Tag: build-log

Logged 4 October 2026, Kathmandu.

Two swatches of the workshop’s plain, undyed handwoven hemp, cut along the threads and measured on graph paper, came in at 420gsm and 462gsm. That’s an average of 441gsm, about 13 oz per square yard, and well above the 300–360gsm we were quoted verbally while sourcing. Getting there took two attempts; the first was too rough to trust.

Two Metres, ten Squares

Entry 01 left us with one swatch at 439gsm, worked out on an assumed area we knew was too small, and a plan: three to five squares from one batch, averaged, with the range reported.

On the day of V2’s rework (Entry 03), I came away from the workshop with a metre from Master Dai: the same hemp the new cuffs were being cut from. Before testing it, I picked up a metre from the second supplier too.

From each metre I cut five squares, as close to 10 cm × 10 cm as I could measure with a ruler, and weighed each on the same 0.01 g scale as Entry 01. GSM means grams per square metre, and a 10 cm square is a hundredth of one, so the shortcut is weight in grams × 100.

Both metres averaged comfortably above 400gsm. Neither average was precise enough to stand behind.

Why the First Numbers Didn’t Count

The × 100 shortcut only works if each square really is 100 cm². Mine weren’t, for two reasons.

First, the cut. A ruler gives a straight line, but the threads in handwoven cloth don’t run perfectly straight. Cutting along the ruler, I crossed threads at a shallow angle instead of following them, so every edge was a row of cut-through threads, with short ends that can work loose before weighing.

Second, the shape. Handwoven cloth is woven under tension, and not an even one. Cut a piece free and it relaxes into the shape the weave gives it, which isn’t a square. A square drawn at 10 cm on the cloth isn’t 100 cm² by the time it’s on the scale.

Edges like that leave no clean boundary to measure, so the squares needed trimming before anything could be measured properly. I’d skipped buying graph paper, on the theory that an approximate number was fine for a home test. For a number going in this log, it wasn’t.

Doing it Again, Properly

Entry 01’s plan was to cut as close to 10 cm × 10 cm as possible. That turned out to be the wrong target: handwoven cloth won’t reliably hold an exact square, however carefully it’s cut. So the second attempt stopped assuming the area and measured it.

1. Cut along the threads. Each edge follows a single thread instead of a ruler line, so the threads running alongside it are either fully in the swatch or fully out. This meant trimming the first squares back, so their first weights no longer apply.
2. Measure the real area. Each trimmed swatch went flat on graph paper and its outline was traced, in whatever shape the cloth had settled into. Whole centimetre squares inside the outline count 100 mm² each; the part-filled strips along the edges are counted square millimetre by square millimetre. Swatch 1 held 89 whole squares (8,900 mm²) and 1,123 mm² of edge strips.
3. Weigh and divide. Same 0.01 g scale. GSM = weight in grams ÷ area in square metres.

So far, I’ve done this for two of the workshop’s five squares: the heaviest and the lightest from the first attempt, to see the spread at its widest.

The Workshop’s Hemp: 420 to 462GSM

Swatch 1 came out close to 100 cm², at 100.2. Swatch 2 came out at 93.5, 6.5% short. Left unmeasured, an area error that size moves the result by 27gsm.

Two swatches is fewer than the three to five we set ourselves in Entry 01, so treat this range as provisional.

Even the lighter swatch sits 60gsm above the top of the 300–360gsm we were quoted while sourcing. That figure was never treated as fact, and this is why.

Why are two Swatches From one Metre 42GSM apart?

That’s about 10% of their average, and more than measuring error explains. Misread every edge of a swatch by half a millimetre, all in the same direction, and its GSM moves by about 9. The scale adds about 1. Misreading alone could open a gap of about 20gsm, not 42.

So at least half the gap, and probably most of it, is the cloth itself. Handwoven hemp isn’t machine-even: each row of weft is beaten in by hand, and some stretches of the same metre pack in more thread than others.

It’s also why one swatch, like Entry 01’s, was never going to settle the question.

Two caveats that still stand

Hemp takes up moisture from the air, so the same swatch weighs a little more on a humid day. Lab tests condition fabric at around 20°C and 65% relative humidity before weighing; ours were weighed at room conditions.

