The first tweed I ever sewed was a heathery brown remnant I bought because it felt like something my grandmother would have owned. I made a straight skirt from it, not very well, and I still have it. If you have been asking what is tweed, and whether it is worth the fuss on a domestic machine, here is where the cloth comes from, how to read the named patterns, and the techniques that turn it into a jacket you will wear for ten years.
What Is Tweed
Tweed is a rough surfaced woollen cloth, usually woven as a twill, made from wool that was dyed before it was spun. Those three facts do almost all of the explaining.
Start with woollen. Worsted yarn is combed first so the fibres lie parallel and the result is smooth and strong. Woollen yarn is carded but never combed, so the fibres stay jumbled and full of air. The glossary of The Textile Museum at George Washington University puts it plainly: yarns spun from combed wool are smoother and stronger than yarns from carded wool, and those are the ones called worsted. Tweed sits on the woollen side. That is why it feels hairy rather than sleek, why it is warm for its weight, and why it sheds threads the moment you cut it.
Next, twill. Each weft thread passes over two or more warp threads and under one or more, stepping across by one each row, which makes the fine diagonal ridge you see when you hold a piece to the window. Twill gives a woollen yarn drape, and it makes herringbone and houndstooth possible at all. We have a post on warp and weft if those terms are slippery.
Third, dyed in the wool. Most fabric is woven first and coloured afterwards. Tweed is made the other way round: the fleece is dyed loose, several dyed lots are blended, and only then is the mixture carded and spun. A tweed that reads as plain brown across the room is really rust and olive and ochre twisted into one thread. That is a depth you cannot print on.
Tweed Vs Worsted Suiting, Flannel And Boucle
Gabardine and business suiting are worsted: combed, smooth, crisp at a pressed edge. Worsted holds a knife pleat; tweed holds a shape you steamed into it. Flannel is also soft and often wool, but it is napped after weaving, while tweed gets its texture from the yarn. We have a separate guide to flannel, and since much of what is sold as tweed today is boucle tweed, a full boucle guide too.
Where The Name Tweed Came From
You will read everywhere that the word is an accident: that around 1830 a Hawick manufacturer wrote to a London merchant about his tweels, tweel being the Scots form of twill, and a clerk misread it as Tweed after the Scottish river.
It is a lovely story and it may be true, but it is not established fact. The Dictionaries of the Scots Language records the tradition, then notes flatly that the documentary evidence for it, if it ever existed, is no longer available and that the data for the tradition are conflicting. The editors think the name more likely grew out of shortened forms of tweeled or tweedling, the confusion with the river being accidental but, as they drily put it, felicitous from an advertising point of view. Tell the story by all means, but tell it as a story.
A Brief History Of Tweed
Hand woven woollen cloth was made in the Scottish Borders and the Hebrides long before anyone called it tweed, and it was working clothing: weatherproof, cheap, made at home from local fleece. What changed in the nineteenth century was fashion. Wealthy Victorians bought Highland sporting estates, needed something to shoot and fish in, and found the local cloth did the job better than a London tailor could.
Two women pushed the trade further than anyone. Lady Dunmore, whose family held the estate of Harris, had the Murray tartan copied in tweed by island weavers in the 1840s and sold the cloth to her friends, which is where Harris Tweed as a commercial product begins. Eighty years later Coco Chanel took the same cloth off the shooting field and cut it into soft, boxy jackets for women. Our post on the history of wool covers how the fibre got here.
How Tweed Is Made
- The scoured fleece is dyed loose, then several dyed lots are blended, the step that gives tweed its optical depth.
- The blend is carded and spun into a lofty, slightly uneven yarn.
- The warp is wound and threaded in the order the pattern demands, then woven as a twill.
- Finishing does the rest: washing, milling to felt the surface closed, then cropping and pressing.
That last stage matters most to a sewist. Milling deliberately shrinks and mats the cloth so the fibres lock together. A well finished tweed has had most of its shrinkage taken out before you buy it. A cheap one has not, which is why the pre shrink step below is not optional.
Harris Tweed And The Orb Mark
Most tweed is simply tweed. Harris Tweed is a legal object, protected by its own Act of Parliament. Section 7 of the Harris Tweed Act 1993 defines it in words worth reading slowly: a tweed which has been handwoven by the islanders at their homes in the Outer Hebrides, finished in the Outer Hebrides, and made from pure virgin wool dyed and spun in the Outer Hebrides.
Every clause is doing work. Handwoven, so no power looms. At their homes, so not in a mill shed. Pure virgin wool, so nothing reclaimed. The Act also created the Harris Tweed Authority, and the Authority describes its own role as maintaining the authenticity, standard and reputation of the cloth, overseeing production and inspection from start to finish, and applying the Orb mark only to cloth that has met the definition.
So look for the Orb on the label or stamped on the cloth. If the description says Harris style, it is not Harris Tweed. That is no reason to avoid it: fine tweed is woven in the Borders, in Yorkshire and all over Ireland.
The Named Tweed Patterns You Will Meet
Herringbone
A twill that reverses direction at regular intervals, so the diagonal runs up, then down, in narrow columns like the bones of a fish. The most common tweed pattern of all. It reads as a solid from a distance and it is forgiving to sew, because the columns guide you when keeping a seam straight. It is directional, so cut every piece the same way up.
Houndstooth
Also called dogtooth, and puppytooth in its smallest form. A broken check made by alternating four dark and four light threads in warp and weft over a simple twill, producing those jagged four pointed shapes. Large scale houndstooth needs matching as carefully as any plaid.
