Let it burn!

Life got in the way, and between work going crazy and prepping for DW I got sidetracked. But thanks to some friends - here is a post that I think just might get spread around:


It all started as a rather innocent discussion at the sewing meet. The discussion focused on a rather common topic - has the level of our garb risen to far for newbies to aspire to? Is handsewing the only option etc. It gave me some food for thought and I had an idea for a class - and with some helpful input from among others, Lia, Kathryn and Helwig, I got started on a lecture about the basics of textile knowledge and what every seamstress should know about fibres.

Part of this lecture included the fire testing of fabrics - different fibres beahave and smell differently and often you can figure out what you've got by just setting it on fire!

I grabbed a bunch of different fabrics from my scrap basket and went to a colleagues place and spent some time burning holes in it. Back at another sewing meet a chance remark about silk veils being very flammable made me realize I had not burned any veils of any material.

Back home I set up as safe an experiment zone as I could. Pulled the batteries out of the smoke detector, filled a pot with water and turned on the ventilation above the stove on max. I got out a piece of silk veil,  sheer cotton, linen and I also sacrificed a piece of my precious wool muslin.

I tried to be as scientific as I could about the whole thing. Each piece was to be subjected to the same:

Held in flame from a lighter for max 10 sec, or until it caught and then either blow it out or dunk it in the water. If I had to drown it to kill it, I'd let it dry before test two: hold the fabric flat and above a flame until it caught fire.

This is the result:

Top left: Linen Top right: Cotton, Bottom Left: Wool muslin, Bottom right: silk

The wool and the linen self extinguished as I removed it from the flame. The cotton had to have a bath and the silk I dropped in a hurry....
The sheer silk in a windfree environment definitely does not self extinguish as the thicker kinds of silk do, and it burned so rapidly I dint want to do the second test on what remained.

As I held my class at Double Wars I realized that how much more a simple testing of fibres to resolve the fibre content of a fabric, had as a value - since we do hang around fire a lot! Like some of the parents in the group commented - to think that some people clothe their children in syntetic fleece! if they only knew...

I will definitely continue on this avenue -and I think my lecture will evolve for Cudgel Wars - I'll keep you posted!