A Sprang Vest

For years I have been admiring Carol James' sprang shirts but was intimidated by the hassle of attaching sleeves and a collar. But last summer, when I had the opportunity to demonstrate sprang at the Minnesota State Fair with the Duluth Fiber Guild, I knew I needed to wear something made of sprang. Hats and scarves were too warm for summer wear, so I opted for a simplified vest based on Carol's shirts.

Sprang vest. Note that the chain line across the side is the width of the side panel.

Construction

The vest is constructed from three pieces of interlinked sprang. The front and back are one long piece created on a false circular warp, a flat warp wrapped around the frame with both ends looped around the same string (see photo below). The ends of the warp are at the bottom of the vest and the center is the shoulders.

Drawing by Carol James showing the process of creating a false circular warp.

Near the middle of the warp the threads are interlinked two at a time to  narrow the cloth. The center is secured with two weft threads on each shoulder. For the neck, two threads are cut and the interlinking unwound enough for a head to fit through. These threads are then tied at the ends of the slit forming a V-neck in the front and the back. Sometimes this type of neck hole creates unsightly stretching at the end of the Vs, but with this yarn it works well.

The side panels are shorter sections of flat warp with a chain line to allow stretch. These panels were attached with an almost invisible seam replicating the interlinking pattern of the cloth.

The neck hole and shoulders are secured before removing cloth from frame.

Pattern and Yarn

The pattern is a grid of diamonds formed by changing the direction of stitch slant from Z to S (check out the S&Z Gallery for more designs in this technique). I developed this motif for Carol James' 2023 SprangAlong. It's one of my favorite designs because it adds a patterned texture with a simple repeat. The motif repeats every 10 stitches, and each colored stripe in the vest is the same width of 10 loops.

The yarn is a discontinued Lion Brand Micro Spun sport weight that I received in a yarn exchange with a friend (we each had yarn that we couldn't use that the other wanted, so we sent our "rejects" halfway across the country and are both enjoying the addition to our stashes). It's an extremely soft microfiber yarn with six loosely plied strands; not at all the tightly-spun yarn that is often recommended for sprang but it works very well to create a soft interlinked cloth.

I had several opportunities over the summer to demonstrate sprang, and the vest provided a talking point and illustration of the usefulness of the sprang technique.

Sharing sprang at the Minnesota State Fair.