Step by Step

 I'm coming down to the 'end' of the current series I've been working on for the last 18 or so months.  I've explored the weave structure and gotten comfortable with it, but I'm beginning to get that restless feeling that means...it is time to move on.  Not that I have anything grand I want to do.  In fact I will be revisiting 'fancy' twills.  

But I thought it might be interesting to some of you how the last few warps came about.  If you want to see more of the Matrix designs, my ko-fi shop is filled with some (not all) of the various designs I wove as I explored the weave structure.

At the end, I came up with a 'tile' design.

I was quite pleased with myself when this appeared on my screen.  I felt it showed off the weave structure, was complex (four different tile designs), and when woven in this 'counter change' format was symmetrical.

Once I had this one set up I wanted to see what else I could do with it.  Fiberworks offers a 'drop' option when copying the threading (and treadling) so I set up the first section, then requested that the software repeat the threading but to 'drop' it.  I had no idea what to expect.

Interesting but not all that attractive to me.  It was going to take some more messing around.

So instead of using the 'drop' function, I mirror imaged the first half of the threading, alternating the blocks in the treadling.

This one showed promise but I messed with it some more and wove this instead.

In this version, I used the mirror function for the threading, but in the treadling created a 4 x 4 block in the middle which then repeated along the length of the towel.  The repeat is too large to be seen in a thumbnail.  

And finally, after messing with the drop function more (a *lot* more) came up with this.

Now I'm preparing the 'last' warp of this series.  The warp will be the same blues (peacock and bleu moyen) and the weft will be what ever is left of the two blues in the warp and whatever warp is left - if there is any - will be natural white.

Colours are not close to 'true' but I wanted to see if I would get the effect I wanted so did an approximation.

When using the same colours in the weft as in the warp the effect will be more like a 'satin' weave - very subtle.

I'm now officially over the halfway point on the current warp so it feels good to have the next warp sorted out.  Sometimes it can take several hours before I find something I want to invest my time and effort into weaving.  Weaving is labour intensive and I don't want to 'waste' my time and effort so I prefer to have a plan I feel 90% confident in before I commit to threading, sleying and weaving the cloth.

If you are interested in more detail on the development of this series, I documented it up until about this time last year in Stories from the Matrix.