- Making do: Weaving a Boro-style solution

This is where I ended up, but the story starts here:

I bought a pair of Capri pants earlier this summer ... on sale of course. Unfortunately, I soon discovered why they were marked down: the decorative zippers were incredibly uncomfortable whenever I crossed my legs, which was often. 

So, having taken an online study with Jude Hill on Considering Weave, I decided to try weaving on cloth to make sturdy strips in place of the zippers.

On my first couple of tries, I set up a bead loom with a crochet cotton warp, then randomly wove linen cloth into it. Two strands of cotton floss then got stitched through the fabric and between the warp threads as a kind of weft.

But the resulting strips were too heavy, so I went back to the drawing board.

I used a lighter warp (20/2 linen thread that I've had for decades), a scrap of green table cloth linen (from the kitchen towel series ... which reminds me, I need to write a summary post on that), and cotton/linen thread unraveled from a sweater that my daughter was sending to Goodwill.

The more I worked, the less sure I was whether I was weaving ...

or stitching ...

And in my mind I began to word play ... Was I steaving or witching? No matter. The resulting strips were the perfect weight to sew into the pants ...

I even used the holes from the torn out zippers as a stitch guide.

Field testing remains to be done, but I'm pretty sure it was time well spent. And if nothing else, I now have an intriguing new technique in my stitch repertoire.