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		Sewing your Leggings

Sewing your leggings may Your first choice is in the fabric you use. We will go into more detail about that later on the Fabrics Page, though now we can mention that there are two types of fabrics, knited and woven. Knited fabrics are knited and are "sretchy." As such there are differences, not all stretch the same way, there are one way, tow way and three way stretchs. Knited fabrics are not the way to go if you want to go the historic way but they are are fantastic for good quick leg coverings. However for the more authentic look and feel you should go with woven fabrics, though there were some knited leggings but they were ussually long stockings and would have been, for the most part, rough or exspencive. Woven fabrics are woven out of strait vibers, it has a "grain" along the Warp, wich is the lenthwise fibers which run parallel to the selvage, and the weft threds are the ones woven trough warp. Thes fabrics have little stretch along the weft and less along the warp. But trough the marvels of quantum phyisics, geometry, and the intricacies of sewing physics, woven fabric streches along the diagonal, which we call the bias

If you are making your leggings out of a knited fabric it's going to be relativly easy, especialy if you have access to a surger or other overlock sewing machine. Only the most insaine person would hand sew leging of a knited fabric, I know only four and one of them had a pair that works well.

If you are making your leggings ou of a woven fabric it's going to be interesting for you. Not exactly hard but more interesting.

Bias cut woven fabrics are far more "flexable" than when cut along the grain. Very usefull though, if you have never used bias tape Making your own Bias Tape.

Sewing on the bias is great funn, try it. One thing you should know is that the sretch you get from the bias comes at the cost of length, Which means that if you cut a dress on the bias and make it a little too big it will hang in such a way as to end up fiting tight and hanging longer than it was cut. Conversly if it is cut a little small to fit the cuves of the calves the length will be shorter that it may have been planed. So in short as it is stretched in one direction it will tighten in the perpendicular direction.

		© Ragnar Torfason 2006 March 28