.Shot Cottons.

When I was first putting together the Poppy Tunic pattern, a friend suggested I try using Kaffe Fassett's shot cottons for the main fabric.  I'll be the first to admit that I'm not a huge Kaffe Fassett fan.  I know that he is extremely popular, but his style just doesn't grab me. His shot cottons looked great though and I was lucky enough to get a selection to try from Alan at XLN Fabrics.

Wow!  They are absolutely perfect for sewing clothing - especially when you are looking for something with a nice soft drape.
Unlike other solid fabrics, shot cottons are not completely solid.  They have a more organic look and feel about them, with colour variations and imperfections in the weaving giving them lovely individual stlye and detail.  The weave of a shot cotton is quite loose and they are fairly lightweight, thus creating a nice soft drape and feel for garment sewing.  And there are more than 50 colours in the range!

The cotton is woven using two different tones of thread  - the lengthwise warp threads and crosswise weft threads are usually a different colour.  Sometimes the difference between the colours are very vivid and other times they are much the same.  Each shot cotton has a unique dimension and seems to give off a different colour depending on how the light reflects against them.  When the raw edges of the fabric frays, a bright stripe of colour appears (see photos below - and check out these funky shot cotton scarves!)

I highly recommend using shot cottons in garment sewing and know that I'll definitley be visitng these again in the future. There are loads of great colours and they are really comfortable to wear.

It is difficult to properly determine what colour your shot cotton is going to look like in real life from the swatches that Kaffe provides.  Here are the ones that I have in my collection so far, along with their names.  I'll be sure to photograph others as I collect them to help out with determining colour choices.