My Old Friend 8072

The scan shown below is the first scarf of a run in the Feathers series to be wet-finished and pressed. You may remember me saying that the liftplan from design 8072 on Handweaving.net works just as nicely on a point threading as on a straight draw threading. I've used it twice recently on a 20-shaft straight draw, once as a scarf in the Mindless Weaving project, and once on a couple of bookmarks. You can scroll down a post or two to see pictures of the straight draw version and a drawdown showing the liftplan in detail.

Here it's used on a 20-shaft point threading (just 1 to 20 and back, no advance) that has one echo. I tinkered quite a while with the interval between the two design lines until the liftplan made a nice peacock-ish pattern. If I remember right, one design line started on shaft one and the other on shaft seven.

This is a really unbalanced parallel threading for 20 shafts. The usual scheme is to make the interval divide the available number of shafts as evenly as possible by the number of design lines - i.e., if you are working with 20 shafts and 2 design lines, the first design line begins on 1 and the second on 11, or if the design has 3 design lines, the first begins on 1, the second on 8 and the third on 15.

However, usual isn't always the most attractive. I tried it, didn't like it, so I exercised my weaving software until I had a threading that worked well for this liftplan.

One design line is threaded in royal blue, the other in kelly green. Both are 50/2 silk from Henry's Attic, sett at 65 epi. The weft is a 100/2 silk dyed dark garnet red. Before pressing, the weft was really iridescent from certain angles, but after a hard press it just shows as a dark pixel against the blue and green - no more iridescence.



As I finish and press the remaining scarves in the series, I'll try to make scans to post. Keeping in mind, of course that they may get sold at the show this weekend before I have a chance to capture images... Hope on, hope ever!