Jacket
'Canvas' descends from the Latin cannabis. The heavy plain-weave cloth was originally hemp — sailcloth, painters' canvas, the duck of dockers and farmers and 19th-century gold miners. Levi Strauss's first 1873 riveted pants were made from hemp canvas. Cotton took over later; the word and the cloth construction stayed.
Cut and lay
Heavy hemp canvas weighs 12–16 oz per square yard. It is cut with sharp shears against a chalked pattern: front and back panels, two sleeve sections, two pocket panels, a collar piece. The fabric is rigid enough to hold its shape on the cutting table without pinning.
Pattern · marking · shears
Seams that hold
Hemp canvas wants a robust thread — bonded nylon or polyester at #69 or heavier. A workwear seam is typically French (folded under and double-stitched) or flat-felled, with visible top-stitch at one-eighth inch. The result is a seam that holds longer than the cloth around it.
Lockstitch · French seam · top-stitch
The modern names
Patagonia's Iron Forge Hemp Canvas line is the heaviest contemporary hemp workwear in production — 12 oz canvas, riveted pockets, the lineage of the original Levi's pant. Outerknown's Blanket Shirt uses a lighter hemp blend. Filson does hemp/organic-cotton in their Mackinaw silhouette. The garments wear in instead of out.
Patagonia Iron Forge · Outerknown · Filson
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