproofness (and when it's raining to much I use my oilcloth cloak which doesn't get heaver when it's wet).
(however for a totally fair comparison of warmth I'd have to make a boiled wool tunic of similar thickness to the broadcloth one)
Hope this is helpful
and I'm going to have to ask what
lodenwool is? I've never heard of that and a quick google search brought up lots of sites that seem to say slightly different things
Gimli: It's true you don't see many Dwarf-women. And in fact, they are so alike in voice and appearance, that they are often mistaken for Dwarf-men.
Aragorn: It's the beards.