Horse Blankets ???

  Not sure what happened here but I am not seeing many posts on my blog about the ongoing Civil War horse blanket project. I have been through many iterations of samples, yarns etc. and have not been happy. I was going into the 2nd year of this project. I absolutely cannot find an affordable repeatable domestic source of the proper yarn. I sent my potential client a "Dear John" email. The materials alone, wholesale, are more than $100.00 and that cost is there way before I throw a shuttle. Suffice to say I am a Civil War horse blanket expert. I bought some wool yarn off of Ebay, Brown Sheep for a last ditch prototype. The yarn I bought felts, it is not Superwash, but it is knitting yarn so the twist is too loose. I persisted. I set up my big loom to weave a blanket in two panels, with the stripes, with numerous calculations for shrinkage etc. It was not fun weaving. The knitting yarn shredded  on the selvedges. I then had to hand stitch the panels together. Having finished that, after I sent the "Dear John" email, I threw the whole thing in my washing machine, hot wash. Then I put the whole thing in a hot dryer. ¡Surprise! The thickness and the look is correct. These blankets were made to be folded four times and what I got would work. Also ... maybe more importantly ... is that my calculations came out, my stripe blocks are almost square, and the shrinkage percentage is very close. So what I have now, well felted but still soft and nice, begs to be a clothing item (without the yellow stripes!).