A New Design

My friend Tien Chiu is getting married in June, and I've promised to weave a banner to be hung at the entrance to the facility she and her fiance have chosen for the ceremony. The banner is based on the Chinese double happiness symbol, traditional for weddings, with the addition of their names and the date.

Tien's handwoven wedding ensemble will include a coat that has this symbol on the edging. You can read all about her adventures designing and weaving the cloth for the dress, coat, and edging on her blog.

Here's a draft of the design we've been discussing for the banner:



It's shown above as black characters on a white ground; the actual weaving will be metallic gold (the weft) on a black ground (the warp). After filling with weaves, and recoloring the pixels, the design will look more like this:



If you click the image to enlarge, you may be able to see the weaves - 1/7 and 7/1 satin for this iteration of the draft. Until I weave some short samples, I won't be sure those are appropriate for the planned 60-epi sett and the yarns I'll use. The warp will be black 20/2 mercerized cotton; Tien is suppying the gold metallic weft, as she has lots left after sampling and weaving yardage for the wedding coat.

I'd prefer to have the black ground solid black - I think the little dots of metallic gold weft may be distracting. By using weft-backed satin with two wefts, one black and one gold, I can make the ground solid black. The black dots of warp would still show in the gold areas, but I think that will be less visible than gold dots on black. In any case, weft-backed satin is a structure I need to learn more about, so even just a small sample will be instructive even if I decide that 1-warp, 1-weft satin looks just fine.