Weft Yarns; or What Are Leftovers For, Anyway?

In a comment on the last post, Laura asked what I'm using for weft yarns. As it turns out, anything in the stash that's kinda sorta approximately the same size as 20/2 cotton.

Because each piece is about 18.8 inches wide, and anywhere from 16 to 24 inches in height, it doesn't take much yardage for weft, especially if I'm using two weft colors. Let's see. 18.8 * 24 * 60 ppi = 27,072 inches divided by 36 = 752 yards. Half of that is 376 yards.

Wow! Imitating a packrat and stowing away small amounts of remnants of past projects qualifies as A Good Thing!

So far, I've only bought black 20/2 mercerized cotton for warp. All the wefts have been leftovers, or at least yarns that were already in the supply cupboard. I've used 20/2 cotton, tencel, rayon, and blends thereof. I've also used 30/2 silk, which at 7,500 yards per pound is only a little thicker than 20/2 cotton at 8,400 yards per pound. I've even considered using my spinning wheel to loosely ply multiple ends of 60/2 or 100/2 silk, so I can use up the stash of fine silk leftovers.

As far as I'm concerned, the first few warps are kindergarten warps - baby steps - tools for learning, playing, experimenting, figuring out what kind of image works with what kind of structure, and with yarn of what hue/value/saturation. I usually learn more from mistakes than from successes, so I actually welcome the bloopers and failures, because they are excellent teachers.

And if the successes are good enough to sell, all the better - icing on the cake. although most of them will need some needle-woven repairs before I'll be willing to show them in the booth.