The greenish shade in this cloth is actually more blue in real life - I just can't figure out how to adjust the colour in my new camera software. :(
From time to time I will weave for another weaver. Sometimes it is in trade for their services. Sometimes they simply don't have the time to do the weaving themselves. Sometimes they don't have the equipment to execute what they need to have done.
In this instance, it was time that was lacking so I offered to weave a sample for Trish of Indigo Moon using a new-to-her yarn of BFL (Blue Faced Leicester) super wash in a fingering weight (knitting term). The yarn has 400 meters per 100 grams or 430 yards per 3.5 ounces (or just under 2000 yards per pound).
The yarn was engineered for knitting, is a four ply with a fairly tight twist so it's plenty strong enough for warp. Since it is a knitting yarn it has a fair amount of stretch, but not so much that it is difficult to weave. I did have to be careful letting off the tension or too much warp would come forward.
With two colours - Celestial Blue and Divine Purple - I used a Fibonacci sequence to design a stripe. I used 15 epi (I have a 15 dent reed but this could also be woven on a rigid heddle loom using two 7.5 dpi heddles). The picks per inch were around 10 in the loom under tension which relaxed to around 12 ppi afterwards. I didn't so much beat as press the weft into place.
The warp was wound at 3 yards in length and I lashed on to save yarn, hemstitching at the beginning and end to make a short fringe. I wove about 80 inches (under tension) which relaxed to 74" off the loom. The warp was just a hair under 9 inches in width with 132 ends; 8 inches off loom.
After wet finishing (hot water, rinse, rinse, rinse to remove some excess blue dye), it was tossed into the dryer for a few minutes until just damp and given a hard press on low heat.
The measurements were now 70" long by 7.75 inches wide.
The weave structure is plain weave and the cloth has a little bit of crispness but a fairly smooth feel. The cloth shows mild tracking which imo looks quite nice, giving the cloth a little visual texture.
The colours are not completely level so the cloth has an abrash appearance - the slight variation in the colour is not truly variegated as such.
I'll mail the scarf to Trish tomorrow so she'll soon have a woven sample for when she does shows, selling her yarns.
Currently reading Dare to Die by Carolyn Hart
3 comments:
Nice colors, even if the camera doesn't see what you do :-) I hope that now you're home for a while, the allergies have settled down a bit.
I'm assuming same yarn as weft? Just one of the colors?
It's beautiful. Before I saw the bigger version of the picture, it looked like there was a point twill in there. But I guess that's the tracking which probably enhances the variation in color saturation.
Yes, I used the blue as weft. And yes, the point twill effect is the tracking. :)
cheers,
Laura
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