Editor’s Note: Longtime readers will remember the great DIYer Wafflebored, who designed and sewed all sorts of amazing hockey jerseys over the years. He stopped DIYing a few years back but recently decided to rev up his sewing machine once more. I’m super-pleased to share his latest project with you. Enjoy! — Paul
Vancouver Amazons Jersey Project
By Wafflebored
After my retirement from making jerseys a few years ago, I’ve recently started making them again on a limited basis. I didn’t think I would return to sewing, but a couple of factors led to the decision. First, my amazing local fabric store may be closing. They have listed their building for sale and are not sure what will happen after it sells. It’s a great old-school store that stocks some really nice old-stock polyester sports fabric at very inexpensive prices. Most fabric stores don’t offer these kinds of materials, so I realized it might be now or never for some of these projects.
The other change is I found a really great high-spec mask — the 3M Aura 9205+ — that allows me to work comfortably without having a reaction to the fibers that are released while sewing.
I live in Vancouver, and some of the projects I’d always wanted to do but never got around to were historic jerseys from Vancouver-area teams that had an interesting design or story. I decided to start with the design shown at the top of this page, which is a replica jersey for an early women’s hockey team, the Vancouver Amazons, who played in the same arena as the Vancouver Millionaires (just a few blocks from Wafflebored headquarters!). A lot has been written on the team, as you can see here, here, and here.
Players during this era the players wore knitted sweaters. Because I sew but don’t knit, this jersey would wind up being a hybrid modern polyester jersey in the style of an old sweater. I have never done one of these thick turtleneck designs, and it turned out pretty well. Definitely comfortable to wear. Most of my previous historic replicas were modern versions of old designs, and I might wind up making an Amazons jersey in a modern style as well, complete with names and numbers.
The hardest part of making historic jerseys is knowing which colors to use. In this case, we have newspaper reports from the time indicating the sweaters were white, red, and black. Old photos show the “VA” chest lettering overlapping the chest stripe by about an inch. After inspecting the photos and playing with the contrast, I was able to make out a darker outline on the chest stripe. It would appear the chest stripe is red, with thinner black outline stripes where the red “VA” letters overlap.
I had no indication of which color to use for the collar and cuffs. Based on the photos, they look darker than the main chest stripe. I also did some mockups and felt that a black collar and cuffs looked much better than red, so that’s what I went with.
It’s not always possible to get the color or type of fabrics you want, so I often have to pick projects based on what materials are available. In this case, though, the fabric store had an older-style heavy polyester material in the perfect colors: off-white and a slightly darker red. These both lend a nice vintage look to the jersey. The letters were done in the standard tackle twill.
It’s fun to be tinkering with jerseys again, and even more fun to be featured again on Uni Watch!
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Paul here. So good to have Wafflebored back in the saddle! Here’s hoping we get to hear more from him in the not-too-distant future.