Rigid Heddle Woven Scarves

Even though I haven’t posted about it as much, I have been weaving away.

I had to do two demonstrations in March, and having no idea how much I’d get woven either time, I warped my rigid heddle loom for two scarves.

I’d recently bought this brightly-colored yarn that’s a cotton-linen-rayon blend. It’s not my usual choice in yarns, but it came at a great price with some other colors that I do really like, and I knew I’d find use for this.

I always have a bit of a challenge about what to put on my rigid heddle loom, since I tend to work with finer yarns that I sett at 16-18 ends per inch, and the rigid heddle is 12 ends per inch. The confetti yarn was a bit fatter than my usual, so I figured I’d give it a shot.

I used a cranberry rayon boucle yarn for the first scarf. Although the post has apparently been taken down, I had found a blog post online for a half twill pattern woven on a rigid heddle loom, and decided to try that new pattern on this yarn.

The half twill didn’t excite me, but it was interesting. The solid cranberry color really makes the whole scarf look red; the other colors fade into the background. The rayon weft, combined with the half twill pattern, ensures that this scarf is very soft and drapes nicely, but overall it’s not a look I’m crazy about.

So for the second scarf I definitely wanted to use a different weft. I tried a few things, all of which were too bright for my tastes. I finally settled on a very dark forest green pearl cotton. I also decided that I’d do leno for the second demonstration.

I’m usually a very symmetrical weaver, and I’m trying to loosen up a bit, so I decided that I’d make the leno bands random, inserting leno whenever a viewer wanted to see how I did it. I wasn’t sure how I’d like the end result, but I’m just fine with it.

I was surprised at how different these two scarves look. The bright red weft versus the dark green weft makes a huge difference in how much the colors in that variegated warp show up. The cotton plain weave pattern versus rayon half twill pattern also make a sizable difference in softness and drape.

To show a third difference in the way the same yarn looks in different applications, here’s a handwoven napkin using the variegated yarn as weft next to the red scarf and the green scarf with that yarn as warp. I brought these three items to my Southern Tier Fiber Arts Guild this morning and people there were surprised at how different these three pieces look.