Generally, by the time I'm sitting at the loom shuttle in hand, I've thought through all the possibilities and have made up my mind what I'm going to do. Sometimes minor changes are made, but I've spent a lot of time thinking before I start weaving.
This warp, however, seems particularly fluid. After thinking about how I would set the warp up for two weeks, when it came time to start beaming I radically changed what I was going to do in order to use up some 2/40's cotton along with the 2/20's. This meant a change in density, and doubling the very fine linen weft for the samples.
As I wove the samples, I was quite pleased with the results, but the fabric was not really suitable for towels. In order to make good towel fabric, I figured that I'd need to re-sley to 27 or maybe even 30 epi. That would make the fabric a bit skimpy on width for towels, so I really didn't want to do that.
However, I felt that if I used 2/8 Tencel for weft, I wouldn't have to change anything, and I'd get a pretty nice shawl out of it. So I wove one using some 2/8 lavender Tencel for weft, which turned out quite nice, I thought.
Unfortunately, most of my 2/8 Tencel is in rather intense jewel tones, not pastels. My only other option was bleached white.
About the time I thought about using bleached white weft, my fibre choice radar pinged, and I suddenly remembered that I had some 3000 yard/pound white rayon chenille. Quite a lot of it, in fact.
So here I am in mid-stream, radically changing my weft choice, and being rather pleased with the results.
Sometimes you just have to be open to alternate possibilities.
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3 comments:
It's truly amazing the amount of weaving you accomplish. I'm impressed and somewhat daunted that I'm working so slowly on my own projects. It's always informative to read your posts and I enjoy them thoroughly.
Laura,
Does this feel as soft and scrumptious as it looks?
It's always a treat to be privy to others' creative processes. So often, the end product is what the consumer sees, and little thought is given to all of the starts, stops, and changes in direction that let to it.
Weave on,
Jane
My productivity is based on the fact that for 30+ years weaving has been my profession. In other words, it takes priority in my life. I'm also very fast. :D
Now that weaving is also my therapy, I make a point of weaving every day (or doing something weaving related).
The hand of the fabric should feel really nice. I've used this yarn before on a silk warp (made yardage that won second place in the Carnegie Yardage exhibit in Vancouver in 2002 - Junichi Arai was the judge) so I'm confident it will be very close in hand to that fabric.
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