can you tell me anything about this blanket?

[rhodges]

Several items were given to me by the son of a reenactor who recently passed, one of which is an odd looking blanket. Hoping some one on here can tell me if it's just junk or something useful.

[cprljohnivey]

Re: can you tell me anything about this blanket?

Can you post an image. Kind of hard to look at a blanket with no image.

[Tyler Underwood]

Re: can you tell me anything about this blanket?

Brad, I think you may be having computer issues. The image is there and as far as type I cant really say. The binding around the edge has been done using a modern zig zag stitch.

[cprljohnivey]

Re: can you tell me anything about this blanket?

Wierd... I see nothing... perhaps tonight when I get home from work on my own machine...

[faabala]

Re: can you tell me anything about this blanket?

It looks like perhaps Swiss surplus to me.

[reddcorp]

Re: can you tell me anything about this blanket?

It looks like perhaps Swiss surplus to me.

Concur, bought a couple that look like this for emergencies from Sportsman's guide a few years back. Not 100 %wool but serviceable. But just a guess without actually feeling and looking closer at the fabric.

A. Redd

[rhodges]

Re: can you tell me anything about this blanket?

ok, sure am glad i just picked up a county cloth blanket then.

[KarinTimour]

Re: can you tell me anything about this blanket?

I can't speak to what fibers make up this blanket. But I can tell you from looking at it, that the "speckled" appearance means that you have a blanket that was made with some percentage of "shoddy" (extremely common in our period).

Most people are more familiar with the definition of "shoddy" as being "second-rate" or "poorly made." That's actually it's second definition, and one that was bestowed upon the word by the soldiers of the 1860s.

The original meaning of "shoddy" refers to an item of fabric which has some percentage of re-used or recycled fabric in it. In our time period, materials were expensive, labor was cheap. Once you'd worn a piece of clothing until there was very little wear in it, you could either sell it to a second-hand dealer (also called "slop shops") or to a rag-and-bone man, who might sell it to a paper mill if the item was white. But an item which was any other color, especially if it was wool, would likely be sold to a "shoddy mill." These were actual mills where the item would be put through a shredder and shredded back to whisps of fiber. This fiber was then sold to a woolen mill. They would mix it with new wool and then spin it into thread which would then be woven. The whisps of fiber were called "shoddy" and they always retained the original color they were dyed when they were new. When they were spun together with new fiber, they revealed their presence because you'd get little flecks of other colors in the finished item, like your blanket.

Before the War, a jacket or pants made of "shoddy" was a perfectly respectable "second best" choice for every day clothing. Most people wouldn't wear a suit made of shoddy to church, but they were perfectly acceptable for week day clothing, especially for working people. So having a pair of shoddy trowsers you wore to work at the foundry, or to slop the hogs or to step down to the pub of an evening was perfectly respectable, perhaps even comendable frugality.

When the War broke out, there was a huge demand for woolen goods. Contractors were trying to figure out ways to make a penny more profit per item on a run of 10,000 blankets, or uniforms, or socks, or whatever. If they included a little shoddy when spinning the thread for a blanket, it stretched their new wool that much further, and no one complained. The problem was that over time, they increased the percentage of shoddy from 10% to 20%, 30%, 50% and higher. Shoddy is not as strong or durable as new wool. Sometimes some of the mix might be cotton or hemp or other fibers that weren't as warm or strong as new wool. As the percentage of shoddy got higher and higher, the items made of it started to fall apart with very little wear. Because contractors were cutting corners in all sorts of ways, with all sorts of goods, the term "shoddy" became the term used to describe "poorly made goods that weren't worth the price and would fail when you most needed them."

The flecks of color in your blanket tell me that some of the fiber in it has been recycled. It's a beautiful color, and in the 1860s the average person would know at a glance that it was made with shoddy. In that sense, it's a great period example. In a modern sense, however, I'd want to test out whether or not you've got man-made fiber in that blanket. In the 1860s they didn't have fiber made of petroleum products. We do in the modern age, and these are much more likely to catch fire. A 100% wool blanket, when a spark falls on it, will smolder, stink and self-extinquish. A blanket with significant man-made fiber will catch fire and might burn you badly.

I'd shave an edge off the blanket, weigh the shavings, then put them in a glass of chlorine bleach overnight. The wool will dissolve, leaving the petroleum fibers (if any) behind. Weigh those and it will give you an approximate measure of what percentage of this blanket is made of man-made fiber.

If you don't sleep around a fire at night, it's a non-issue. But if you do attend late fall, early winter or early spring events where you might be sleeping close to/rolling into the fire, take your other blanket to those events.

Hope that's helpful,
Karin Timour
Period Knitting -- Socks, Sleeping Hats, Balaclavas
Atlantic Guard Soldiers' Aid Society
Email: ktimour@aol.com

[rhodges]

Re: can you tell me anything about this blanket?

Wow! Tons of information there. Thanks, I will try the bleach test and see what happens

[KarinTimour]

Re: can you tell me anything about this blanket?

You're very welcome, love talking about this kind of thing. Very interested in what you find out about your blanket. Really beautiful example of shoddy, hope you can use it in the field, even if you can't use it close to a fire....


Karin Timour
Period Knitting -- Socks, Sleeping Hats, Balaclavas
Atlantic Guard Soldiers' Aid Society
ktimour@aol.com