Pushing the Boundaries

 

The last couple of days have been a bit busy, but I did get started on weaving the scarf on the sample warp.

It's going about how I expected.  The epi is 20, which is a bit open for twill and so the beating in of the weft is not as consistent as I would like.  But I'm about 3/4s done the scarf and the recipient will be delighted with the colour and not pay too much attention to the fact that this scarf is far from 'perfect'.

The value scale is quite close and it's difficult to tell some of the steps apart so I've had to set up a system to keep track.  Even so sometimes I forget which direction I'm going with the steps and I've had to unweave because I picked up the wrong shuttle, or woven the twill in the wrong direction.  I'm changing direction with each colour change, which may not be visible in the photo.

The threading is a herringbone or Dornick twill which changes direction and skips a shaft in the threading and the treadling, which means when the twill line changes direction the selvedge threads don't drop out of the cloth but stay weaving in.  The maximum float length is 2.  What it means is that no true plain weave is possible, but that's ok because the scarf has no plain weave in it.

When I do the plain weave samples, I don't care if there will be two ends weaving together.  At that point it's just a sample.

So my theory that 20 would be good for plain weave, but 24 would likely be better for twill has pretty much been proved.  OTOH, the drape of this scarf should be really nice given it is being woven at 20 epi.  Of course this is a narrow warp and for a 36 or 48" wide warp, I'd likely go with 20 epi.  Because change something like the warp width, and sometimes the epi needs to change, too.

But I wasn't sure and only weaving it would tell me that.

Sometimes a sample is 'just' a sample.  Sometimes?  It's a scarf.  Or a tea towel.  Or a napkin.

Array is fairly expensive, but so far it's looking good for weaving clothing, if someone is inclined.  It's strong.  It comes in a vast array of colours, with 4 step values of the hues.  It's hard to find fine wool yarns that can be used for clothing, so this yarn is looking good for making really nice cloth for shawls, or garments that need to be cut/sewn.  I'm looking forward to seeing the final results after wet finishing, which will include a good hard press.