We haven’t washed this metre, and Master Dai says the hemp is prewashed before it’s cut. A wash can still change both the size and the weight of hemp cloth, so a finished jacket, washed at home, may not read the same. V2 has since had its first hand wash; how it measures afterwards is the next entry.

What’s still owed

• The second supplier’s metre. Its five squares have had the quick test only. They get the same method next.
• The workshop’s other three squares. They’re trimmed along the threads and set aside, and may go into a wash and shrinkage test.
• Run One’s yardage, once it’s bought. The batch cut for the run may not be the batch tested here, so it gets the same test.

This is Entry 05 of the Run One Build Log: the making of Funcle Yeti’s first batch of handwoven hemp chore jackets, logged in Kathmandu as it happens. Start from Entry 01.

Every sample of our handwoven hemp chore jacket is now measured the same way: hung for 24 hours, laid flat and buttoned, then measured at 19 fixed points, each one photographed with the tape in frame. Its construction gets checked too: weave density, stitches per inch, seams and reinforcement. The numbers are published here.

V2, the reworked first sample, is the first to go through it. It measures 100.0 cm around the chest, 80.0 cm from shoulder to hem and 46.5 cm across the shoulders, plus 16 more points from sleeve to pocket flap. Those numbers are the baseline that the next two samples, and eventually Run One, get checked against.

Why Measure Every Sample?

The first sample came back wrong because the measurements it was meant to be cut from, taken months earlier, were lost in a handoff between people at the workshop. It was cut from judgment instead, and the sleeves missed. V2 fixed some of that in one sitting, and not all of it.

A measurement kept in one person’s notes can go missing again. One that’s written down, photographed and published is much harder to lose, and whoever makes the next sample works from the same sheet.

How Was V2 Measured?

The jacket hung for 24 hours before anything was measured, so it was measured settled rather than straight off the machine. Then it was laid flat, buttoned, and measured at 19 fixed points: nine for the body, sleeves and collar, and ten for the pockets and flap. The protocol has three more points for an interior pocket; V2 doesn’t have one.

Two points are measured across the flat jacket and then doubled, so they read as the full way round: the chest, measured pit to pit (straight across from one underarm seam to the other), and the hem sweep, measured edge to edge along the bottom. Every other point is a single flat measurement.

Flat measurements describe the garment, not the person wearing it. That’s what makes them comparable between samples and between makers: anyone can lay a sample on a table and check it against the numbers below.

V2’s Measurements

V2, measured flat on 24 September 2026, before its first wash. All values in centimetres, recorded to the millimetre.

Point	How it’s measured	V2 (cm)	Tolerance, later samples (± cm)
Chest	Pit to pit, doubled	100.0	1.0
Shoulder	Seam to seam across the back	46.5	0.5
Sleeve	Shoulder seam to cuff edge	58.0	1.0
Body length	High point of the shoulder to hem	80.0	1.0
Hem sweep	Edge to edge, doubled	103.8	1.0
Cuff opening	Buttoned, flat	12.8	0.5
Armhole	Straight line, seam to seam	21.5	0.5
Collar height	Centre back, stand plus fall	6.5	0.3
Collar length	Point to point along the neck seam	50.0	0.5
Open chest pocket, width	Across the opening, edge to edge	12.3	0.3
Open chest pocket, depth	Opening to bottom seam	13.9	0.3
Flap chest pocket, width	Across the opening, edge to edge	12.5	0.3
Flap chest pocket, depth	Opening to bottom seam	13.7	0.3
Flap, width	Edge to edge	12.6	0.3
Flap, depth	Top seam to bottom edge	6.2	0.3
Lower pocket, left, width	Across the opening, edge to edge	16.2	0.3
Lower pocket, left, depth	Opening to bottom seam	18.0	0.3
Lower pocket, right, width	Across the opening, edge to edge	16.5	0.3
Lower pocket, right, depth	Opening to bottom seam	18.2	0.3

Measured by hand, a sewn jacket rarely gives the same number twice to the millimetre. We record to the millimetre anyway, and the tolerance column sets how far a later sample can land from V2’s number: ±1 cm on the largest dimensions, ±0.5 cm on the shoulder, cuff, armhole and collar length, and ±0.3 cm on collar height and the pockets.

