I didn’t manage to finish those polka dot towels in May, but I did complete 6 more scarves, for a total of 12. Those 3 scarves with the gold-wrapped rayon boucle took a long time to finish, what with tying an overhand knot on each of those fancy threads and then dipping each into a bit of FrayCheck. But since the FrayCheck was effective in my sample, I continued.
Two of the scarves have one selvedge with sienna and white stripes of various widths. I wasn’t at all sure of that brown, so for that last I pulled out all of the brown threads and moved the white closer to the fancy yarn. I think I like that one best.
I think you can actually see the gold in the yarn in this close up of the finished fabric.
Then, after looking at them for literally years, I finally decided to weave a 4-color echo scarf. Not having done it before, I appropriately chose tencel as opposed to the silk I had initially intended. I used four colors of 8/2 tencel – baby pink, bright blue, bright green, and red-violet. I chose to pick a threading and treadling from Robyn Spady’s May 2018 issue of Heddlecraft. She called it aurora borealis, which works for me. For the first scarf I used 20/2 mercerized cotton in dark purple.
(Do you like the fact that Dolly came outside for today’s photo shoot?)
Although the recommendation is to use a dark weft in a size substantially smaller than the warp, I ignored both of those recommendations for the second scarf, using a smokey blue 8/2 rayon. The breeze lifted the long end of the scarf here so you can see the design a bit better than when it was flat. Personally, I prefer the lighter color weft.
For the last scarf I played at my computer for a bit, changing the tie up and treadling. I again picked an 8/2 tencel yarn, in black this time, and I think it looks like an oil slick. I don’t know if my customers will like that name, though. 😉
I may do more 4-color echo again, but not immediately. The treadling was complex enough that I couldn’t listen to audio books or even music while I was weaving. 🙁
I have a silk warp on the loom now. No pix at this point.
I usually wait to post till pieces are finished, but it’s been too long since I’ve posted and I have a lot of work to do still to finish things.
So. In my last post I showed you a photo of the yarn that I would use next to weave some scarves. The weaving went ok, although I ended up doing some needle weaving, which, as you know, is not my favorite thing to do and I’m slow at it. But it got done.
Seems like finishing it should be simple, right? Not! My go-to finish for scarf is twisted fringe. But just like that wouldn’t work with those rayon seed scarves, it also wouldn’t work with these three. The main yarn used is a rayon boucle that has a gold metallic thread throughout its length, sometimes wrapped around the rayon tightly for 1/2″ or so. Looks really nice in the fabric, but that wrapping means that it will not make a neat twisted fringe – stiff spots in the yarn. (Sorry that I couldn’t get a decent photo so you could really see the yarn well.)
I tried braiding the fancy yarn. Nope, that doesn’t work either. I tried various knotting techniques with larger and smaller bundles of yarn. Nope. So the scarves sat, waiting for me to get inspired on how to finish them. Many days later it was clear the inspiration would not arrive.
So. I set myself up and made a single overhand knot in each strand of the fancy yarn. Then I cut them all to the same length. I tried doing a similar thing with the tencel on the selvedges. That didn’t look good, so I did my usual twisted fringe with those ends. Now I plan to put a tiny dab of FrayStop on each end of the fancy yarn. Tedious, for sure. Then I will wet finish this one scarf before I decide what to do with the other two. I may end up hemming them with no fringe.
Lesson here: use yarn that won’t fringe well for weft, not warp. Wonder if I can remember this next time I have some really cool yarn. 😉
Meanwhile, Susan Poague, a woman I’ve communicated with on and off for a few years and did some custom dyeing for me, had an article published in the latest Handwoven magazine about her turned taquete circles. Susan and I emailed back and forth about the circles draft back in 2016, and I ended up weaving a scarf using a modified draft, but I had some issues with it and wasn’t happy with the outcome.
Still, every time Susan blogged about it, I loved her results. So when the Handwoven issue came out, especially given my stall on those scarves, I decided it was time to weave another batch of towels, in circles. I put on a warp for 8 towels and wove them off.
Here they are washed and dried, awaiting hemming (sewing) and pressing.
Don’t they bring a smile to your face? I believe they will improve the mood in all kitchens that they grace.
Usually I do this kind of work (the tedious dipping of each end in FrayCheck and the hand hemming) in the evening, when I can sit in front of the TV. But today I’m going to take my work outside and do it now. My OCD self needs some closure, and the towels will be a sure success, even if the scarf isn’t.
It’s May 7th and I have 6 scarves woven, wet finished, and complete! First up, I started with some hand painted 20/2 silk. I dyed this yarn in late April, using a photo I found online from Blue Brick Dyeworks, as inspiration. They called it Prairie Storm, which works for me.
Here’s the yarn I ended up with from that inspiration image.
I chose a weave structure I’ve used many times and really like, and wove the first scarf with a 20/2 gold weft. Looks like that storm at dawn.
Then I used 2 strands of a textured green & white silk singles I’ve had for a long time. I also changed the treadling, turning the pattern into leaves. So different! The colors are more spring-like, and the texture adds a strong element.
Here’s a close up so you can see both weave structure and texture.
For the last scarf I wanted a strong color, so used 2 strands of 60/2 chocolate silk. Now that prairie storm is really threatening.
I went back to the treadling of the gold scarf, which you can’t really see there, but you can in this close up.