Donegal
Named for the county in the north west of Ireland and known by its neps: tiny knots of contrasting coloured fibre spun into the yarn, so the cloth is flecked with specks of red, blue, yellow and green. The ground is usually a quiet twill and the neps do the talking.
Barleycorn
A small, dense weave effect made of nubby motifs said to resemble grains of barley. From two paces it looks like plain heathered cloth with a gritty surface, which makes it a forgiving first tweed.
Overcheck, Glen Check And Prince Of Wales
An overcheck is a widely spaced grid of coloured lines over a base pattern, so a herringbone ground might carry a russet check every four inches. Glen check, properly Glenurquhart check, is an arrangement of small and large houndstooth blocks forming a soft, blurred plaid. Add a coloured overcheck and you have what most people call Prince of Wales check.
Estate And District Tweeds
Patterns designed for one Scottish estate or district, in colours drawn from its own heather, bracken and peat, so a keeper was camouflaged on the hill yet known to anyone who read the codes. That is why a tweed swatch book is full of place names.
Boucle Tweed And The Chanel Jacket
This is the one many of you came for. Boucle tweed is woven from a novelty yarn with loops or curls built into it, often mixed with slubs, ribbon or mohair, so the surface is bumpy and open rather than dense. It is soft, light, spongy, and it ravels ferociously.
The classic Chanel style jacket is built from this cloth, and the construction is the interesting part. Instead of interfacing and a bagged lining, each piece is quilted to a light silk lining before the pieces are joined, so the lining stabilises the loose weave from inside and the jacket stays soft. Nothing is fused and a chain is stitched into the hem to make it hang.
How To Care For Tweed
- Brush with a stiff clothes brush after wearing, in one direction, before dust works into the weave.
- Hang on a broad shouldered hanger and rest the garment a day between wearings.
- Dry clean only when it truly needs it, and steam creases out rather than pressing them out.
- Store clean over summer, with cedar or lavender, never sealed in plastic. Moths go for dirty wool first.
Best Sewing Projects Using Tweed
- A lined straight skirt. The best possible first tweed project. Our easy lined pencil skirt tutorial walks through the whole thing, and swapping suiting for a mid weight tweed changes nothing about the method.
- An unstructured jacket. Boxy, lightly lined, patch pockets.
- A long waistcoat. The long sweater vest project translates well into a firm tweed if you line it.
- Welt pockets. Tweed presses into crisp welts, and our double welt pocket tutorial is the place to practise.
- Bags and cushions. Ideal for small, costly remnants.
For more, the free sewing patterns library is sorted by garment type and the plaid patterns roundup suits a checked tweed.
Tips For Sewing With Tweed
Tip 1: Pre shrink before you cut
Wool that was not fully shrunk at the mill will shrink in your garment the first time it meets steam, and unevenly. Lay it flat wrong side up, hover a steam iron an inch above without letting the plate touch, then leave it until cold. Or ask a dry cleaner for a London shrink, the old method of wrapping cloth in damp sheeting overnight.
Tip 2: Finish every seam allowance immediately
Tweed ravels badly. Handle a cut piece twice and the raw edges have already begun to disintegrate. Overlock or zigzag every edge as soon as it is cut, or better, bind it. The Hong Kong finish is the classic answer for an unlined tweed jacket.
Tip 3: Underline the whole garment
Underlining and interfacing are not the same thing. Interfacing stiffens selected areas, usually collars, cuffs and front edges. Underlining is a second layer cut from the same pattern piece, basted to the wrong side and treated as one with the fashion fabric. On a loose tweed it stops the weave shifting on the bias, steadies the allowances, and gives you something to catch hems and tailoring stitches into so nothing shows on the face. Silk organza or fine cotton lawn both work. Our guide to the different types of interfacing covers the other half of the pairing.
Tip 4: Pad stitch the lapel instead of fusing it
Fusible interfacing on a spongy tweed lapel gives you a flat, bubbled board. Pad stitching gives you a lapel that rolls. Cut hair canvas to the lapel shape, pin it to the wrong side over a curved hand, and work small diagonal stitches in rows, catching a thread or two so nothing shows through.
Tip 5: Shrink and shape with steam
Wool is mouldable in a way no synthetic is. Steam relaxes the fibres and they set into whatever shape they cool in. That is how a tailor eases a sleeve head without a gather. A wool pressing mat bounces the steam back into the cloth.
Tip 6: Match the check across every seam
Any tweed with a visible check must be matched at the centre front, at the side seams, and across front and back at the same level. Buy extra fabric and cut single layer with the pieces face up, so you can see where each motif lands. Our posts on pattern matching when cutting and estimating the extra fabric you need will save you an expensive mistake.
Tip 7: Universal needle, longer stitch, walking foot
A universal needle in 80/12 or 90/14 handles nearly all tweeds. Lengthen the stitch to about 3mm, since a short stitch on a thick woollen chews the fibres. Use a walking foot if you have one: it feeds both layers at the same rate and stops spongy cloth creeping and shifting your matched check. See why a walking foot is not only for quilting and choosing the right needle.
Tip 8: Press from the wrong side, with a clapper
A dry hot iron on the right side of tweed flattens the nap and leaves a glaze you cannot remove. Always press from the wrong side, always with steam, and through a press cloth if you must touch the face. Then use a tailor’s clapper: steam the seam, clamp the wooden block over it, hold until cold. Our post on the pressing tools worth owning shows how each earns its place. And line the garment to hide the lot.
Tweed repays a slow build. It is heavy, it frays, it costs more than you would like and it needs pressing at every stage. It also lasts thirty years and never looks like it came off a rail. Buy a metre of something plain, make the straight skirt first, and find out how it handles before you commit to the coat.
Tweed Sewing Patterns Roundup
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