Whole, hung from a luggage scale that reads in 5 g steps, V2 weighs 1,000 g dry.

How Is V2 Put Together?

The tape covers size. A second set of checks covers construction: how densely the cloth is woven, how densely it’s sewn, and what holds the stress points together.

Check	V2
Thread count	6 warp and 6 weft threads per cm
Stitches per inch	6, at the side seams, armholes, shoulders, hem and cuffs
Seams	Plain at the sides, [double] at the armholes
Seam allowance	10 mm
Bartacks	None. Not at the pocket corners, pocket bags, sleeve plackets or other stress points
Interlining	Sewn in, not fused
Cuffs	Unlined
Elbow patch	Added after sewing, not built in
Buttons	Coconut shell
Chest pocket flap	Closes with a button
Buttonholes	2 cm longer than the buttons they close

Thread count is the number of threads in a centimetre of cloth, counted separately along its length (warp) and across it (weft). Stitches per inch is how many stitches a seam puts into an inch of its length; it’s counted in inches even here, because that’s how the trade counts it.

Three of these are worth watching. V2 has no bartacks anywhere: the short, dense bars of stitching usually sewn across pocket corners and other stress points to stop them tearing. Every seam runs at 6 stitches per inch. And each buttonhole is 2 cm longer than its button. None of these is a verdict yet. Whether any of them shows up as wear, or as a button that won’t stay done up, is what the wash and wear tests are for.

What Do V2’s Numbers Show?

On its own, this list is a baseline, not a verdict. There’s nothing earlier to hold it against: V1 was never measured this way, and the measurements it should have been cut from are gone.

A few things show even so. The body is close to straight: 100.0 cm around the chest and 103.8 cm around the hem, a difference of 3.8 cm over 80 cm of length.

The lower pockets aren’t a perfect pair: the right one measures 16.5 by 18.2 cm and the left 16.2 by 18.0 cm, so the right is 3 mm wider and 2 mm deeper.

And the list doesn’t yet measure the part of V2 we know is wrong. It records the cuff opening, but not the sleeve’s width at the bicep or the forearm. That’s where V1 went wrong, and where V2 is still narrow toward the wrist.

Where Do the Numbers Go Next?

Two more samples get measured the same way, at the same points: a third sample from the first supplier (V3), and the second supplier’s first. Both are checked against a written spec, version 1.0, built from these numbers, with one exception: the sleeve goes with its correction, not as a copy of V2.

V2 itself gets measured again. It’s the test jacket for washing and wear, so the same points, and its dry weight, are taken again after its 1st, 3rd, 5th and 10th wash. Two thread markers are tacked onto it as well, each sewn exactly 20.0 cm tack to tack, one running vertically and one horizontally, so shrinkage can be read along the length and across the width separately. If the hemp shrinks or relaxes, it will show up as a change against the numbers above, not as an impression.

Either way, every sample from here starts from written numbers, not memory.

GSM: The cloth itself has been weighed properly too, square by square; that’s Entry 05.

This is Entry 04 of the Run One Build Log: the making of Funcle Yeti’s first batch of handwoven hemp chore jackets, logged in Kathmandu as it happens. Start from Entry 01.

Logged–23 September 2026, Kathmandu.

V2 isn’t a new sample. It’s the first sample of our handwoven hemp chore jacket, the one that came back wrong, reworked at the workshop in a single sitting. It now has longer cuffs, reshaped sleeves, cotton lining at the neck and a cotton patch inside the elbow.

It fits better than V1, and it still doesn’t fit right: the sleeve is narrow at the wrist, so the cuff folds back only once. On its first wear, the unlined hemp cuffs rubbed the wrists.

What Needed Fixing

The first sample’s sleeves were short at the cuff, wide through the bicep and over-tapered toward the wrist. It had no foldable cuffs, and none of the cotton liner patches we’d specified at the neck and elbow. The measurements it was meant to be cut from had been lost in a handoff months earlier.

