When I was first putting together the Poppy Tunic pattern, a friend suggested I try using Kaffe Fassett’s shot cottons for the main fabric. I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not a huge Kaffe Fassett fan. I know that he is extremely popular, but his style just doesn’t grab me. His shot cottons looked great though and I was lucky enough to get a selection to try from Alan at XLN Fabrics.
Wow! They are absolutely perfect for sewing clothing – especially when you are looking for something with a nice soft drape.
Unlike other solid fabrics, shot cottons are not completely solid. They have a more organic look and feel about them, with colour variations and imperfections in the weaving giving them lovely individual stlye and detail. The weave of a shot cotton is quite loose and they are fairly lightweight, thus creating a nice soft drape and feel for garment sewing. And there are more than 50 colours in the range!
The cotton is woven using two different tones of thread – the lengthwise warp threads and crosswise weft threads are usually a different colour. Sometimes the difference between the colours are very vivid and other times they are much the same. Each shot cotton has a unique dimension and seems to give off a different colour depending on how the light reflects against them. When the raw edges of the fabric frays, a bright stripe of colour appears (see photos below – and check out these funky shot cotton scarves!)
