Handwoven silk scarves

I’ve been weaving for six years. In weaverly terms, that’s really nothing. I read articles, blogs, and posts on Weavolution by women and men who’ve been at this craft/art for half a century. Heck, my first weaving class was taught by a man in his 80’s wh learned to weave rag rugs as a boy during the Depression to bring money into the house and never stopped. So six years is a drop in the bucket...one or two strands in a warp, a few throws of a shuttle...insert your favorite metaphor.

On the other hand, one common statement about how to get good at something is to do it for 5,000 hours. Many weeks I spend 30-40 hours researching, planning projects, sitting at the loom, or fringing and wet finishing. Even when I factor in the fact that some weeks that drops down to about 20 hours, my calculator tells me that I’ve worked at weaving for well over 5,000 hours in those six years.

However, in addition to weaving for only six years, I live in the sticks two hours from everywhere, so most of my weaving is very solitary and predominantly learned from books and the old trial-and-error method. While I may have woven miles of a particular weave structure, I may not have a clue about the correct terminology for that structure.

A case in point – drall. I’d seen it in print, read it on the net, attempted to have people explain it to me in words (unsuccessfully, might add). It wasn’t until I was finally pointed to a draft for it and accompanying weaving resources that I understood. OOOOHHHH. Drall is a classic Swedish term for a particular arrangement of what others (me included) call a 3/1 vs. 1/3 twill. Took me a good two years to figure that out.

Similarly the term gebrochene. My reaction is gebro-what? What is that? How do I even pronounce it? How many harnesses does it take? Again, gebro-what?

Then not too long ago I purchased some magazines from a weaver who was downsizing her stash. One of them, Weaver’s from winter, 1997, had an article on gebrochene. Ahhhh....based on some historical weaving, gebrochene is a German term for a modification of what I (and others) call Ms & Ws. I’ve woven Ms & Ws plenty of times, and some modifications of it, to date always on my 4 shaft counterbalance loom. This article whet my whistle for an 8 shaft pattern on my Mac. So I sat down with my computer software, drew in a threading that pleased me, figured out that I’d need to use fine threads to get enough pattern repeats to make me happy, and then played with a variety of tie ups. I ended up using the following draft.

I wound a warp of 260 ends of 20/2 undyed silk (about 8,000 yards of thread to the pound) and got it on the Mac. Threading we smoothly, I was set to weave. For the first scarf I used a black weft. Although I’m not usually a black & white gal, this is my favorite of the three scarves. For each photo I’ve shown you the ‘front’ and the ‘back’ of the scarf. I can’t decide which side I like better.

For the second scarf I picked a Pacific blue silk that makes me drool. It’s so richly colored and has such a terrific sheen that I paid top dollar for it when I saw it in a store. Woven in this scarf, the mix of the white and blue really tones that color down more than I would personally choose. I’d probably like a scarf woven with all the blue.

Based on my experience with the blue, I picked a deep burgundy for the third scarf. This is lovely. (Not as red as it looks in the photo.)

I think the scarves may be a bit heavier than people will be buying in the summer, but I do expect lots of admiring lookers. Time will tell...

June 26th, 2013 | 

Huck patterned shawls

I know I’m really short on shawls for the coming show season. I also know that shawls take more than twice as long to wind the warp, twice as long to thread the heddles and reed, twice as long to do the hemming. Still, I felt like I needed to weave more shawls. So I went back to one of my standbys – 5/2 eggshell mercerized cotton and huck lace. As shawls go, they’re quick & easy.

Because I’ve made friends with my Macomber loom, I decided to do an 8 harness lace pattern instead of my usual 4 harness patterns. I spent a bit of time on the computer playing with different tie ups and came up with one that I really like.

Look how much texture this pattern has while it’s under tension on the loom.

And here’s how the finished cloth looks after wet finishing.

For 5/2 lace I sett the threads at 12 EPI – experience has shown me that’s what I like for the finished piece. The cotton drapes nicely, and although the floats are a bit long, I think it’s not too fussy to be fully functional.