One Sitting at the Workshop

The rework happened in front of me, and it’s photographed as it happened. One tailor did the work, over an hour or two.

Master Dai was there. (Master is the title for the lead tailor; Dai means elder brother, the word for someone whose read on the work outranks yours.)

To change the sleeves, the tailor first unpicked the seams of both layers: the hemp shell and the cotton liner. Here’s what changed.

Area	V1	V2	Where it stands
Sleeve length	Short at the cuff	New, longer cuff	Fixed: the sleeve now covers the full arm
Lower sleeve	Too narrow toward the wrist	Seam allowance let out toward the wrist	Better, still narrow at the wrist
Bicep	Too wide	Taken in	Looks okay, not ideal yet
Cuffs	Not foldable	Foldable, per spec	Fold back only once: too narrow at the wrist to roll up to the elbow
Neck	No liner patch	Cotton lining added	Done
Elbow patch	Missing	Cotton patch stitched to the inside of the hemp shell	In place, but on the shell, not the liner
Cuff lining	—	None	Open: see below

The spec put the elbow patch on the liner, as an extra layer where a lining is likely to wear through first. On this sample it couldn’t be attached to the liner, so it’s stitched to the inside of the hemp shell instead.

Why Couldn’t the Sleeve be Fully Fixed?

V1’s sleeve was cut the wrong shape: too wide at the bicep, too narrow toward the wrist. The tailor let out the seam allowance toward the wrist and took the sleeve in at the bicep.

Taking in is always possible; letting out isn’t. A seam can only give back the fabric already folded inside it. Past that, more width means new fabric, such as a new sleeve or an inserted panel, or a corrected pattern.

That’s why the wrist end is better and still narrow. For Run One, the correction belongs in the pattern, not in more alterations to one sample.Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Ut elit tellus, luctus nec ullamcorper mattis, pulvinar dapibus leo.

Buttonholes: One Last Stop

The new cuffs needed buttonholes, and the buttonhole machine isn’t at the workshop. It’s at the first supplier’s shop in Thamel, so the jacket went there the same day, with collection set for the next day.

When I went back, the buttonholes hadn’t been done yet; they were finished later that day. It’s worth knowing for Run One’s timeline: when one garment’s machines sit at two addresses, a finished jacket can take an extra trip and an extra day.

While I was collecting it, another customer at the shop asked about the jacket. The shop told them it was a one-off, which, being a sample, it is.

How Does Wearing a Hemp Jacket Feel Like?

V2’s first time outside was the walk home on Wednesday 23 September: 15 to 20 minutes on a cool evening, worn over a shirt with a backpack on. It was a humid, overcast day in Kathmandu, between about 18°C and 26°C.

The jacket was comfortable the whole way, neither cold nor too warm, even with the backpack. One walk isn’t a warmth test, and it isn’t logged as one: it’s a first impression.

On the body, the sleeves now cover the full arm, and the bicep is no longer too wide; it looks okay, not ideal. The wrist end is still narrow, so the cuff folds back once and the sleeve won’t roll up to the elbow.

The cuffs rubbed against the wrists. They’re unlined hemp: the neck now has cotton against the skin, and the cuffs don’t.

The tailor’s view is that these cuffs can’t take a liner. Whether a cuff built with a lining from the start is possible is one of the first questions for the second supplier.

The rub also reopens a decision from the first sample. Master Dai suggested a hemp-cotton blend at the collar and cuffs, for softness, and we turned it down for durability. One walk is thin evidence, but it points his way.

Hemp is widely reported to soften with washing and wear, so some of this may ease on its own. V2 hasn’t been washed yet, and Master Dai says the hemp is prewashed before it’s cut. Whether a wash at home softens the cuffs is something we’d rather find out than assume.

Still Open After V2

• Can the cuffs be lined, and can the elbow patch go on the liner as specified? Both questions go to the second supplier.
• Does the hemp-cotton blend come back for the cuffs?
• The sleeve correction has to reach the pattern, whoever cuts Run One.

The first sample of the Funcle Yeti chore jacket was made in Kathmandu from handwoven hemp, and it did not pass.

