Clothes in Trunks
23 October 2022 09:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
igenlodeAnd... once again the Great Changeover is completed, once again on *exactly* the same date as on the two previous years of record -- which is odd, because it's a different day of the week each year (so I'm not always doing it on a Sunday afternoon, for instance).
And precisely as I noted last year, the short-sleeved shirts really didn't get worn to speak of (I dare not cycle in them, for instance), and I have been existing in a state of semi-changeover for some weeks after partially emptying the trunks earlier.
Having had a pyjama crisis recently and acquired a fluffy new pair (which, I subsequently deduced, had been discarded by the original owner because they have a shiny metallic thread in the checked pattern that happens to fall at exactly the wrong place on the collar, chafing the wearer's neck -- but they are otherwise so soft that I am determined to wear them down into submission), I now have *three* pairs of winter pyjamas, which means my pyjama-and-longjohns drawer is painfully stuffed, no to say overflowing. However, I noticed this morning that the ones I am wearing at the moment have not only been patched under one arm, but have a worn place halfway up one sleeve... so those will presumably bite the dust at some point this winter, for which I shall not be sorry. I simply can't bring myself to throw clothes away *before* they suffer terminal failure :-p
(One of my less-than-satisfactory crocheted jumpers/loose jacket turned out to have a hole in the middle of the back where one of the strands of wool had snagged and/or snapped, and since by the time I noticed it would have been very difficult to repair it invisibly -- it's an openwork stitch -- and quite tricky to repair it at all, I did take the opportunity to throw that away. It has simply never been a success, but I put so much work and calculation into it (and then into trying to rescue it when after all my calculations it turned out not to fit properly) that I couldn't dispose of it without an excuse.)
In fact, I still have a summer pyjama crisis, because the 'wrong' jacket ripped after the trousers went -- not the four-times mended one, but the other one that was in relatively good condition. So I have to decide whether to mend that one after all, or to throw that one away and keep the much-mended one which is currently wearable.
Or, of course, to throw away the trousers and *both* jackets... but that would probably be inadvisable, since I wouldn't have any summer pyjamas at all, save for the short-sleeved polyester ones that are older than any of them, being made of virtually indestructible artificial fibre, and are frankly indecent, since although they haven't ripped they have worn so thin as to be definitely see-through. They are so lightweight that I can only wear them in the hottest weather, or in an emergency... which is what I may end up with if I unpack my trunks next year and find I have no other summer pyjamas at all :-(
Basically, I still badly need to get one or two more pairs of cotton pyjamas. The issue has simply been deferred by six months or so due to the advent of winter.
And precisely as I noted last year, the short-sleeved shirts really didn't get worn to speak of (I dare not cycle in them, for instance), and I have been existing in a state of semi-changeover for some weeks after partially emptying the trunks earlier.
Having had a pyjama crisis recently and acquired a fluffy new pair (which, I subsequently deduced, had been discarded by the original owner because they have a shiny metallic thread in the checked pattern that happens to fall at exactly the wrong place on the collar, chafing the wearer's neck -- but they are otherwise so soft that I am determined to wear them down into submission), I now have *three* pairs of winter pyjamas, which means my pyjama-and-longjohns drawer is painfully stuffed, no to say overflowing. However, I noticed this morning that the ones I am wearing at the moment have not only been patched under one arm, but have a worn place halfway up one sleeve... so those will presumably bite the dust at some point this winter, for which I shall not be sorry. I simply can't bring myself to throw clothes away *before* they suffer terminal failure :-p
(One of my less-than-satisfactory crocheted jumpers/loose jacket turned out to have a hole in the middle of the back where one of the strands of wool had snagged and/or snapped, and since by the time I noticed it would have been very difficult to repair it invisibly -- it's an openwork stitch -- and quite tricky to repair it at all, I did take the opportunity to throw that away. It has simply never been a success, but I put so much work and calculation into it (and then into trying to rescue it when after all my calculations it turned out not to fit properly) that I couldn't dispose of it without an excuse.)
In fact, I still have a summer pyjama crisis, because the 'wrong' jacket ripped after the trousers went -- not the four-times mended one, but the other one that was in relatively good condition. So I have to decide whether to mend that one after all, or to throw that one away and keep the much-mended one which is currently wearable.
Or, of course, to throw away the trousers and *both* jackets... but that would probably be inadvisable, since I wouldn't have any summer pyjamas at all, save for the short-sleeved polyester ones that are older than any of them, being made of virtually indestructible artificial fibre, and are frankly indecent, since although they haven't ripped they have worn so thin as to be definitely see-through. They are so lightweight that I can only wear them in the hottest weather, or in an emergency... which is what I may end up with if I unpack my trunks next year and find I have no other summer pyjamas at all :-(
Basically, I still badly need to get one or two more pairs of cotton pyjamas. The issue has simply been deferred by six months or so due to the advent of winter.
no subject
Date: 2022-10-24 06:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-10-24 09:25 pm (UTC)On closer inspection, the actual problem seems to be that the metallic thread is carried along the edge of the selvedge (which is why the edge of the neck is so scratchy -- it hasn't been tucked inside the seam but is just the selvedge of the cloth) and is the one locking the other threads in. Theoretically speaking, I probably could extract that thread, although I'm not quite sure how it is woven along the edge -- it wouldn't be a simply matter of pulling a single warp thread -- but would then have to apply a different seam finish.
It would probably be easier (for a given definition of 'easy', since I can't make out quite how the collar construction works) either to undo the collar altogether and restitch it such that the edge of the fabric is enclosed in the seam, or to apply an alternative seam finish, e.g. bias tape, over the edge as if it were already a raw edge. Unfortunately it is a very thin sliver of cloth sticking out, so turning the edge under or binding it aren't really terribly practical to attempt. Binding it *down* onto the underlying seams rather than around the offending edge might be possible, though again I think you might risk having a chafing line of stitching in an uncomfortable location.
(Frankly, it seems to me to be an extraordinary construction; I've never seen a collar made that way, but then I've never really examined pyjama collars closely before...)
Based on past experience, I've found that metallic thread isn't very durable and the shiny foil surface tends to come off after a few washes, so I imagine it won't last forever. But there is quite a lot of it interwoven along that edge -- it's not just a single thread, and that is probably the root cause of the issue. One longitudinal thread probably wouldn't chafe noticeably.