I’d wound a warp for 3 shawls, knowing I have a lot of 5/2 eggshell cotton in my stash. As I was weaving the second shawl I was getting to the end of a cone of cotton so pulled out a new cone. Uh oh. Different manufacturer, very different look. Can’t mix

those yarns in one piece, at least not if I want to achieve the effect – classy – that I’m looking for. As it was, I ran out of yarn 7 rows before I wanted to – my second end has only 11 rows of plain weave, where the beginning has 18 rows. Due to the length of a pattern repeat, in order to unweave enough pattern to get me 18 rows of plain weave, the shawl would have been almost 6 inches shorter than I wanted. So one shawl has a shorter end. Probably very few people would ever notice, but I know.

For the third shawl, instead of using that different eggshell yarn, I opted for an 8/2 barber-pole yarn in eggshell & light tan. It’s fine, too. To my eye looks a bit less formal.

I decided to do some beading on that first shawl, the one with 18 rows of plain weave at both ends.

Instead of doing dangling beads all the way across – which struck me as a bit too much – I did little 3-bead groups near the hem across much of the shawl width. I think it gives a nicer overall look.

Now I really need to be done with shawls for a while and produce more scarves. I have a show next weekend. I didn’t even get t weaving more other things that I’d contemplated for this year – like pillows, or wall hangings, or.....

June 24th, 2013 |

Oops

 Weaving is all about threads. Which threads go through which heddles. Which harnesses are tied to which treadles. Which harnesses are up and which are down. Make one little change, purposely or not, and the differences can be dramatic.

That’s what happened when I was weaving some cotton shawls. The results are fine, but not what I’d intended. I’ll start with my finished products. First, a shawl of 10/2 unmercerized cotton in huck boxes.

The second shawl on the warp was woven with a half-lace treadling, what I called huckish for my sunset shawls, and a variegated thick-thin unmercerized cotton weft.

In the sunset shawl post I showed you the draft I used. Here it is again, since it’s the same draft I used for these brown shawls.

Looks fine. But that’s not what the first shawl turned out like, is it? I didn’t get that all over traditional huck pattern, but instead huck boxes. I’ve woven enough huck that I should have realized it immediately as I wove, but I wasn’t paying enough attention – at least not the right kind of attention. I was attending to having the same number of warp & weft threads per inch, not to what th pattern itself looked like.

After the shawl came off the loom and I wet finished & pressed it I set out to find out what I had done differently that gave me an entirely different effect than what I wanted. It took me far too long to figure it out. Why? Because it was so simple, so little.

Here’s the draft I actually used, instead of the one above I meant to use.

It’s easy enough to see how different the fabric will be, but where’s the difference that created it? Look at the red square in this draft.

I SHOULD have tied that fourth treadle to harnesses 2, 3, & 4, but I inadvertently tied it to only 2 & 4, leaving 3 out of the mix.

As I said, the end result is fine, just not what I had intended. Next time I might not be so lucky. Then again, sometimes ‘mistakes can produce wonderful new weavings.

June 21st, 2013 | 

Advancing squares

 I know I’m short of my stock of shawls so went for a warp of 3 rayon in a pattern I haven’t used before. I’m not positive I’ll use th pattern again, either. We’ll see how it goes. The pattern is an 8harness advancing squares pattern, so I wove it on my Mac. We’re friends now.

Here’s a shot of the first one I wove on my drying rack. It’s a seafoam green weft on a navy warp. This photo doesn’t show the shawl to its best advantage, nor does it show the color accurately, but does give you the best understanding of the weaving pattern.

Interestingly, while I was weaving I wasn’t happy with my choice of weft color, but didn’t make that decision till I was well into it. Decided to go ahead and make a better choice with the second shawl...which I wove with a baby blue weft. This shot doesn’t show the pattern as clearly, but gives you a better idea of how soft and drape-y the cloth is.

For the third scarf I used a red-purple weft. This shot lets you see the lightness of the shawl – you can see some of the white sheet through it.

On the loom this was absolutely my favorite. Off the loom it is absolutely my least favorite. Weird, huh? I’m not sure if I prefer th seafoam weft or the baby blue one, but it’s sure not this one.

As I was pressing these shawls I found several weaving errors on that baby blue one that required quite a bit of time needle- weaving to correct. It’s still not perfect, but the best I could do.

June 12th, 2013 | Tags: handwoven shawl, Macomber, tencel | Category: Weaving | Edit this post This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.