What Was Specified

The brief asked for foldable cuffs and cotton liner patches at the neck and elbows — the two places a jacket gives out first on anyone who actually wears one. Reinforce them at the start and you’re patching in year eight instead of replacing in year three.

What Came Back

No foldable cuffs. No liner patches at the neck or elbows.

The fit was closer than it had any right to be, and there’s a reason for that. My measurements had been taken months earlier and left with the workshop, and by the time the sample was cut they’d gone missing. The Master Dai worked from judgment instead. Master is the title for the lead tailor; Dai means elder brother — what you call a man whose read on the work outranks yours.

He got the torso right by eye, which is a genuinely impressive thing to do. The sleeves he did not. Too short at the cuff, too wide through the bicep, and tapered hard enough that you notice it on the first wear rather than the tenth.

The One Thing That Was Right

He lined it in a cotton matched close to the hemp. I thought it looked dull. He was thinking about dye transfer onto undyed cloth over ten years of washing, which is the correct thing to be thinking about. The liner stays.

What Happens Next

The sample went back for rework. V2 is in progress. If it holds, the same spec goes to a second workshop — with the measurements taken fresh, on the day, by someone who doesn’t have to guess.

Seeing the thing exist in cloth for the first time was a good day, for the record. It just wasn’t a finished jacket.

We spent a few weeks walking into hemp shops across Kathmandu to see what was already being made. Almost all of it was the same jacket: a zip, a hood, a winter cut. Very little of it was pure hemp — most was a blend, usually with cotton, sometimes without saying so.

Nobody was making a chore jacket in handwoven hemp. That gap is the reason Run One exists.

What the Shops Said About Weight

One shop owner told us pure handwoven hemp runs at least 300gsm, and realistically 350–360. That’s secondhand, from a retailer rather than a weaver, and we’ve treated it as a starting point rather than a number.

The Swatches

Shop 1 gave us four options (that we liked): two dyed, in a pattern they call “zigzag weave” — visually it reads closest to a twill or herringbone, though the shopkeeper’s term was “Zig-Zag,” so we’re not stating that as fact. And two undyed in plain weave, one of which is wood-ash treated. It basically means that these wild harvested hemp from the mountain is boiled in wood ash to make it softer.

The shop also confirmed the ash treatment directly — it’s genuinely part of their process, not something we’re guessing at. It’s noticeably softer in the hand, entirely handwoven and sometimes costs more due to the additional processes and labor intensive production.

We’re using the plain, untreated, undyed option for Run One. No dye, because it’s a step that adds cost, adds a thing that can fade, and hides what the fibre actually looks like. Not the ash-treated version either, for now — we don’t yet understand enough about what the treatment does to the fibre over time to build it into a jacket worn for over ten-year, and that’s a question for the next visit, not a guess we’re comfortable publishing.

The First GSM Test, and why We’re not Quoting the Number

We ran a rough check at home on a 0.01g scale: the swatch weighed 4.39g. Assuming a clean 10cm × 10cm square, that works out to about 439gsm — well above what the shop had quoted.

We don’t trust that number, and the reason is visible in the photo: the swatch wasn’t actually 10cm square. It ran past that mark on one edge, which means the true area was larger than we assumed — and the same weight over a larger area means a lower real GSM. The 439 figure is almost certainly too high; we just don’t know by how much yet.

There’s a second reason to be cautious, one that would apply even to a perfectly cut square: hand-tensioned weaving means density drifts across a bolt, so one square only ever tells you about that square.

The proper version takes several squares from different parts of the same batch, averaged, with the spread reported alongside. We’ll run that for both suppliers once we have swatches from each, and publish the range as well as the average — the variation is a real property of hand-woven cloth, not an error to hide.

One thing we can’t solve: the batch we test may not be the batch that gets cut. Hemp moves through these workshops faster than a sample takes to approve. So the test tells you what this workshop’s cloth typically runs, and we’ll test the actual Run One yardage separately once it’s bought.

Where This Goes Next

Supplier 2 has been visited once, briefly. No swatches yet.

Supplier 1 has the brief and is making the first sample.