#fableism

[jazzeria]

A lil update on my lil blankie: more signs of wear in the construction, flaws are showing themselves, and the fabrics are breaking in (some nicely, some are wearing).

3 Jan 2025

So by now, Lil Blankie is about 7 weeks old and has been washed about 5 times.

I sleep with the blanket every night. Sometimes I cover my head and eyes as I sleep. Sometimes I wear it like a cape around my shoulders as I go about my business in the home. Every second day or so, I spend several minutes just snuggling it for the sheer joy of it--and also for science, of course.

But increasingly, there's a sense of... Well, it's less lighthearted than it used to be. I can see and feel Lil Blankie ageing and wearing down--recording it makes me even more aware of it. I'm feeling the entropy.

But also, that was kinda the point of this project: to prepare for repairing my (much larger, and much more emotionally significant) childhood blankie by testing various fabrics, practising the skills required, and, perhaps, becoming comfortable with the idea of wear and repair.

...

The flannel pilling is becoming more noticeable. I'm not sure if this is just because I'm more conscious of it, or if it's actually getting appreciably worse. Hard to say at this point.

The Essex cotton-linen continues to break in beautifully, becoming more and more pliable. The texture is still coarse however.

I'm really enjoying this lovely criss-cross crinkle!

The Sprout Woven is softening beautifully, too. I'm starting to see some wear, but I think it's a good thing: little raised fibres like you'd see on flannel. I can see why this is sometimes used for quilting! I think it's gonna be cuddly and squishy and just generally really nice for snuggling!

The Japanese wovens haven't changed much since last time: they still have a "crispness" that hasn't washed out: a bit stiff, and about as coarse as before. I wonder if they will soften before they wear out?

The only exception is, where the Japanese wovens are backed by the thinnest quilting cottons, there is some kind of transferrence of the quilting cotton's pliability, through to this side... I can't tell if this is purely a psychological phenomenon, or an empirically objective quality. It might be the Japanese woven slipping slightly against the smooth quilting cotton.

In any case, they still have a slightly coarse texture, which I'm attributing to the weave (perhaps a slub in the yarns, or just a coarser weave), and they've developed a criss-cross crinkle as well.

A small patch of the pale blue-purple woven had a tear that I noticed during construction, and patched with fusible stabiliser on the wrong side. The stabiliser quickly wore off (second or third wash?) and the tear began fraying. But I don't think it's grown any larger. I'll have to remember to measure it in future posts.

The Japanese print (which I've since learned is a heavier 220 gsm cotton) continues to break in beautifully. While it's not as cuddly as Sprout Woven, or as smooth as quilting cottons, it feels... "sturdy" and "reliable". I really really want some house pants made from this fabric! But I could imagine a long-cherished blanket being made from it, too.

Here's some shots of the tear I noticed last time. I think it's grown a little since the last post.

On the triangle side (which was made using various quilting cottons)...

In general, all these cottons have softened up beautifully. I think they're at peak softness right now: the most pliable, before they start to fuzz and wear out. So I guess I need to record how long before they fuzz and wear out.

The thinnest cottons, I think they're more appropriately described as "lawn": about 95 gsm, thin enough I can see my hand through, very smooth. For the purposes of these posts, I'll consider them a sub-set of "quilting cottons".

Here's my favourite wrinkly triangle (incorrectly sized during cutting, and stretched/squished to make the triangle points fit together nicely):

When I search for the softest quilting cotton, the order is still:

lawns, when backed by flannel

any quilting cotton, when backed by flannel

the rest, except:

the black-and-colours floral print, especially when backed by Essex linen

When I run my hand over the triangle side, it just feels lovely and squishy all over. I can especially tell when I'm touching lawn backed by flannel, because of how smooth the lawn's surface is. But anything backed by flannel also feels quite lovely.

I can also tell when I touch the black-and-colours floral print (not the black-and-white floral print), especially when it's backed by Essex. This quilting cotton is subtly-but-noticeably coarser than any of the others. I have no idea why, but I can just tell that it is. This fabric came in the same pack as the black-and-white print, which I think also feels very slightly coarser than the other prints?...but I don't think it's as coarse as the black-and-colours print. ... This could be entirely subjective, however.