Then, sticking with my must-use-stash mantra, I pulled out a rayon seed yarn, something I’ve never used before. Sett at only 15 ends per inch, I had to remove my go-to 12-dent reed and go up to the attic to get my 6-dent to accommodate this ‘lumpy’ yarn. I wasn’t at all sure how I’d like it. Turns out I love it! I used a different supplemental weft for each of the 3 scarves.
First is a wide ribbon with a gold metallic center. This one, like the other 2, has a regular old 8/2 rayon weft.
You can’t really appreciate that ribbon or the texture at that distance, so here’s a close up.
That wide ribbon didn’t look at all good on the loom, and I wasn’t at all sure how the whole thing would wet finish, so I cut it off and wet finished scarf number 1 before proceeding. Decided I didn’t want to use such a wide supplement, so re-threaded the reed for the next 2 scarves.
This one is uses a soy silk flat ribbon-like yarn in purples and pinks.
And the last one has a hand painted rayon yarn in greens and blues.
The only downside to these scarves is that there was no way I could twist that fringe, nor did I think they would make a nice hem. So I tried a few different simple knotting techniques, but neither is as neat a look as I prefer.
Today I got the next scarf warp on the loom. This one is dominated by this interested rayon boucle yarn that has metallic interest. Looking forward to seeing this one weave.
I got 3 more pieces finished in March, bringing my completed total to 15 – YAY!!! That dropped my weaving deficit by 8 or 9. I’m sure I can make up a few more in May, so I’m feeling much more comfortable.
These 3 pieces have a rather lengthy story, so I made it a point to combine several photos into a collage, and I’ll do my best to moderate my verbiage as well.
After my last two disappointments with my silk dyeing, with so much color rinsing out, I spoke to my dye teacher. She suggested perhaps I hadn’t scoured sufficiently, so I committed to more scouring. And it’s a darned good thing I did, too. I did these 4 scour baths on one day, each with the hottest tap water possible, a combination of soda ash and blue Dawn, and a soak of at least 1/2 hour per bath.
You can see the water getting progressively cleaner with each scour. After these four I dried the skeins, as I wasn’t quite ready to dye them. On dye day, I did one more scour bath, and the water was pretty clear.
I dyed the skeins with light and dark blue, and a medium green. Here you see them going from dripping wet to almost dry, then dry and wound into balls, and finally the warp chains.
Pretty amazing how much the color lightened from wet to dry, isn’t it? These are 30/2 silk skeins, so it’s very lightweight and fine – more than 7,400 yards per pound. I had 720 ends to make a warp that was about 24″ wide in the reed. Because the warp was variegated and I thought it would be busy, I decided to keep the weave structure simple, and used and all-over huck lace.
For the first piece I used a sort of unusual yarn that’s been in my cupboard for a while, a 20/2 rayon in a beautiful red-violet. This has even more yards/pound than the 30/2 silk. In this photo look at how much light passes through the shawl and you get an idea of just how airy it is. A featherweight for sure.
I wove the second piece with 20/2 twilight silk, so it’s a bit heavier than the purple shawl. Still light and lovely.
I took a closeup of this one so you can see the structure better, and see how different the two sides look.
I chose the green 30/2 silk I’d dyed earlier this month for the weft for the last piece. Again it’s a very lightweight piece, woven and sewn into an airy cowl. Here it is long.
Although it is both wide and long, it’s so light that it’s easy to wrap it twice for a different look.
I’ve already got 2-1/2 more scarves woven to start May out right. It’s another hand painted silk warp that I’m happy with.
So what’s the relationship to my weaving? Well, I’ve finished 3, 6, 9 scarves since my last post! That brings my total for the month to 12, and it’s only the 18th. Woo Hoo! That makes a nice dent in my shortage (somewhere between 8 and 17), although there’s still a long way to go. I just received my acceptance emails to the 2 big shows I applied to, so work, work, work!
First I hand painted some silk in blues. Like the greens, I was disappointed with how much of the dye rinsed out, so the scarves are much more subtle in color than I was planning. Pretty, but not what I had in mind. I’m calling the first two faded jeans.
I had to show you a shot of one of them on a hanger so you can see how the light and airy the lace looks. The actual color of this scarf is much like the first one, not gray like it looks here.
This scarf has a dark blue weft, giving it a different look – stonewashed jeans. Interesting how different the 2 sides look, isn’t it?
For the one above, I added some of the dark blue to the fringe, as I don’t like the look when the warp color (and the fringe) is so different from the weft color. It jars my eyeballs.
Then I wove 3 rayon chenille scarves with ladder ribbon supplemental/supplementary warp. Two of them have the same color weft, which is a taupe/gold color.
For the third I used a much lighter weft, creating an overall camel look. It surprised me that I liked this one best.
Here’s a closeup so you can see the ladder ribbon supplement.
Those three went so quickly that I had to weave 3 more rayon chenille with ribbon. This time I chose a color called chili – think deep, dark chili that’s been simmering for hours. Same weft as warp on all 3.
The first scarf has ladder ribbon, which looks all white in this photo but is more silver and gold in real life.
Then I used a flat ribbon in variegated colors. Interestingly, on the loom this one looked rather dull to me. After finishing it’s my favorite for sure.
Here’s a close up of that one for you.
Because it looked dull on the loom, I didn’t want to use it for the third scarf, so I went with another ladder ribbon, this one in reds, pinks, and white.
And a close up. Somehow the bits of color seemed closer together on the ribbon to me than the silver and gold. In reality, those distances are the same.
I’m putting on another hand painted silk warp on the loom right now. For wider pieces. Nice color on the silk this time. 🙂
