Egyptian Cotton

[jonathan]

Chris, I hope you noted the point about sails returning the their original boats!

Model sailcloth was also called union silk, no idea why. When they had a cotton that was a bit iffy modellers varnished it to make it wind and water proof. Bearing in mind all the varnish on your boats you might not want to consider this. It looks pretty awfull to.

Why not grow the plants on your veg patch. Perhaps we should all take on an allotment and pool our harvests to provide a supply of cloth. Just a bit of whimsy as i do not want to sacrifice my raspberry canes.

[chris]

I thought you were going to suggest using a table cloth, Johnathan. The time you flew a club table cloth for a spinny has past into legend at Shearwater as is still talked about.

[chris]

Thanks Pat and ACB. some useful leads to follow and when I get back from Guersney (for a wedding) I'll follow some of these and see where it leads.

[roger]

I thought you were going to suggest using a table cloth, Johnathan. The time you flew a club table cloth for a spinny has past into legend at Shearwater as is still talked about.

Angie tells me that you cant have that one again as its turned out to be old and quite valuable

[Pat]

For those who missed it:

http://www.cvrda.org/coppermine/display ... m=21&pos=6

[Ancient Geek]

Just one more thing using any woven cloth remember to cut the selve edges off, they are/were inevitably tighter and resulted in bagging in panels if it wasn't done, if done the very narrow cotton panels made by false seaming are largely unecessary except for shaping.

[Pat]

Trimming the selvedges applies to all fabric work, not just cotton. I've fallen foul of it before when dressmaking and curtainmaking. Also ensure the grain runs the same way - often you think a fabric is the same looking from either end but when two panels cut in opposite directions are put together it shows up differences. Velvet is the most obvious one but it can show on plain fabrics too.

[jonathan]

Chris,
You will be pleased to know that she now has a cotton spinnaker with a nice wooden headboard.

I used cotton ticking for model yacht sails and its worked quite well. The stuff I got was certainly the right colour but I would avoid the stripy version for feather mattresses as it would make the boat look like a prisoner on the run. But if you did and painted arrows on your wetsuit it would make an interesting story for the papers!

Cheers from Essex

[ACB]

Model sailcloth was also called union silk, no idea why.

"Union material" was used for spinnakers, until nylon took over. A mixture of long staple cotton and silk.
Horribly expensive, prone to mildew and fragile. Nylon replaced it almost instantly!

There is a furnishing fabric called linen union which is a mixture of cotton and linen.

[ACB]

Just to say that if making a cotton sail one will need some small diameter four strand Italian Hemp.

I do know where to get that:

http://despawson.com/index.html

cvrda types will have no difficulty identifying the father of the Editor of "Yachts and Yachting"