Some shots to show the lovely drape of these cottons:

I love that my imperfect sewing made this side pucker and crinkle; and I'm extra glad I decided to quilt along the triangle seams (the diagonal ones, anyway) for the larger areas of un-sewn surfaces on this side.

I'm so happy I decided to make this lil blankie.

[jazzeria]

A lil update on my lil blankie: I'm starting to notice signs of wear along the edges of the blanket and along some seams; flaws are showing themselves, and the fabrics continue to break in (some more nicely than others).

End-Jan to mid-Feb 2025

I'm writing this post in April and while I didn't take notes for this period, I did take lots of photos!

At this point, Lil Blankie is about 12 weeks old, and has been washed about 8 times.

I sleep with the blanket every night. Usually it covers my head and eyes when I sleep. Sometimes I wear it like a cape around my shoulders as I go about my business in the home. About once a week, I spend several minutes just snuggling it for the sheer joy of it--and also for science, of course.

In an attempt to begin quantifying the wear, I took some measurements. I'm using a US (inches) quilting ruler: each notch is 1/8th of an inch (so like 3mm).

I'm not an expert with a camera, let alone a phone camera. I tried to capture the wear of the fabrics.

On the Rectangular side...

The Sprout Woven has broken in beautifully, and is reaching the maximum balance of softness and integrity (it's broken-in without wearing out). I think from here, it can't get any softer, it can only get more worn-out.

The Essex Linen is becoming more pliable, but the texture remains coarse. I'm starting to see a bit of fraying at the edge of the blanket. The texture which comes from the unevenness of the weaving yarns is becoming more apparent.

The Flannelette continues to wear. The fuzz and pilling are steadily increasing. This is especially apparent at the blanket's edge:

The Japanese bunny print continues to break in. This heavier-weight fabric (220 gsm) feels so wonderfully sturdy yet soft! I think it hasn't yet reached maximum softness, but it's getting softer.

The Japanese yarn-dyed wovens continue to break in. The texture remains about as coarse as before, but I think the pliability has increased. I wonder if the coarse texture remains because of the unevenness of the weaving yarns, and for how long this will persist...

On the Triangle side...

On the triangle patches near the corners, the seams have very noticeable signs of wear. The piecing stitching (pink thread) is showing through, and the edges of the fabric where the seam allowance folds over, are wearing to the point of fraying.

When I wear this blanket like a cape, I often use a safety pin to hold the corners together in the front. This causes extra stress on the fabrics and the seams near the corners, so this increased wear makes sense.

Otherwise, the quilting cottons continue to be soft and lovely overall. I don't think there was much noteworthy change in them during this period.

[jazzeria]

A lil update on my lil blankie: some fabrics show signs of wear along the edges of the blanket and along some seams; construction flaws are becoming more apparent; some fabrics continue to break in, while others have reached the tipping point from "breaking in" to "wearing out."

Feb to Mar 2025

I'm writing this post in April and while I didn't take notes for this period, I did take lots of photos!

At this point, Lil Blankie is about 16 weeks old, and has been washed about 10 times.

I sleep with the blanket every night. Usually it covers my head and eyes when I sleep. Sometimes I wear it like a cape around my shoulders as I go about my business in the home. About once a week, I spend several minutes just snuggling it for the sheer joy of it--and also for science, of course.

On the Rectangle side...

This patch of Japanese bunny print (220 gsm cotton) has had a tear in the seam (whether a construction flaw, or damage during washing) since about day one. But off to the side, there's also a tiny hole developing, too:

Closer look:

I wonder what caused this tiny hole... Was it an inconsistency in the fabric's weaving? Did I slide the safety pin through here when wearing Lil Blankie as a cape? (It's about 30 cm from the corner, so that's plausible.) Did Lil Blankie just catch something once, or is this the result of a pattern of use? I haven't noticed any other such "holes" in this fabric anywhere else on Lil Blankie.

