Sunday, June 30, 2013

A Look At Reweaving And Its Various Methods

By Lana Bray


Reweaving of fabrics is a focused skill applied in damaged garment for repairing tears and holes. It involves weaving by hand some threads into the damaged area of the garment, creating repairs that are virtually invisible. Every worker wears a plate with a magnifying glass while working with thread and small needles to repair the area with damage. The worker replicates the original structure of the garment stitch by stitch, making the damaged area invisible.

This process is especially useful for repairing moth holes that appear in fine wool. A worker must examine and evaluate every rip, hole or tear to figure out what can and cannot be gotten from the completed repair. However, there is no sure guarantee that that the completed repair will be totally invisible.

There are several distinctive reweaving methods. On a basis of the condition and size of the torn area together with the fabric being worked on, any of the three methods can be applied. The French reweave is also referred to as an invisible reweave. The technique is applied to selected fabrics having small holes, tears and burns. Invisible strands of thread from unseen areas are in the real sense woven together using hands, such as an inseam or cuff.

The French technique results in a new garment since it zips the hole or tear, making it virtually impossible to for the naked eye to distinguish the difference between the enclosing fabric and the repaired area. In some fabric like gabardine, the repaired section is not totally unseen. One setback of this method is that large tears or L-shaped holes cannot be rewoven.

These large holes or L-shaped tears that cannot be fixed by the French method are best sorted by the Inweaving technique. This method involves the reweave taking a small section of the hidden garment and placing it on the hole in a way that the pattern of the garment matches. The edges that have undergone repair cannot be seen by the naked eye. This method can be used on any tear irrespective of its size, just as long as the fabric covering it is large enough.

Reknitting technique is almost the same as the French method. It involves utilizing unseen strands from double knits, sweaters and woolen knits, then knitting them onto the area under damage. Elaborate care should be taken to match the style and knit pattern of the garments. Visibility depends on the color and type of the knit as well as the size of the tear.

Garment owners who are planning to reweave damage in their fine wool fabrics that are as a result of insect bites are advised to clean the garments first. This is because most of the times, reweavers will only work on garments that are clean. In addition, the only way to see the full extent of the damaged area is when the garment is spotlessly clean.

The process of reweaving is a painstaking and labor intensive one that has to be done with magnifying glasses, top skills of the worker, and lamps with high intensity. Since this is the case, repair of a garment is likely to take up to about six weeks.




About the Author:



No comments:

Post a Comment