Weaving A Gem Of A Life

MP, the woman who gave me my first order for a custom baby wrap and one of my testing moms, asked me to do a semi-random gradient for her next warp. I owe her a lot, so said yes, even though I was quite hesitant about how much time it would take to measure the warp.

Although I could be wrong, I think that the people who do gradient warps have sectional warp beams, which entails entirely different warping equipment and methods than mine.

Anyway, for MP, I said I’d give it a shot. I used a 60-thread pattern on the mill to get from all one color to all of the next. (All A, 1B, 4A, 1B, 5A, 1B, 1A, 1B, 1A, 1B, 6A, 2B, and on.) I wasn’t obsessive about sticking with the exact pattern when I was threading – since I wind 2 threads at once, I allowed myself to pick whichever one I wanted off the lease sticks at the loom.

Here’s the first bout of her warp on my mill. I really like these two colors – turquoise & aquamarine.

I forgot to take photos of bout numbers 2 & 4, but here’s #3 – charcoal to mauve.

I got the loom all threaded up, and now have the first wrap about half woven. Black weft, hearts & flowers weave pattern.

While I like the way this weave looks, it’s not my favorite to weave since it requires 2 floating selvedges. There is obviously some small movement I make that causes me to break the right hand floating selvedge thread about every 20″. PITA!! I’ve tried to study & correct it, but so far, no such luck.

Here you can see how the gradient works and a closeup of the pattern.

I think you can appreciate the gradient better on a plain weave than a pattern weave, but that’s just my opinion. Since I’m doing custom weaves on all the baby wraps, I weave what mama wants.

Laura Fry a the biggest proponent I know of wet finishing handwovens. She has literally written the book about it. All of her knowledge and reasons for doing so are right and true.

For me, the hard press on the last baby wrap was important for a reason in addition to setting the fibers. I found two problemmatic warp threads during the hard press that I hadn’t seen either on the loom or during my post-loom inspection. This gave me a chance to fix them before I mailed the wrap off. Whew!

I know that both NS & HM are really eager to see their finished wraps, even if it will be another 48 hours before they have them in their hands, so here goes.

NS was the warp designer and I wove her baby wrap first, with the marine weft. She knows that I had some hesitancy about the design, but I WAS WRONG! This is beautiful.

I know – that’s really a tease. 😉 You can’t appreciate it rolled up. Here it is flat so you can see the entire width.

And here’s a shot where you can see both sides of the baby wrap. They’re really not tons different.

When I got N’s done I set to work on the sister wrap for HM. You remember – she chose a pale green weft. Her wrap looks very different on the two sides. To be honest, I can’t decide which I like better, and just had to pick one for the hemming and mandatory labeling.

Here’s H’s flat so you can see the entire width.

And H’s rolled.

Now for a few comparison shots. I think pictures like this help people understand the major difference that weft color can have on a warp. The way colors interact have such a dramatic impact.

And here they are from the side.

I’ve got the custom scarf order on the loom, and expect I’ll get both scarves on this warp woven tomorrow. Then I can get started on the next two baby wraps. 🙂