This tear in the pale purple Japanese yarn-dyed woven was also noticed during construction (it's a flaw: I accidentally cut the fabric, and then tried to patch it by applying iron-on fusible to the back). The edges of the hole are frayed, but it's hard to tell if the hole growing.

This segment of blue quilting thread has gotten snagged:

Generally, the texture of these wovens have remained somewhat coarse, though the fabric has become more pliable than where it started.

The Flannelette continues to wear: the raised fibres are catching and pilling quite noticeably, and in some places, beginning to form a fuzzy felted surface.

Slightly above and to the right of the junction of the quilted "X" in the below photo, the flannelette is wearing so much that you can see un-dyed fibres:

At the edge of the blanket, you can really see the brushed fibres of the flannelette sticking out:

Sprout Woven is tipping from "breaking in" to "wearing out". Some othe little raised fibres are catching and starting to pill now.

Essex continues to crinkle as the cotton shrinks but the linen doesn't. I think it's actually become slightly coarser as a result? Fascinating.

On the Triangle side...

Flaws in the construction continue to become more noticeable (or perhaps I'm just subjectively noticing them more).

The edge of the printed fabric (below) has torn away from the solid navy blue fabric at a seam line where I've also quilted "in the ditch". It's unclear whether this is due to a flaw in construction, or from usage.

When I wear this blanket like a cape, I often use a safety pin to hold the corners together in the front. This causes extra stress on the fabrics and the seams near the corners, so this increased wear makes sense.

In other places, the piecing stitching (pink thread, below) is showing through. I think this is from uneven thread tension during sewing, combined with extra-hard wear in the corners of the blanket.

Check out these gnarly triangle points:

And this janky one at the edge of the blanket:

But for the most part, the quilting cottons (and cotton lawns or poplins) seem to be holding up well. The smooth and even woven construction resists resists raising hairs and pilling--except at some seams and the blanket edges, as noted.

I'm starting to get why these are "quilting cottons" now!

And I'm also starting to notice the quality differences among the various fabrics. But I think that deserves its own post.

[jazzeria]

A lil update on my Lil Blankie: I'm starting to notice signs of wear along the edges of the blanket and along some seams; flaws are showing themselves, and the fabrics continue to break in (some more nicely than others).

Quilting Cottons Comparison - March 2025

One side of Lil Blankie was made using various quilting cottons. I later realised that some of these fabrics are better described as "cotton lawn" or possibly "cotton poplin". These fabrics are noticeably thinner, often partially see-through, with a tighter weave and often finer yarns.

Identifying the fabrics:

I've numbered the fabrics in order of appearance starting from the top left of this photo.

White circles indicate "normal" quality quilting cotton; Yellow is high quality quilting; Green is cotton lawn; Red is low quality quilting cotton.

1 - Solid navy blue, "normal" quality quilting cotton.

2 - Light blue botanitcal print, high quality quilting cotton.

3 - Black with colour flowers print, low quality quilting cotton.

4 - Blue-green floral print, cotton lawn.

5 - Navy blue with white floral print, high quality quilting cotton.

6 - Grey with bird skeleton print, high quality quilting cotton.

7 - Grey with vibrant floral print, normal quality quilting cotton (this feels mid-low quality).

8 - Grey with pastel floral print, normal quality quilting cotton (this feels mid-low quality).

9 - Blue-purple berry print, normal quality quilting cotton (this feels like mid-high quality).

10 - Blue-green tone-on-tone print, high quality quilting cotton (or possibly mid-high quality).

11 - Blue-white-yellow floral print, cotton lawn.

12 - Purple-peach floral print, cotton lawn.

13 - Black and white floral print, low quality quilting cotton.

Hopefully this makes it a bit easier to identify what I'm talking about when I write about the quilting cottons side.

[jazzeria]

A lil update on my lil blankie: I'm starting to see signs of wear in the construction (piecing), flaws are showing themselves, and the fabrics continue to break in (some more nicely than others).

13 Jan 2025

At this point, Lil Blankie is about 8 weeks old, and has been washed about 6 times.

I sleep with the blanket every night. Sometimes it covers my head and eyes when I sleep. Sometimes I wear it like a cape around my shoulders as I go about my business in the home. Every other day or so, I spend several minutes just snuggling it for the sheer joy of it--and also for science, of course.

Increasingly, as I try to objectively measure and record this blanket's destruction (or more euphemistically: its wear), I feel the emotional weight of it. I'm feeling the entropy. Different fabrics will wear at different rates, reaching their optimal softness at different times, for different durations, and degrading from then on, before ultimately requiring repair.

But also, that was kinda the point of this project: to prepare for repairing my (much larger, and much more emotionally significant) childhood blankie by testing various fabrics, practising the skills required, and, perhaps, becoming comfortable with the idea of wear and repair.

So!

The past two reports have focused a lot on the fabrics, but this time, I wanted to focus on the stitching. It might also be because this is the first time I've noticed the patchwork stitching (sewing the pieces of fabric together, not the quilting) become visible in new places.

For the piecing, I used a pink/salmon coloured thread.

(I probably also did it backwards: using a thicker thread for the piecing, and a finer thread for the quilting. While I can pretend I did this on purpose so I could tell when the piecing started to fail, it's honestly because I didn't own much variety of thread when I started, so I used what I had, when I had it.)

These little pink dots are new--I think. It's entirely possible I've just missed them until now.

It's not a nice thought, to think that Lil Blankie is coming apart at the seams.

I also wanted to record now some flaws that I hadn't recorded before.

When I made the triangle side, I didn't plan it well. The edges of the pieced triangles were not straight, and needed some half-triangles (right-triangles, instead of equilateral) at the edges.

The easiest way to include these edge pieces is to....have attached them during row contruction, and not try to attach them at the very end. If I had included them during row construction, the triangle points would have lay much neater.

So, I had to fudge it, and I got extremely imperfect points:

I think I also hand-stitched some of these points, when the seams got too complex for the machine.

Anyway, I wanted to at least mention them now.

There's also a bit of fraying of this light blue botanical print, where it joins the darker navy solid:

On the triangle side, seams were usually pressed to one side, but this seam, I pressed open instead. (Probably it was because of the complicated joins.)

I'm not sure if the open seam led to this fraying.

It might also just be that I favoured this corner when pinning the cape about my shoulders:

I like having the flannel against my neck, so I wear it with the rectangle side against my skin. And being right-handed, I pin the right side over the left with a safety pin. This means there will be asymmetrical wear: two corners will get more (or at least, different) wear from the other two.

In fact, that is where I'm seeing these signs of wear: in those two corners.

Feeling the entropy.

[jazzeria]

Quantifying Lil Blankie's Entropy

I started writing this post in late-April 2025, but forgot to publish it until now.

As of this writing, Lil Blankie is about 22 weeks old, and has been washed about 14 times, probably (I should probably make a tally card).

I sleep with the blanket every night. Sometimes it covers my head and eyes when I sleep. Sometimes I wear it like a cape around my shoulders as I go about my business in the home, pinning the corners together in the front. Every other day or so, I spend several minutes just snuggling it for the sheer joy of it--and also for science, of course.

The goals of this Lil Blankie project were largely:

Develop and practise quilting skills in preparation for Big Blankie (such as: patchwork/piecing, quilt construction, straight-line quilting, and machine sewing in general); and

Track the wear of various fabrics with time and usage, in order to optimse fabric selections for Big Blankie, and better predict the lifecycle of Big Blankie.

That second goal is something I've been tracking in a lot of my posts, but those posts have been largely text-based, messy and qualitative. It would be useful to introduce some metrics in order to better analyse the wear.

What follows is my attempt at injecting rigour into this project, admittedly, partway-through already.

I'll define three properties (Integrity, Texure, and Pliability), and rate these properties on a 10-point scale where 10 is "the best or the most" and 1 is "the worst or the least".

Having each increment represent (approximately) the same amount of change across all three properties will allow me plot the progressions on the same axis (eg: a rating of 2/10 will be similarly meaningful whether talking about Integrity, Texture, or Pliability).

Defining some landmarks will also aid in consistent measurement through this experiment (eg: what does 10/10 mean, what does 1/10 mean).

Definitions

Integrity: how "together" and "not worn out" the fabric is.

10/10 the fabric is brand new. 8/10 there are noticeable little raised hairs from wear 7/10 there is visible pilling 5/10 there is notable wear at the seams 3/10 there is notable wear not only at the seams but also in the middle of a patch 1/10 means the fabric is threadbare in at least one place* that isn't a seam.

Choosing to define integrity this way (with 10/10 being "brand new") raises some concerns. Fabrics that have been brushed (eg: flannelette) or washed (eg: "broken-in" denim) before they're sold would still have 10/10 Integrity when "brand new", but physically they have been put through wear already.

An alternative might be to define 10/10 as "the fabric has not been washed or brushed since weaving", but this would also not well-account for flannels that use brushed yarns in the weaving. Using this alternative also would require more confidence in how the fabrics were produced: do I know for sure that the flannelette was brushed after weaving? how did the flannelette look before brushing? etc.

* "Threadbare in at least one place" will need better defining. I want 1/10 to mark that the fabric has "failed", that it has "lost integrity". So I might define something like, "there is a region of fabric that is at least 1 inch square, that doesn't include seams, that is threadbare." Something more quantifiable

Texture: how smooth or rough the surface of the fabric is.

10/10 is the ideal softness, the most smooth-soft fabric texture for a soft blanket 3/10 the texture of Essex Linen brand-new 1/10 is very rough, resembling toothy carpet or stiff unwashed canvas, the realistically-worst texture/roughness I can imagine being used for a blanket.

I'm using a subjective and qualitative approach for this metric, because smoothness isn't the only consideration in what makes a texture soft. Stainless steel can be very smooth, but doesn't register as "texturally soft" in my brain. On the other hand, chenille doesn't have a smooth (frictionless) surface but can be texturally soft.

The way I'll try to rate texture is by laying the fabric flat, then skimming my hand over the surface. I want to minimise conflating the bendiness (pliability) of the material with its texture, and I think this method will reduce the amount of transverse information during sampling.

Pliability: how flexible/bendable or drapey the fabric is.

10/10 is very flexible, the ideal level of drape for a soft and cuddly blanket, resembling the pliability of a comfy t-shirt 3/10 the pliability of Essex Linen brand-new 1/10 is stiff, resembling brand new raw denim or heavy canvas, the realistically-worst drape and pliability I can imagine being used for a blanket.

In textiles, "drape" describes how a fabric folds, falls, or hangs over a three-dimensional body. There are words like "crisp", "stiff", "fluid", "flowy", "drapey" (which isn't particularly helpful without an exemplar). I've even read terms like "high" or "low" drape, but as far as I know, drape isn't measurable, isn't rigorously quantifiable. So I want to get away from using this term in my analysis.

Pliability is, in part, a measure of the ease of transverse motion of the material. So to measure this, I'll scrunch the fabric in my hands, roll it to see how it bends, and generally manipulate it.

Data Organisation and Visualisation

In order to record and then easily retrieve the data, I must decide on a way of organising the data.

One way of visualising this is as a multivariable function that accepts three variables as input (Fabric Name, Property Name, Date) and outputs a number (the rating out of 10).

Fabric Name is a list of the names of fabrics (a finite array of Strings). Property Name is a list of the property names (another finite array of Strings). Date is... a whole number, formatted based on calendar. So for example: F(x, y, z) = n F(Essex, Pliability, [the number representating today's date]) = 7

I haven't settled on one optimal way of recording this, but have been just doing this in Excel:

Gaps are where no observation was recorded (or not able to be deduced from photos). And I'll treat those as an empty string, a missing data point that will get smoothed over when plotting.

Organising the table like this allows me to easily create these graphical representations of each Property vs Time, with all fabrics on the same graph:

But generating a graph showing how each fabric changed over time is more cumbersome (at the moment). Here are a few though:

The flannelette's texture and pliability have both remained at 10 the whole time. I don't think the fabric will become more soft or more pliable before it falls apart:

This is the methodology I hope to use. I recognise that its shortcomings are largely to do with the incredibly subjective experience of touching fabric and rating it out of 10, but I think it's better than nothing. Time shall tell.